Big Technology Podcast - Arab Spring Leader Wael Ghonim on Modern Social Media's Promise And Peril

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

In 2011, Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page that sparked the overthrow of the Egyptian regime. Since then, the former Google marketing director has kept a close eye on social media's evolution, and has plenty to say about where it's gone wrong, and how it can get better. Ten years after Cairo residents painted "Facebook" on the walls after the revolution, Ghonim stops by Big Technology Podcast to revisit what happened and where we go from here.

Hey, YL. Hey, Alex, how are you? Good, good to see you again. Thank you. Okay, I'm just going to read the ad, and then we'll get into it. Here we go. The Big Technology podcast is sponsored by MediaOcean. Looking for a job in Big Tech, you might want to take a look at MediaOcean.

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of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is one of the most original thinkers in tech I've ever met, and someone who is not only a thinker, but a person who's had the guts to put his own safety on the line for causes that matter to him. Well, Gounim helped spark the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 by creating a Facebook page that rallied the country against the regime. He's also a friend of mine. I think I can say that.

Yes, of course. Thank you. I appreciate that. You are a friend of mine, too. Thank you very much. Okay, so it's confirmed. And while you've helped me think through the issues, through different lens, and I've been looking through this conversation since before I started the podcast. So an official welcome to the show.

Welcome, Maya. Thank you, Alex, and I'm happy to be with you. And we've kind of developed an interesting relationship as we got introduced to each other. And since then, I'm happy to, yeah, of course, call you a friend, because I do think that at the end of the day I'm getting from you is good vibes and experiences and we share insights. So it's a good way to start a friendship anyway. Yeah, likewise. I've told you this before, but I feel like every time we talk about tech and talk about life, I come away having learned something and not only like learned like a new fact or figure, but a new way of appreciating the world, a new way of looking at the world.

And that means a lot. So thank you. I'm glad you see it that way. For sure. For sure, 100%. So I think I'd like to start just by introducing you to the audience. So you were working for Google as a head of marketing in the Middle East in 2011. And then the Egyptian regime killed a man, Khaled Sayyid.

And you created a Facebook page, We Are All Khaled Saeed. So can you take, which eventually ended up leading to the overthrow of the regime. So can you take us back to that moment? What were you feeling then and what were you thinking? Well, it was basically a moment of frustration because I'm someone who was born in 1980 and since I was one year old, since I was like coming to life, there was only one president that runs the country and the ruling party was kind of getting old in their positions of power.

It's been like 30 years at the time. And unfortunately, the way the country runs has not been ideal in the perspective of a lot of people, especially young people, who were kind of exposed to the global phenomena who got together on the internet. So when the event of Khaled Saeed this happened and the response that came from the government about his case was just basically, a denial and saying that, no, he did not die from being beaten up by police officers. They just swallowed some drugs, and that's what basically caused him to die. When that happened, I started the page, and my idea at the time was not to start any kind of massive unrest or any kind of massive revolutions or anything.

It was just as simple as I know how to communicate. I learned how to communicate. I have a background in engineering, and as well as master and business administration and a lot of experience in the street. And it must be that people like me should be doing something about the environment. So I was trying to raise awareness about police brutality, human rights violations, calling for democracy in Egypt. And all of that was happening kind of like in the realm of between 2010 and for months until 2011 happened. Just to give people perspective of the numbers, after three days of creating the Facebook page, about 100,000

people were on it. And the page grew like to, when the time the revolution kind of started, the page had about 400, 500,000 members. And at the time, in 2011, that was like a huge number within a page that has some sort of a political agenda. And at the time, because of my frustration and because of my desire to do something, I just decided to take a bit of a risk by operating this page anonymously. So it was not a full risk. It was an anonymous management of the page.

The way events unfold is not about moments, actually. You know, there was no, like, we try as journalists or we try as people who write books and we try and understand experiences to come up with some sort of analysis of what happened. But most of the time, there is always like a butterfly, effect, the trailing effect for all the events. So it was not just the Khaled Saeed death that triggered everything. I did not join politics just because he died. You know what I mean? It's mostly just general observation, frustration, anger that eventually gets manifested when an event like what happened to Khaled Saeed happens. And then as we grouped and as people were together, when the events in Tunisia happened, I kind of had a change of my own internal face towards whether or should we or should we not do something in the streets?

Not that I'm the one who holds the key. And what happened in Tunisia? In Tunisia, basically, in 14th of January, bin Ali, the president of Tunisia for over 20 years, due to protests, announced that he is resigning, and he had to flew outside of Tunisia. At the time, actually, his plane was on the air, and they were trying to find,

the pilot was trying to find which country is going to take him, because France said no. You know, a few other countries said, no, we can't have you because there's a lot of trouble. And he ended up landing in Saudi Arabia. But the point I was trying to make is that kind of event gave us a perspective that actually change in systems could happen, that individuals are powerful. At the time, I thought the power of the people is greater than the people in power. I still think the same.

But it's kind of like it came manifested in the scene. So I just used the page and the 400,000 people win at the page to call for, let's all, you know, I just put a date and a time and hoped for us to start working towards this. Of course, just to clarify, I'm not saying that I'm the one who just ignited it. The real ones who ignited it are the regime. And if I was not there, it would have been a different scenario that takes people somewhere that's also not favorable. because at the end of the day, there was like a total collapse in the system. And that was also met with a total new technology that's coming bright and exciting. Everybody was excited on Facebook and liking and hearting.

You know, there was no heart at the time, liking and getting like in the hype of like feeling that they're powerful, that they can do things, which is kind of true. But at the end of the day, that kind of contributed to the fall of President Mubarak during the, the revolution for 18 days. I got arrested for 11 days out of the 18 days. They captured me from the street and I was arrested for about 11 days and there was huge pressure coming from the street, coming from different governments, different countries and also like of course Google as the company have done some diplomatic effort to just try and help me out. Not to get me out, but just to make sure that I'm okay, because at the time, no one even knew where I was. I was just basically taken out from the street and put in a solitary confinement in somewhere

that I did not even personally knew because they cover my eyes. So, I mean, long story short, it was basically this kind of a collective action that got together, and I was in the middle of it because of how internet savvy and also how frustrated and how driven I was about having a better future for the country. Right. And the way that you describe it is, you know, great perspective talking about how what happened was a manifestation of frustration passed.

But on the other hand, it does take a certain type of individual to help lead what you led. And, you know, I'd love to speak about social media throughout this conversation because obviously our perspectives on Facebook have changed. since then it was sort of the height of why people liked Facebook and we'll get to that in the next question but I just want to know from your perspective like personally you must have known that you know your life you had a pretty good life you know working for Google and and you must have known that your life was going to change getting involved so what made you feel you know it was worthwhile to put your personal well-being at risk to lead something like this because

when an individual, and I know it was a group, but, you know, they eventually found you, they find the individuals that are, you know, helping to spark it. When an individual goes against a government, that's a bold thing to do. So I'm curious what, if you even made a calculation and what calculation went through your head when you decided to make this happen. Yeah, I think it's a combination of recklessness and basically immaturity combined with, you know, lack of knowledge as well as a lot of bravery and drive to feel something like in throughout my career like the you know I remember the last few months at Google I was not really happy at all like I just felt something is going on wrong you know I

don't I did not come to life to live a boxed life in a way like you know I just operate out of my own resources and we are here to just live life whatever that is I feel like there is something, I always feel that, that there is something stronger about the bonds between people and there has to be a price to try and bring those bonds together. So some people have to stand up and pay that price. My naivity protects me somehow because, you know, if one sometimes really understand the consequences of their actions, like, of course, I, while I was doing what I was doing, I thought there was a lot of security risks on myself. And I, I thought I might be arrested, but at the same time I always reminded myself, even inside the prison,

you know, does it really matter how long do you live or what kind of work do you do during your life? And of course, that question of mattering is important to, you know, even on whether you're a believer of a God or a divine power that is, that wants us in a certain way, or even if you are a non-believer that just want to do things that matter in your own experience of life because I just believe that life is all about feelings. It's not about words, it's not about actions, it's really about feelings. The words and actions are just our way to feel whatever we feel. Many people who do actions, who are addicted to certain actions, they are just addicted to it because of the feel that it gives them. So in that sense, I kind of value my feelings

a lot. And whenever I felt like I was not happy, I did not just keep moving on in the same direction. So I felt an internal urge all the time to do something while at the same time I strive to balance it. I don't want to, you know, I was an anonymous admin. I was hiding my identity. I did not stay up my mom's place on 25th of January because, you know, I was living in Dubai. So I would stay with my family, but I didn't. I stayed in one of my friends' offices. I changed my phones. I broke one of my SIM cards because I don't want the government to trace me if they are. So I kind of played, despite my naivity, I kind of played the game as much as I can. But I can tell you that when they captured me, I was not ready for it. So I knew that a lot of

it was also naivety. How did they find you? Because you were an anonymous admin of the page and they ended up finding out who you were. They found me by chance. It was not like, what happened? I basically, there was an ex-Google. At the time, I think he's still at Google, Google Ideas, or Jigso. The CEO of Google Jigso was visiting Cairo, and it was merely a coincidence, I swear, because his plan to visit was many months before, it was settled many months before, and his name is Jared Cohen. So he was working for the Department of State before Google. So when he came, he was coming to Egypt for a project about extremism and he was in contact with the government. Like he was working through normal channels. But because of his background,

I believe the government somehow followed him because he came, he arrived on 26th or 27th, I can't remember. And again, you know, because I know from inside the company that this trip was... And what's the significance of the 25th? 25th is the first day the protests started. So when he arrived, he arrived at the time where the government was kind of like looking around what's happening. What's happening here? Where are all these people coming from and who drives them and who's motivating them?

And they were kind of... Yeah, they were kind of... bought into a big conspiracy about that whatever that's happening cannot be just coincidence. It must be a series of events or mass organized and orchestrated by foreign powers. And they were trying to figure that out. So they kind of followed him. And I just had dinner with him on 27th because 28th was going to be one of the days where

we don't know what's going to happen next. So I just wanted to see him before I just disappear from the scene. So I agreed with him to meet him for who can't. I'll smoke hookah and dinner in one of the cafes. And as soon as I finished my dinner with him, as I was walking in the dark street, it was like around midnight. Just four people surround me with,

they have machine guns and stuff, and they push me on the ground, they hit me, and then, you know, they basically handcuff me, put a head, like something to cover my eyes. an eye cover so that I can't see what's going.

It's like a movie scene, you know. I kept trying to scream, but, you know, even people who would see you, they would not engage because these look like they don't, they were not fearing, they were not wearing like official outfits, but they had guns and they clearly looked like they know what they were doing, that they're not going to stop. So you get a sense that, okay, that's security. So I, they found me in that way, which. Which I think it was...

Would they eavesdrop with your conversation with Jared? Is that what happened? No, no, no. They were following him. They were finding who is everyone who is he meeting. And they found me to be a very... Like, they have to arrest me. They have to know what's my story.

Why I meet this guy? What's happening? And that was part of the investigation. The big part of it was asking me about my connections with Google, my connections with the CIA. I mean, I had no connections with the CIA. my connect you know what what is driving they just can't understand oh they couldn't understand at the time my motivations for doing what I'm doing they thought it must be that I'm

just recruited and paid to believe in the certain way I believe in to do whatever under foreign agents but it was from the heart yeah and I kind of tried to argue with them back and forth using logic and emotions that this is this is not what it's not what you think And I do think that they did, like at least the ones I talked to, they did have a different way of treating me as we go, which gives me a bit of a signal. I don't necessarily security people don't give you the real impression. They're trained to do so. They don't give you the real impression. They don't need to.

They actually prefer that you don't know what you think of them. So in that sense, I kind of feel like I was able to kind of deliver my. my message, but overall, most of the government, even until today, they just treat me with a lot of suspicion. Right. What was it like being detained for those 11 days? It was a very hard experience because on one hand, you don't know when are you going to get out, you don't know what's going on. Like, I was completely disconnected and isolated from the scene. Just imagine me in a very small, tiny room. That's not even well painted. It has like all these bad things that I'm smelling and I kept coughing for hours because of it and I'm blindfolded and handcuffed

even when I go to the bathroom or yeah the whole time and it was such a tough experience I have to say that I probably still still trying to kind of pass in a in the most positive way but there are certain things in my head you know I before I leave I just hugged everybody they allowed me to see some of their faces, which is also uncommon. They don't unfold you until you're out, because they don't want you to recognize any of the faces of those who either interrogated you or beating you up

or whatever that is. I don't know if I'm, I guess, like, many years past, no problem. You know, a couple of the officers actually liked me and they wanted me to see everybody, and I saw everybody, including those who were beating me up, and I hugged them, and I told them in front of them that I wish them the best. And I actually wish it.

And, you know, I get very irritated when people call that Stockholm syndrome. I like to call it Amistradam syndrome because it's all about making love. You know, we're just here to love each other. And at the end of the day, the fact that someone oppresses me does not automatically make them oppressor for good. And the fact that one is oppressing me does not make them oppressor for good. And the fact that one is oppressing me does not make them the evil people. I mean, even if they torture me, that does not make them the evil people. Because I'm not in the game of a sign.

Of course, the act of torture is an evil act. And of course, it's unethical. And I oppose it with all what I can because I've actually experienced it. So I kind of know how horrible it is. You just go into your own terror room inside your head where you know all things are dull. You are no longer in control of your destiny. You just don't know nothing, you know, even the food, someone is throwing it to you, throwing it at you, and you have to accept whatever you're eating. And the food was okay. So thanks to the shifts in state security, you know, at least. I mean, it was okay, not good, huh? It was okay. You know, because I'm just, I learned from my own experience in life and in the streets just live with whatever that's in front of you. You know, if I'm complaining about the food, I'll be beaming up there. But the food was something I could eat, the torture did not go into crazy limits. I did not get electrified. I was not,

you know, I was not lift. There was no mark in my body from the beating. You know, all the beating was okay. I could have taken it. The humiliation, of course, all of that, as I say, is bad and horrible and it's not something that I am defending or justifying it any way. But at the end of the I believe it's part of my responsibility since I'm working on trying to change reality in my own country to kind of understand reality for what it is and deal with it and accept it. So when I leave while doing that to all of them, I believe that I'm working on my own, I'm working according to my own value system in which I believe the whole thing about, you know, if I alienate them and they alienate me, they have power and they will win.

Right. If we communicate, then it's a different story. So I don't want to cut the communication. I don't want to play the game of polarization. I don't do ACAB. I was tortured by police, but I don't believe ACAB at all. I believe that all cups are important to have in the society so that we can actually have a manageable society. And all cups are bad.

Bastards. Oh, okay. That's a common. It's a lingo. It's a lingo. You know, sorry, because I'm in my own... No, it's good to hear. It's a lingua among...

Activists, but this is not your perspective. But it's a common language that I actually oppose. Right. Yeah, I mean, and it's not, it's not all the... Of course, not all the activists have the same common view, but it's kind of like this idea that you are mad at the regime for being exclusive and so on, but then inside of you actually build up that kind of same exclusive idea. that you just don't accept them at all and you just treat them as completely alienated

as if they're just dictators and so on. Like in my own view now about things, I question the general, generally speaking, a Western narrative to the events in my own country, like this whole idea that their problem is that they don't have democracy and if democracy exists, then their problems will be solved and the lack of freedom of species. the prior. Like, I just think this whole, and I call it Western Agenda, because it is an agenda. It's not an ethical position. It's not an ethical position. Ethical positions don't change based on interests. So since it's an agenda, I do think that at the end of the day, this agenda is a naive one. And it's, and, you know, I don't need much to prove its naivety, because at the end of the day, even the democratic solution in the West is being kind of like in a mess right now. It's not where it need to be at all. like you see at the type of the way how politicians are dealing with each other in the US or the whole thing about Brexit in the UK.

And one could step back and ask, is this the real democracy? Is this the kind of idea of a ruling of the, we are just all enslaved by a process that is not necessarily optimum. And at the same time, a bunch of us want to force it on, and I was one of them, on on collapsing systems or old fashion systems instead of collapsing old fashioned systems as just like it's a batch things don't work like that that's uh it was a naive moment of when i did that and i still think that there is a lot of naivety that's surrounding us and you can see its impact in the global in the global scale yeah i mean we've had moments over the past couple of years

where it's been like um what would we say if we were were looking on from outside and what was happening in the U.S. was happening elsewhere and how would we characterize it? I mean, look at the storming of the capital as the tip of the spear, but it's also just like this was a, it should have been a wake-up moment for a lot of folks about, you know, let's make sure that we're buttoned up at home before we start to try to influence all the events need to be understood in context. You cannot just create isolation events, focus on one event and call it as the whole reason why, but I'll learn things, you know, and that's what basically I think a lot about right now. We are so invested in certain kind of

problems that look good and bring us more attention. And the way we deal with these problems is not deep enough to fix the actual problem. So, for example, if me and you are good in mass, seven billion people, they live 24 hours. day, 18 hours they are up. And their kind of awareness of who they are and what they are is driven from all the sum of all the experiences they are experiencing, right? Totally. So if the experiences are good, generally their awareness and view is going to be more good. If they are bad, it's going to be more challenging and so on and so forth.

So if we have that holistic view, and then we look at big social media companies that occupy a large percentage of the market share and by design occupy a large number of hours of the consciousness of their users. And you look at the kind of philosophy that they operate in order to distribute the content to their users. And we're talking here about, you know, billions of users receiving billions of information pieces on daily basis. These infrastructure networks, these like kind of like highways of information that is being designed, have not been designed with safety in mind. They have not. They actually have been designed with recklessness in mind, with gross in mind, with speed in mind, but not safety in mind. And, you know, safety gets

prioritized as according to the experiences and limited experiences of the people who are operating the company from their headquartered. You know, the design of tech problems. It's just Basically, you are in a headquarters somewhere in California where things are amazing, but you are operating your software where millions of people in Myanmar are using it. And if you do not prioritize, you know, looking after the health of the network, not just the growth of the network, how healthy the network is, by looking at the type of engagements that people are having with each other, if you are not looking at that and you're just keeping it in a chaotic system and whomever can have engagement wins,

then you are basically facilitating hacking consciousness and without knowing. I'm not, by the way, questioning the intentions of the people. And I have met a lot of people in these companies and I've worked in these companies. So it's not a matter of questioning intentions. It's just a matter of questioning maturity because a lot of the people in the tech companies do not admit to themselves that they have been immature about their understanding of the impact of their systems on the global scene, and they continue to be immature by just thinking that actually these, you know, they're working on like batches, batch of fixes, rather than

thinking philosophically that there is actually a huge problem that we are facing as for the collective human consciousness, that, you know, it does not make sense that all these polarizing content, all these stupid, funny, crazy videos just makes us occupy most. of our times. And guess what happens when you do that? People start slowly losing reason and using humor to advocate reality. And you just lose the overall sense of balance inside of you to see things for what they are. And then you can have a leader that claims whatever they can claim that it's always the biggest. It's always the best. And whatever, these claims are true or not. It does not matter if it's true or not because he can say it and they can believe it.

And the same part, by the way, just to be clear, I consider myself to be kind of a liberal more than a conservative. But at the same time, I'm actually more frustrated by the liberals than the conservatives in general because I think that the liberals claim that they always have solutions, that they are more open-minded, that blah, blah, blah, and I say claim, because what I experienced was actually just a claim. I've been in too many of these like sittings where we get like top, top people from Silicon Valley and we're sitting down to discuss how can we fix democracy and, you know, make sure that social media does not ruin the democratic scene. And every one of these settings I was invited to almost had zero people who are from the conservative side. So I always ask those people, you know, how can you think that you can fix? a problem in which one of the wings is not available.

I mean, you can't fix it. I mean, even if they are the problem, just alienating them doesn't make it happen. You know, you can't come up with a solution driven by liberal values and enforce it on people who have conservative values. Things don't work like that. And I also tend to, just the last point, tend to think that, you know, I think that right wing and left wing, it's like kind of a bird. you can't really travel with one of the wings on its own. Why? If you look at the patterns of liberalism

and, you know, how individual characteristics of the people who are leading that kind of wave of progress and liberalism and so on, you would find one very common, they are recklessly optimistic. They push in directions where they don't know where it's going. They get fascinated by short-term results and they discount long-term impacts. It had happened all the time. And the people who are conservative as a result kind of balance that view. On one hand, they are pretty stuck to many things that they don't want to change, although it might be better for them to change. But they are very skeptical towards a lot of the things they see in the liberal side of things and the progress side of things. And their skepticism saves us all.

Their skepticism saves us all because if you allow the liberals to push gas unstop, they are actually going to take the society into the wrong. places because simply we are here because we have been connected to our roots. We are here because we are thousands of years worth of evolution and we can't just discount human behavior, human nature, nature of environments, you know, complicated state of transitions. If you want to transition any society from one state to another, there has to be a very complex, we can't just disconnect all that and just be excited about banners and movements and trends and hashtags. and, and hypes, and everyone is like creating a certain kind of hype and pushing it. And that's why I kind of feel it is one of the things I kind of understand now that we're all wrong.

We will not be able to figure things out until we all stop and say, we are all wrong. If we are in the game of polarization, if you are making more people polarizing in this world, no matter what the polarization is for, it's wrong. Because at the end of the day, you can't operate a society with no trust. And once people are polarized, that's what, you know, the American politicians are just becoming, to be honest, I mean, I don't want to be offensive, but they are just making jokes of themselves. Because, you know, when you are someone who is supposed to be a strong leader and you are running a serious business, one of the biggest civilizations in the world, and your attitude is like, you know, reckless, I, you know, I don't want to even call it a kid because kids are, you know, kids are amazing, kids are mature. You can actually have a mature kid, but just kind of reckless behavior.

And we all accept it as part, you know, that's human behavior. Oh, that's how the TV runs. Oh, that's how the media. Oh, that's how the system. No, that's all bullshit. Yeah. You know, that doesn't work that way. If there is a fundamental problem, then we need to figure out how to solve it and not to further the polarization.

I want to pick up on a few things you said. First of all, I agree that we need a balance of liberal and conservative. I think that's important. I don't think having a one-party system has worked well for anyone. And so I do think that's important. I also think it's important for both parties to approach things in good faith. And I think too often in recent times we've probably had, you know, the right wing in this country not really operate in good faith. I mean, it exists on the left side too, but it's been sad to see the lack of good faith action and good faith negotiation in politics. And then finally, just the idea that certainty is everyone's so certain. I think this is something you were hitting on. So certain that

they have the answers. And the real possibility of growth is saying, I don't know or I might be wrong or there's a chance that this might not be a definitive solution. Why might it not work? How could we do this better? What do you think, you know, someone who has a different viewpoint in terms of the way that I in terms of the way that you see the world that's so important and it's unfortunate that everything's become so flattened and two dimensional right now yeah I think that it's unfortunate but to be honest it makes sense as in the design of the game makes it this way why because at the end of the day there are tools now so for example if if one of these politicians is trolling another one they get much more attention and they need that attention

because that's the way they can actually raise funds because they are a known politician and people are paying attention to them. What I'm trying to say here is like we all need to kind of stop and zoom out a little bit and re-invision how to fix things without alienating anyone and without assuming, you know, you said that you think that the left, you know, the conservatives are kind of more fixated into their positions. but me and you kind of have to understand that this is not to oppose the liberals. This is something in their character.

This is something they have experienced. This is the way they think. And in order for that way of thinking to move or advance, you have to kind of respect their own value system so that they can listen to you. So, for example, you think that the right side is less, you know, kind of like less listening and less respectful to the left side. But I can tell you, if you are in the right, if you are religious, a Christian religious, and you see, you open a comedy. Yeah. Yeah, you open a comedy show, making fun of your God, making fun of your religious beliefs, you are going to feel the same way.

And again, this kind of, this kind of phenomenon. is what we need to deal with, which is we need to kind of figure out how can we build some sort of meta-thinking that absorb all of us, so we can think then to fix these issues. But I can't think that a solution will emerge when comedians are the ones who are running the philosophy scene

in reality, because they are capturing people's attention in a way or another. With all due respect to comedians, I like them, I enjoy them, and I can name quite a lot that makes me happy. But at the end of the day, countries should not be run by comedians. Presidents or president nominees in a realistic world cannot have their head being with a comedian because they cracked a bunch of jokes. Ha, ha, ha.

You know, we're talking about a real world here. We're not talking about your ability to present. So for us to really start solving the problems, there has to. to be some deep questionings of the methods we have been using. You can't allow people to mock each other, accuse each other with no limits, and then think that they're not going to be

polarized in a horrible way. They're going to be polarized and sometimes they're going to choose against their own interest as well just to punish the other side because we see that in street fights and... Well, that's become the whole American political scene has been punitive recently. Yeah, it starts local

and it keeps growing until it become a global phenomenon within the environment. Yeah, you know, there's one thing that I've been thinking about like this whole conversation, which I want to bring up, which is that, you know, it's been interesting hearing your perspective on social media and sort of how it's helped to, you had this remarkable line in one of your TED Talks, the same tool that united us to topple dictators eventually tore us apart. And, you know, I think that like you're someone who's been associated with one of the most positive uses of social media, an opportunity to rally, you know, a population against, you know, a regime that, you know, was, was unresponsive and push for change. And so what does it feel like to you?

Because, you know, they were spray painting things, Facebook on the walls in Cairo after the revolution. So do you have this sort of like, you know, push and pull where you're like, well, I'm glad that social media was available for that, but I'm also nervous about what it's developed into or like when you were you know pushing those levers back in 2011 did you have a feeling where things might go? It was not a feeling where things might go but it was

kind of a question in my head like I can see in this tool so much power that it can be abused by anyone right like I mean I was personally a victim of the of the I mean not victim but I was targeted by the tool

by you know tons and tons there was like a page that has like over a million people and they would write things I never said they say well when he is saying this such and such and they put it as and I on your page and not on my page not on a different page they just yeah they claim that I made a statement and this statement is ridiculous and horrible and extreme but no one's chicks who who said what and at the time I even sent sent a message to Facebook and they said we can't remove it you know we're not going to be in the you know they have to kind of yeah they can't judge that

if I said it or not. So as I was trying to say, like my relationship, I got targeted by the same tools and I have seen how at the end of the day, being excited about a tool is no longer something I do. It's naive. Being excited about a tool that continuously develop is even more naive.

And being excited about a tool that evolves around financial principles controlled by a bunch of investors trying to amass a huge number of audience and selling advertisement on it. You know, that's that kind of a model in my view. It still exists and it probably will exist for a little bit, but I think it's doomed to fail. I mean, look at if Facebook did everything great and, you know, they kind of made their users

happy, users would not flock to social networks as they appear. Because at the end of the day, reality is humans are. are actually looking for a good experience all the time. And if you offer them this good experience, they can stick with you. But the problem is, and as I understand that, these companies get so excited about, you know, connections. Mark Zuckerberg have already reviewed a lot of his positions in that sense and talked about it. But they get so excited about amassing large number of people. They get so excited about growing the figures and advertising and whatever.

But they don't ask themselves philosophical questions. They hide behind, oh, when I talk to anyone, you know, that's human behavior. Well, it's not true because human behavior is like, we all know in design that if you change a bottom color, things change. So in that sense, if you create an environment that is decent, people will be decent. And if you create the right tools to enforce decency, that's fine. And as long as they are non-partisan and as long as they are not enforced by a platform on its own. And that's why I think, you know, there are some interesting things about Clubhouse, but I still think in the same way, I'm just using it as a tool now.

I don't know where it's going. I'm not going to be excited about a tool. I'm no longer putting my emotional capacity on corporates, on companies that basically want to become, you know, huge. I just think this whole path is somehow part of the reason why we're in and the problem we're in. Everybody's kind of rushing for success. all these networks kind of shoo more than they can bite. They just took more and more and more because, you know, they have to report every three months here and there and increase their stock price.

But these tools are somehow right now are not in the service of the people it claims it is. Yeah. I want to address that. Let's take a quick pause and we'll be right back here on the big technology podcast with Wow. I'll go in it. Hey everyone, let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and

informative takes on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less, and explain why you should care about them. So, search for The Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast. step, like the one you're using right now. All right, we are back for the second part of the big technology podcast here with Wild Ghanem, who helped spark the Egyptian revolution using Facebook.

Before the break, we were talking a little bit about these social networks and sort of maybe we can get into the solutions in this last bit of our conversation. The one thing I want to ask before we get into solutions is just again, thinking about the problem. um first of all do you view what you did as good when you started the page that's course of course and and i still uh i still benefit from from social media every day there is a lot of good that comes out of these networks uh and and that's by design but one gram of bad um is is you know remove uh a thousand grams of good uh huh you know kind of if you think about it if you just spoil a thousand gram of good

with a gram of bad. It couldn't just get all spoiled eventually and go bad. So it's not that. And this is something very important to people who work in social media networks. You know, don't get defensive when people are just going after you for the problems you have. Because we still think there is a version and so we have not forgot all the good moments, all the great things that have happened because of social media in our lives. It's just that the current memory is so occupied with all that polarization and all that bad stuff that's happening right now. Yeah. Do you think there, like it's interesting when you mentioned about one gram versus a thousand grams it's like Disney has this rubric where like you have good moments which are magic moments and bad

moments which are tragic moments and they've like figured out like if you go into one of their park and you have one tragic moment it takes 30 magic moments to make up for it and thank you it kind of makes sense you know you know we humans do that on every day if there's someone who is like kind of nice to you but one time he was really horrible what you're going to tag their mind and you know you're just going to say they're at least crazy you know they because they show you a horrible side right and and and that is what we all need to understand it's not about targeting these companies and claiming that they're not doing good or they we are telling them this so that they can tell us about their amazing efforts

in the in great directions no argument they're good human souls and i assume that they're trying to do they're trying to live their own way without hurting others while making things better however the real problem is because of the defensive nature of humans and because of the lack of that kind of experience within the tech industry, all these consequences happen. I would call them intended or intended, whatever, consequences happen. And they really have no owner to fix. And most of the time, the solution is kind of like we sit down and keep talking about it. And it's never the solution.

The real solution is kind of rethink the design. Do you think they'll live? I mean, so do you think they've become too defensive when it comes to criticism to start rethinking the design? And just a secondary part of that, what would you change with the design? I mean, if we're talking about a building a product that better reflects the good parts of humanity, how might you do it? So, great two questions.

The first question, I really don't know, because. I'm not inside the companies. So my view is super limited to the outside perspective. So I'm not comfortable making a judgment about their internal efforts. Yet I'm seeing from the outside, like I did not see any evolving concept that came out of Facebook that is changing the nature of dialogue within the platform. It hasn't happened. So do I think that a solution like that exists or possible? I believe, you know, I'm sure the people there have the experience of understanding what kind of problems and how to deal with them.

So I believe that, yeah, you can come up with practical solutions. And by the way, people think of solutions in a certain big way. I think Clubhouse, for example, the current version of it, not necessarily the future ones, the way it is designed doesn't make you pay attention all the time to how audience are engaging with what you're saying. So, for example, on one hand, that kind of drops engagement in a way because, of course, if everybody's clapping and we count the number of claps and people know how many are clapping to this and how many are clapping to that

and all that kind of stuff, it's going to all be exciting and fun. But guess what? The game is going to be eventually hacked. Why? Because the people who are optimizing to be recognized and be nice, and get all the claps are not necessarily the ones who have the value. So the design right now somehow, just because it did not manipulate and tap into that kind of human behavior just to increase the number of audience, is by design making

things calmer, you know? So what I'm trying to tell here, my fellow friends who are thinking too much about how to come up with holistic solutions to solve the problems of social media networks is that Sometimes, actually, the solutions are way easier than we think they are. And sometimes the solutions have to do with the design of the experience rather than the algorithms and the machine learning and whatever that is. I remember just a quick example here. You know, they say to know the difference between a marketeer and an engineer, they asked both of them to fix the problem that the escalator is a slow on. and that people get bored

as the escalator keeps going up so the engineer kept trying to solve the problem by fixing the machine work whatever that's in the process to increase the speed by a bit but the marketeer put a mirror because in his assumption if you put a mirror

people start looking at themselves in the mirror and they're going to lose a sense of how much time have passed as the elevator goes up and not that I'm suggesting this over that But what I'm just saying is, like, you can actually think of easy solutions to improve decency in environments like Facebook. You can actually reduce polarization by not building everything just around engagement numbers. And you know what to do exactly? I don't think that's the problem.

The real problem is that if you do that, you make less money. Totally. That's the real problem. Maybe there is a way where you can make more money, but unfortunately, I just think that resources on Earth are like, they behave in an interesting way, even if they are resources created by humans. If you accumulate a lot of them in a short period of time, you are surely going to lose them in a short period of time. And if you accumulate them in a balance and slow and, you know, well-rooted way of time, you are going to for sure last for longer. So whatever that's happening because of technology is that we kind of rush everything, you know, everything happens and you can look at the numbers, the dashboards, and everybody have, the investors have higher expectations of you. So this whole ecosystem, when I say a solution, when I think of a solution, I really think that one, different designs within the experiences that can be tested to see how can you kind of lower the tense, the heat.

you know, the temperature. Just lower the temperature. You know, build things that, you know, reward people for being decent. Show more things that are. But, you know, if you are in the company thinking ads, ads, ads all the time, thinking revenue, revenue, revenue all the time. Or if you are trying to do these changes while not taking revenue hits initially, in either cases, it's not going to work because for a change in a mass.

And of course, here is what I say. It is true that there are losses to doing something like that from a perspective of any company. But also, the company is not aware of the losses it is already taking now because of their brand hit. Because maybe Facebook in life could have lasted for 30 years and it would only last for 20. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe it would have lasted for 50 years, but it will last for 30. But then how do you really know all of that? You can't.

There is no way for you to know. the only way for you to know is look at the current moment. Are you actually being as good as you can? And by the way, one last part is we want improvements. And I personally don't want like a whole change of the system because if you change everything, everything changes. So I'm not naive. I'm not looking for a complete makeover of social media.

Maybe it happens through another platform, you know, just like how Clubhouse is coming in and changing a bit of the nature of communication between individuals. Maybe it happens that way, but at the same time, if it's meant to happen within Facebook, it will have to be gradual, but there has to be way more transparency.

There has to be way more commitment towards making sure that the collective awareness is not up for grab by human traffickers. Yeah, look, nothing annoys me more in this world than when people are like social media just reflects humanity. It's like, if a mirror is not, not perfectly constructed, it will distort. And you can see the differences between the conversations on Facebook and the conversations on Twitter and the conversations on Clubhouse, and they each reflect differently. And there's got to be a way to design this stuff that makes it not reflect the

worst parts of us, but the best. We have already designed a lot of these kind of experiences in the past. It's just that it was pretty local. It was tailored towards small numbers of people. So the kind of when globalization happened and everyone kind of wanted to operate and open in huge markets, everybody kind of rushed in their designs. You know, the whole design process of things that are used by billions of people does not really look at the consequences in the right way. You know, how many people within these platforms kind of advocate for unintended the consequences, how many people have experiences outside the experience of the TIC environment.

You know, also, TIC has a lot of fundamental problems that is created around the industry itself. It doesn't have anything to do with Facebook itself. That, for example, if you're in the oil industry, before you dig a hole, you have to kind of talk to thousands of people and get like hundreds of paper and meet this and that and lobby with this and that. And then you dig a hole. In tech, you know, before you even talk to anyone, you know, you have to, you.

probably could have had 100 million users already, and you are changing the scene. That's what happens. Yeah, there's like 10 people and a billion users. That's a typical scene. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so, and I'm not here to say this is wrong, and we should stop it, we should manage this. I'm not an idiot. I'm not naive. We know that. What I'm, yeah, what I'm trying to say is like we, since we are trying to understand why things are where they are, somehow we need to kind of understand what are the general characteristics of this industry that differentiates it from other industries.

So it's a very high-speed industry. You know, I actually think one of the problems of high-tech that it's high-tech. You know, there is a lot of influence on tech, tech, tech, you know, we are here to live experiences and feel feelings. And tech is just a tool. And if you just take the high-tech as your own way, you know, live around gadgets and occupy yourself. with plastic and, you know, all these kind of virtual life experiences, then that's not really high tech because it is using the human intelligence into very low quality transactions most of the time.

And it also lowers humans' ability to do cognitive things. And there has been a lot of researchers about that, right? So high tech is supposed to raise our own awareness, raise our own experiences, improve You know, that's what I would expect from high tech. But unfortunately, high tech now means let's figure out a solution to any problem without really making sure that this is an actual solution. And it's not just a way to create a more complicated problem. Yeah, I know the buzzword is disrupt. But like, disrupt for disruption's sake, is that good?

Like shouldn't it be improved or something like that? That always, well, especially recently struck me as something that's been. a little bit off. Yeah, and by design, a lot of the people who are trying to disrupt, they don't take time to understand the existing system. They make a lot of arrogant assumptions about the reality of things. They rush into conclusions about why bad things are happening, but the reality is sometimes bad things are happening

because there are crucial, hard design problems that makes them happen if you take that path. And they design other paths where they can avoid the problem, but then fall into huge other problems in the future. You know, for example. You know, I'm not against... Like Robin Hood. Yeah, I'm not against multinational companies.

I'm not against corporations. But I'm also interested to understand what does it mean that individuals within a company that has not been voted for by public, control the transportation sector across the world. They really understand who is where, what they are doing. It's kind of like, you know, just because they can build this model that can go everywhere in the world that we rely on. And what happens when these people turn out to be corrupt, or when the model get broken after people have completely relied on it. And, you know, all these kind of things. I just think actually the real spirit of tech initially started with democratizing information,

giving access to everybody, making opportunities to people. So one would imagine then the design is going to be these kind of islands that help other islands get formed and created, and we build the whole world of that. But it ended up, we played it the usual game because of the negative, the dark side of human. nature where everyone is playing the game to control and look good. And I don't blame them because also, you know, you don't want to question the system as well as you see the good things you are doing as you do. Like if I'm Google, I'm seeing all the great things I'm doing as I'm building the company. So it kind of slips in our heads that we just start optimizing to become

bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And you are operating opposite to the spirit of the experience of democratizing access because all those people who you are giving them information want to have a better life experience, when I have a better role in life, and they want to do something. So if things are centralized in small, it's a numbers game. If things are centralized in small, superpowers, whatever they are, corporates, countries, certain individuals within a sector, whatever that is, that leaves very small room for others to grow and increases level of frustration among people and get some kind of

of those people who want to interrupt rather than disrupt. If you keep disrupting and, you know, they just want to interrupt you because your disruption is not adding value in their own value system. And here, I think one of the very important solutions is somehow having more conversations with the investors around this. You know, we target Facebook, we target Twitter, but the reality is if you really want to change this environment, convince a few big investors. Why? Because the VCs don't seem. Yeah, they don't seem really willing. Well, many, we've had a few that on this show that have been receptive, Roy Bahaat, one example. But unfortunately, it seems more and more that investors are, you know, putting up blinders and crawling into their, you know, own reality holes. But I'm sure, I hear you, I hear you. And I'm sure that there are some other. are questioning. I mean, since they are in the game, they must be seeing it from different perspectives.

And I'm still looking. I've seen enough people that are not optimizing for profit. You know, I'm not against profit. I do want to have a nice life and a lot of money and whatever. So I'm not against profit. I appreciate the system. But at the same time, I'm not going to make my life about that profit.

I'm not going to create a whole reason for existence and call that, Well, that's how capitalism should work. No, I mean, let's say the capitalism is not a religious. You know, we can just actually take things here and there and modify them and see what happens. We can try and create different ways, shapes, and forms to influence the model. And by the way, I believe that change doesn't take a lot of people anyway. You don't have to have a lot of BCs. It's probably a couple of VCs who are disciplined enough and they happen to be well-known.

so they inspire certain type of founders to help build on new principles and they will be okay waiting because that's the biggest problem with the existing the cycle. You know, you can't just build something right in that kind of cycle. You're going to build something that grows into cancer

in this cycle, like trying to C.R. A, series B, let's go get the users, what is happening? You know, we need to improve this number because the investor is looking at it and, you know, this whole kind of world is not the environment where you're actually, I mean, you can add value, of course, all the time, but that's not suited for adding value. You know, adding value happens if it's linked with ability to monetize most of the time. You know, look at the teams and how they're organized and the meetings and how they're shaped. You will see always like some sort of focus on making sure that the business is not impacted. You know, kind of Facebook, YouTube did not want to be the minutes. of truth until the advertisers decided they're not happy and and then the ministry of truth was launched uh you know which is fine i mean i guess i guess at the end of the day it's their it's their platform but i'm just saying their position have changed because of the pressure of the financial institutions and not necessarily because of the pressure of the public uh public opinion

yeah and i know there are like some investors out there that are receptive to thinking outside of the way that has been traditionally thought in Silicon Valley where like impact on society matters you know as much as as profit and growth and I know some of them listen to the show so I'll take back what I said earlier that I do think that that there are some that are engaging and you're right you know and and you know just to also fix what I'm saying there are a lot of people inside Facebook and Google and Twitter and other companies who who would actually listen to this and kind of agree and try and do something about it. So I think another thing I learned in my own experience in the Arab Spring or the Egyptian

Revolution is not to make assumptions on behalf of people's intentions and not to make negative assumptions about the future, how the future could emerge given my cynicism towards someone. It's not my job. I mean, if they don't do it, they don't do it because it's their problem when they're going to pay a price for it. But it's not my job to keep saying they're not going to do it. There's no one that wants to do this.

There's that kind of defeat the purpose of us trying to fix this in the spirit of fixing the problem. For real. No, I think it's important to look at things with a little bit of optimism and realism versus a sense of resignation, which we see too often. So it's a nice note to bring our conversation to a close on. Before we go, I want to hear more about just quickly, what are you up to now and what's next for you? You live in Sanford. You live in the Bay Area now, too. So that's an interesting move.

I live in California, and I haven't been working for two years and a half right now. Mostly working on myself and trying. I went through a very hard depression because of, you know, all the events that I've experienced in Egypt and then leaving the country. I haven't visited back home for seven years now. I recently got divorced. So I'm kind of like trying to. to stabilize my life, if you would say, and bring it into a better place.

And as I'm doing that, I'm enjoying it, and I learn to be very honest with everyone. You know, I found out. If someone is hiring me for a job, I don't mind telling them about my depression. And I actually would appreciate if they don't hire me. Why? Because if they are not going to respect me and my own emotional state and they just want to make a use of my mind, that has been under huge depressive emotional experiences, then I have no respect or no passion to work for them.

So I kind of, in this time, I've been trying to work on myself and bring myself up in that sense. I've been trying to reflect about what have happened, what were the mistakes I have done, where are the sources of my naivity. I kind of like applied this function in my head that whenever reality doesn't meet expectations, I'm going to like really debug my expectations because it is not smart to expect good things

and then find things, bad things happen and then victimize yourself and sit on the side crying. The right thing is to understand what did you miss? What was part of the reality that you didn't see? And I hope actually this is something that because it has been something that helped me a lot in my own I call that active meditation because I don't know how to meditate by just. stopping my line of thought. I don't try and stop my line of thought. I know there are different kind of meditation.

So I meditate in the way where any idea that comes to mind, I just have to process it and think about why is it coming? What can I do about balancing it so that when it comes back later, it comes in a more shaped form. So I'm managing my own subconscious in a way while kind of preparing myself for a startup that I'll be working on. it has been years since I wanted to do it and unfortunately the events have taken me into undesirable directions but I'm in a much better place now and I'm kind of you know ready

to to get back to the scene in a more useful way hopefully yeah well I look I think that your voice is an extremely important one your perspective you know given your life experience and just the way that you think about these things is valuable to any company here. So, and it's impressive that you. I thank you and, you know, I appreciate that you saying this and it has not matched my experience. Well, I think that, I don't think it will be surprised. I think that for all the Silicon Valley companies talking a big game about how to be responsible and how to think differently. You know, if they didn't want to bring you on or find a way to work together, then then I don't think there's much meaning to their words. So I'm just to be

I appreciate the strength of your backing. I just think that sometimes people don't listen to you because you don't have the right narrative for them. I kind of always think of my own personal responsibility and I definitely still lack the right narrative because the right narrative would get things done. We are unlike what we like to think, unlike what we like to think, we're very logical creators. If I know how to show you my logic in a way that becomes logical to you, you're going to adopt it because why not? You know, at the end of the day, it's not really, we're not here here, and that's a good way to end this. We're not really here to ruin each other experiences or point at each other or judge each other. That's kind of a very bad way to waste our life experiences.

I've done that for a while and I'm done with it. It's like it's the worst kind of addiction to just get yourself in these negative cycles. We're here to try and add value. you. So I strive to kind of, you know, fix my own shortcomings. And hopefully, you know, it will eventually be appreciated. Yeah. Well, we hear on Big Technology Podcasts definitely appreciate it. I'll tell you that much. People who want to get in touch with you, is there a good way for them to do it? Well, I'm in, my email is my last name at gmail.com. G-H-O-N-I-M-G-M-G-M-O-com. And on Twitter, I'm at go name, but I write mostly in Arabic.

So I have been thinking about creating an English account, but maybe as things go, if enough, if I feel like there's enough audience that can relate to what I say and would like to hear me, I'm happy to do that. Well, I encourage it. Always happy to be in your podcast as well. Thank you. I hope you come back again. I really do.

I got to about 25% of the stuff I wanted to talk about. Not a commentary on you just because it was so interesting in terms of the directions that we went. So I hope we do it again. This will also definitely be the longest episode that we've had, and I'm proud of it. I hope we don't bore people. Yeah, for sure. And then we'll have a clubhouse discussion at some point. I would love to have a clubhouse discussion with you.

Great. And I've been experimenting with a platform a bit, and as I said, like, it's a nice start. Yeah, they seem very lively. Yeah, so I can't understand anything, but they seem a lot of fun. So, well, let's do one in English sometime soon. I'll put the details on that on the newsletter, the big technology newsletter. I'll just drop it when this thing drops, you know, within the day or two, sort of when that's going to happen. So we can work out of time and make that work.

But it's really always great to chat. I love catching up with you, YL. And I hope we do it again soon. Same here. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks everybody for listening. We do these shows every week.

new episode every Wednesday. Join us next week for a conversation with Kvon Bakpore, who is the head of product at Twitter. That should be an interesting conversation. They're trying to copy Clubhouse, which we've talked a lot about today. They also recently banned Donald Trump, so I'm sure we'll touch on both of those things. Thank you, Nate Gwattany for editing. Thank you for the folks at Red Circle for hosting and selling ads on the show. And thanks always to you, the listeners, for coming each week. And joining us here. If this is your first time, please hit subscribe. Again, new episodes every Wednesday.

And if you've been here for a while and could rate us on Apple podcast, that would go a long way. All right, everybody, until next week, we will see you then on the Big Technology podcast. Take care. Have a good one.