Big Technology Podcast - Are We Having a Moral Panic About Instagram? — With NYT's Farhad Manjoo

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

Farhad Manjoo is an opinion columnist for the New York Times. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss whether the criticism of Instagram's impact on kids is overblown, the subject of a recent column. Stay tuned for the third segment, where we discuss Farhad's views of virtual reality, his Thanksgiving column, and his cats. Subscribe to Big Technology: https://bigtechnology.substack.com/ Farhad's story about Instagram: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/opinion/instagram-teenagers.html

Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuance conversation, of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is a guest that needs no introduction, but we will introduce him nonetheless. Farhad Manju is here with us. He's an opinion columnist from New York Times, a long-time observer. and reporter on tech, who's now brought it out a little bit. So I think it's a great week for us to discuss what's happening to our society, how much the Internet has impacted that, and where people might be putting a little too much emphasis, really kind of perfect for our pledge to do nuanced conversations. I think this will be one that you're going to enjoy a lot.

Farhad, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, Alex. It's good to be here. It's great to have you here. How you've been, man? it's been a while um you've been cranking stuff out for the time it's really interesting stuff and and you know one of the things i like is yeah we're we're going to talk about how like it doesn't um there are some of your your columns especially this recent one about um the moral

panic that folks are having about instagram it's a kind of brave thing to say um it seems like a lot of A lot of people told me that, and it was interesting. I didn't really, like, know, notice, know that when I was writing it. Like, I, here was my cat jumping over me. Yeah, for those on audio only, Farhad has written a column about what's going on in his cat's minds, and we have one joining us in the recording studio, quote-unquote, today. And we're going to get to that in our third segment, but I'm sorry, go ahead, Farad. Yeah.

Oh, what were you talking about? Oh, yeah, the moral panic. The moral panic. We were talking about how people told you that it was brave to talk about. So, yeah, just to set the stage, you said that we're having, you know, potentially having this moral panic about Instagram after the whistleblower Francis Hagen came out with some reports that internal Facebook reports that say that Instagram's harming our teens. So I didn't mean it as like a larger defense of Facebook or Facebook's business practices.

I was mostly just thinking about Instagram as a product. And when I think about Instagram as a product, one thing I worry about, like, so I have two kids and they're younger than teenagers, so they don't sort of have precisely the problems that, that, you know, was brought up in that, in the criticism of Facebook and teen girls. But the, it struck me that the criticism was very similar to kind of criticism of media generally, like media aimed at kids. There's sort of criticism all the time about body image issues. I mean, magazines have done it forever. So it didn't seem like a new criticism. And it seemed like Facebook, like Instagram, was being unfairly kind of singled out for something that kind of exists in the culture. More than that, like the research that was supposed to have sort of shown that Facebook is bad for girls,

the Facebook, the Instagram research that the whistleblower said was kind of hidden, it just didn't seem very strong. It was mostly like survey-based research. And it just seemed like the kind of research that I've seen before from tech companies, which is like UI research, which is not something that you use for, you know, making like kind of assessments about people's users' psychology or how they're feeling. it was you know self-reported surveys not random and it just seemed like it I think that from what I know Facebook just sort of didn't do anything with it after that didn't follow up on it and so it probably

would have been better if they looked at some of these warring signs in the survey and done some actual research but like the research we have that was supposedly sort of the smoking gun did not seem very strong to me. And we just have this long, long history in sort of popular culture of just being very worried about whatever kids are doing. Like it's happened since comic books, like comic books were supposed to like ruin an entire generation.

It happened with TV. It happened with video games. And, you know, there have been some like established research about some of those things that suggest that they have negative aspects, but not to the degree that people worried about them in the first place. And, you know, as someone who kind of spent my childhood

watching a lot of TV and playing like a lot of Nintendo, like the sort of like automatic idea that like watching a lot of TV ruins you seem just completely kind of preposterous to me. And like these kinds of criticisms about technology in general, I think are always kind of lack that, like, nuance. Like, it depends on, like, the studies I've seen about screen time, for example, are not that, um, strong. Like, they suggest that they may have some small negative

effect on kids if you spend like eight hours a day watching TV, um, or, or using some kind of screen, which is like a lot and not kind of representative of what, um, I think ordinary people should worry about. Um, and, um, and then the other thing that happened, I don't know, am I going on too long here? The other thing that happened, I think is I had a reassessment of, um, like the danger of screen time during the pandemic because like what happened during during the pandemic was like everyone just was addicted to screens and even my kids and they don't use Instagram but they use YouTube a lot and there are terrible things on YouTube that I don't want them to watch but there are also like a ton of interesting and like there's content on YouTube that is much more valuable than like the content I watched when I was a child and I think that if you sort of um kind of condemn an entire platform you it's kind of like saying like reading is bad for kids like some things are some kind of content in that medium could be bad for kids but like the entire sort of medium being bad for kids seems a little bit I don't know a little bit extreme yeah and it reminds me of

what's happening in China where they've put a limit on the amount of time kids can play video games and I've watched this closely as if you and I've thought in a social media and use the right way, can actually encourage creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. And that's the stuff that's actually going to empower people to be successful, not just memorizing and spitting back. And so I do think there's a good use for it. The question that I think we're all struggling with, and that Facebook in particular is struggling with is how do you end up creating those uses that you know are positive while mitigating some of the downsides? Yeah, I mean, I think that Facebook has one huge problem as a company.

and I don't know how it solves it. And that problem is that it's all of its revenues based on engagement. And engagement is something that can be good sometimes and bad sometimes. But you can really drive that in a terrible way. As like the company pulling the strings, you can kind of make the content such that it provides little value, but it provides like to the user, little kind of long-term value,

but a lot of kind of short-term value in that it keeps them coming back and it keeps your ad revenues up. And, you know, I think like, Other tech companies, a lot of other tech companies have a lot more, I don't know, pure incentives. Like Apple sells you stuff and if the stuff is bad and doesn't like add value to your life, like you just will stop spending that huge amount of money. I feel similarly with Amazon, like I have a lot of trouble with kind of their, some of their business practices.

But as a service, it is like very, very useful. and it's a very sort of like clear transaction that I'm making. And Google is similar too in that like your search engine at least or maps or something like that. You're like trying to get like, you know, utility from it and you're being shown ads on it. But it's not like something where like this like Google can like change its results in such a way to get you to search 10. times more. Like, it doesn't have that same kind of risk. I think the problem with Facebook is like

every time, and, you know, many of the Facebook files articles suggested this. And this has been a long time criticism of Facebook, like every time that some kind of risk or problem is presented to them, they seem to sort of err on the side of like more engagement. Like, and that and and that's, I mean, I criticize them for that, but it's sort of like in the same way. that I criticize oil companies. Like that's like the thing they sell. And so it's hard to criticize like we need sort of rules and regulations, but like Facebook itself, I think is not is not sort of capable of kind of policing itself. And so, you know, if I have one criticism about that Instagram thing, for example, it's just that like it was secret and it was buried.

And I like that we know about it now. But I just didn't think by itself it was like a, you know, a smoking gun. Right. Look, I do think that Facebook can make choices on its own. Like Mark Zuckerberg as the loan shareholder, it can end up sacrificing some business optimization for the greater good. But, you know, we can't let them off the hook completely. I mean, I think that like just, but sort of a lot of what they're doing is here's the problem I have. Like, I think that a lot of this stuff should have stopped in 2013 when people, in 2012, in 2013, like 2011, when Facebook was buying up all these companies. Like, at that point, the government had a way to stop Facebook from becoming the monopolies.

And there were people who criticized the FTC for allowing those mergers to happen. There were, and they, you know, the Obama administration was extremely, like, tech-friendly. And, like, they had a lot of tech-friendly policies. And, like, Google and Facebook were able to grow extremely large. Well, it's no surprise because those platforms also helped their campaigns. right right true i mean like there was a sense in in government and they helped trump's campaign and all a sudden it was a turnaround right there was a sense in government in like silicon valley in in sort of the culture that like tech companies were good and so there was not like a strong kind of regulatory bent

and you know we could have made these companies less dangerous to the world if we had like if Facebook was just Facebook and not Instagram and WhatsApp like it would be a lot easier to to kind of get a handle on and you know it may may not even be that much of a risk if people move down to other platforms but the fact that it owns all these all these things and um and for a lot of these things you you as a user have little choice as to kind of engaging in it um I think it's a I think it's a problem but um that's specific thing about about Instagram, I felt like was it a little bit over the top. Yeah. And I want to touch on what we started with, which is that people came and told you that you were brave. I mean,

obviously, you know, I started the interview saying that. And just to unpack that a little bit for listeners, it does seem oftentimes that the press tends to, you know, go along together. And there's no negative penalties for saying bad stuff about Facebook. And so to come out and say, hey, we need a little nuance on this stuff. It doesn't happen too often. And in fact, you know, on this show, particular. I mean, people know here that, you know, I'm not a no booster of Facebook, but I've also gotten, you know, angry emails about like, you know, trying to look at this from a broader perspective. So I imagine you got some of those as well once your column ran. Yeah. I mean, I think that a lot of, especially there are the readers in, like, the comments on

the Times were mostly negative. There were kind of contrarians on Twitter who agreed with it, but I don't think it was like, you know, positively received by a lot of people. And, and And, yeah, I mean, I sort of expected that. But like this idea of like bravery, like we do have in, in journalism and in tech journalism, something of like a like a herd mentality. And it's difficult to kind of get out of that. I have like sort of no one of the things about not writing about tech as much anymore is like I have no kind of like beat affiliations with any of these companies. And so like I don't even really like, like I don't go to the.

press events. I don't like know the PR people there as much anymore. Like I just have very little of a relationship with them. So I don't really like feel strongly either way about them as like sources or subjects that I'm like passionate about anymore. And it was like it's like a thing where Facebook, um, I think is like just ripe for criticism. Uh, it is like I think probably net like a bad force in the world. But I think sometimes people get off like the main, the main ways that it's a negative force. And I mean, I think that's like mostly that you as a user of Facebook are just driven

into sort of ideological bubbles. And also like it echoes just like a lot. of like the polarization that we have in the country. It just sort of seems to amplify that. But I think, sorry, am I like, the other thing I think is like, this is why you're here, man. So we do want to hear your thoughts. Go ahead.

I think the other thing that is a big, I don't know, blind spot or difficulty for the press about Facebook is that a lot of the reasons that a lot of the things that are bad about Facebook are things that are bad about journalism about like media generally. I mean, like, it's kind of ironic that the Wall Street Journal broke these stories when like one of the Wall Street Journal's kind of corporate partners, Fox News, is like the source of a lot of misinformation and kind of like the crazy stuff you see on Facebook came from Fox News or like the crazy stuff you see on Fox News came from Facebook. And they work in like this very symbiotic way where, we're like, you know, if you got, if you, if you sort of got rid of

them, like the whole system would be better. But if you got rid of both of them, like, we would like, um, solve a lot of our problems. Uh, and, and I think that like, um, you know, you see that in not just Fox News. Like, you see, um, like a, the effect that Facebook has had on the media is to make it more sensationalistic, make it more like headline driven and clickbait. And that's like a thing that media had really like had to do to survive in the Facebook world. And you can blame that on Facebook, but like you can also say like, well, they didn't come up with a different business model and like a lot of online sites like base their model on Facebook. And so that has like changed journalism in a poor way. And it's difficult for people in

media to kind of make that criticism because, like, of, you know, of our own biases. Well, there's also a sort of under siege mentality that the media has right now where it feels like it's, you know, under attack, not physical attack, but certainly, you know, we've had, we had a head of state here in the United States who's, you know, tried to discredit it and basically ran against it. I mean, Steve Bannon called the media the enemy of the people. And, you know, look at what happens with CNN folks inside the pen. I'm not, you know, there's folks, and I think there's reasonable criticism that folks like Jim and Costa, like, you know, present themselves as like, you know, people who are under, you know, under real threat, you know, whereas like he's kind of just to blow hard yelling stuff at the president from, you know, the front row. But there is this siege mentality and, you know, unfortunately, it has prevented media from being as self-reflective as I think they need.

to be and as nuanced as they need to be, which is, again, like, you know, I like the idea of doing a newsletter and a podcast. And, you know, you're on a subscription paper, although people have a lot to say about the times. But I like the idea of doing this stuff because it gives the format to be able to unpack these issues and, and, you know, try to unpack them at length and with the deserved nuance and gray area. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I agree. So now I'm going to push back a little bit on your column if you, well, anyway, I'm just going to do it. So, so, you know, talking about a moral panic with Instagram, like the company did have data that showed that unlike the other social media platforms, people are comparing themselves on Instagram and against other people

and feeling bad about themselves. And there was a Max Reed who had been at New York Magazine and now is a fellow substacker, you know, talked about how maybe we need a moral panic with Instagram. He didn't link your article, but I wonder if he was speaking to it. And he talked about how, like, the ideas that Facebook, you know, we've talked about like misinformation and Cambridge Analytica and none of that moved the needle, largely because it was policy stuff. But this is about how Facebook makes us feel.

And the reason why this story resonated is because Facebook makes a lot of people feel bad. and I'll just quote one of his line. If he said, yeah, if the point is to transform Facebook from something that works on us to something that works for us and barring that to shut it down, I don't know where that comes in. But he said it's useful to remember what people hate about it. And again, it's about the way that makes people feel. And this, again, like it was one of these things where people said, okay, well, it didn't come out of nowhere. And it's not that surprising, but the data was, you know, the fact that Facebook has no. in this. And the integrity folks were saying that hasn't really done much to change it seems to be

a legitimate area for criticism. What's your response to that? So I think, so there's a couple of things. So one is that like does Facebook, like this is what goes back to what I said earlier, which is Facebook has one primary incentive and that's to increase engagement. And so like even if they do have data that says people feel bad about using it. We have to sort of kind of weigh that against, like, do people feel bad enough that they're not going to keep using our platform? And, like, if, I would love

if companies generally, like, acted in the incentive of, like, what's the best long-term benefit for, like, the user, like a non-monetary benefit? But I can't think of a single company that would do that. Like, oh, this is going to, like, if we change this, it's going to make our users feel better in the long run on metrics that like we don't make money from, on metrics that like we are unsure about. Like they measure like they measure advertising and engagement and that kind of stuff

in like a very precise way. And their sort of surveys about about how people feel are much less precise. And like if they had a, they often have told me that like they have. they feel like long-term, like, meaningfulness is something that, like, drives engagement on Facebook. But that just seems totally bogus to me. Like, if you look at, like, what newsfeed is or if you look at what Instagram is, like, it's not about making you feel good in the long run. It's about, like, making you sort of pull the refresh tab all the time. And, like, I just don't know how you, how you square that with, like, the first.

First Amendment with like media companies. Like it's hard for me to like it's difficult for me to say that like another media company makes people feel bad. And so therefore there should be some legal repercussion. Yeah. Like I mean, Fox News makes me feel terrible. Like I don't really like want it to have like penalties, government penalties or regulation. I think that's the difficulty. Okay. Because these stories always end up going to what's the government going to do about it. I was going to say, okay, well, yes, their business model is all about engagement, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't, like, be up in arms about the fact that they know that they're making people feel bad and they stick with it. But, you know, I guess, you know, you spoke about the way the Senate was, you know, making a big deal about this.

And we should start to feel, I think your point is we should start to feel a little bit weary of what happens when lawmakers want to run with that. Yeah, I mean, so, like, if you think back to sort of previous moral panic, like comics, like books, for example, like, or rap music or rock music, like there were a lot of calls for not selling it to kids or having, you know, various kinds of labels on it or, um, just like banning it outright. And, um, maybe you could do that with Facebook. Like the, the whistleblower suggested that we raised the age from 13 to like 18 or something. something. Yeah, like that's a lot of... From using these products. Right. I mean, it seems like very difficult to enforce. And I don't know what like real long term effect it'll have.

Like one thing I think about is like Instagram is going to be in the world or something like Instagram is going to be in the world. And like if I, if my kids don't use it, they're both going to be sort of cut off from like their friends who use it. and will sort of not understand, perhaps in like a very naive way, like how to use the internet. And like, you know, truthfully, like the biggest problem we have in this country is not how kids use the internet. It's like how old people use the internet. And like one reason that they're less good at it is because like it's just sort of been thrown at them. And they haven't

kind of learned the like media environment and like how to determine truth from not or like what irony is on the internet and things like that. And I feel like you need those kinds of things to be able to kind of navigate and navigate the digital world. And like if you prohibit it for young people, it seems like it would be difficult to enforce and also would make it. It would be dubious that it would have like long term good. I see a lot of these conversations going toward like Facebook is bad and therefore we need to do something about it. And like the do something about it part is scary. Yeah, it gets sketchy.

It does. Right. Because like I have a lot of problems with Mark Zuckerberg determining like what's on Facebook, but I have like infinitely more problems with like the Republican Senate or or Donald Trump or like the FTC or anyone else sort of saying what's valid and what's or how Facebook should run its algorithm. And like all those things seem sort of unconstitutional to me, but also just like a very bad precedent to have the government decide those kinds of things.

Yeah. So let's get to the core of the issue. Do you think that, do you think that Instagram is like comic books and that, you know, the media and lawmakers are saying, you know, how could this be, you know, how can we have this in the hands of the. younger generation where like the actual harmful effects aren't that big or do you think that it might be in another category? Where do you line up on that question? I think it's like those it's like teen celebrity magazines. It's like or like so it's like media that of the kind

we've had for a long time which gives people as unrealistic kind of over glamorous view of the world in like teen celebrity magazines it was like teen celebrities but here it's like your friends at school um and like this is something that adults uh struggle with like everyone sort of feels bad when they look at instagram because like all your friends look like they're having perfect lives i deleted um oh really yeah i barely look at it um but like i do have family who use it and so i look at their pictures sometimes um but it's not something that like i look at often I use all of Facebook's products. I barely ever used.

WhatsApp and Messenger? I don't really use WhatsApp and Messenger. I mean, I use WhatsApp because I have relatives in South Africa and WhatsApp is big there, but that's like the only time I use it. And I got an Oculus recently, and so I used that. But like... I can't wait for that column. so I feel like when like when my daughter is 13 and is like legally allowed to use

Instagram I would probably feel apprehensive about her using Instagram but I feel apprehensive about her doing a lot of things like driving or you know watching HBO or all all those kinds of things and I don't think of Facebook as like I don't think of Instagram, but maybe this is wrong. Like, at this point, I don't think of it as being, like, uniquely worse than those other things. So you're going to let her use it? Are you going to let your kids use Instagram?

I think so. On the other hand, like, I don't, like, I have told them that they're going to get, like, smartphones when they're, like, in their 30s. Like, so, like, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, they're, like, they have, we have a lot of rules about, about, um, when they can use, like, digital devices, but it also applies to, like, TV and other media,

like, mostly because I feel like they're, like, wasting their time on it. But it's not, like, about a particular kind of media. Like, I feel like those kinds of distinctions are difficult to make. Okay. Well, when we come back, we're going to test some of the stuff we've been talking about against some of your other writing, Farhad, and see where we met out. We'll do Farhad versus Farhad.

and see who wins. Okay. Well, you'll come out on top either way. All right. So we'll be back right after this on the big technology podcast. Hang in there. We'll be back in just a minute. 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 two 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 Hustled Daily Show and your

favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on the big technology podcast with New York Times, Opinion Rider, Farad Manjou, Farad. How you doing, man? Thanks for sticking around after the break. I'm all right. Thanks for, thanks for, I've been here again. Okay, okay. You're welcome again. We do love to do the second intro. it's just a fun part of the podcast. People might have forgotten. Yeah, yeah, it's important. For those, especially the people that just tune in,

you know, I feel like podcasts usually get good once you get some of the table setting out of the way in the first half, and then you really get to start to get heated in the second. So here we are. Okay, let's get heated. You've written about how we as a human, species are unable to cooperate with each other anymore and you've indicated that you believe the internet might be at fault. So tell me a little bit more about your view of the destructive nature of the internet on. And you also just mentioned that. You think that Facebook is a net

negative in the first half. So let's hear about like your perspective of, you know, the destructive nature of the human, of the on the human species and sort of like how you square that with the discussion we just had about Instagram and Facebook? I think the, I think the biggest sort of effect

that Facebook has had is to make the world, like, it's to sort of amplify the tribalism in the world. And, you know, we had media that was doing that before. Like, you can think of like talk radio, cable news did that to a sort extent. And Facebook is sort of an expansion of that. And, you know, it does it very efficiently. Like, like, if you are, you know, if you're like a Donald Trump fan and like you live in a particular

place where everyone else believes similar to you, similarly to you, and you have relatives that believe similarly to you, your Facebook feed is going to reflect that. But so, was your like media decisions like your choice of cable news station will also reflect that and i feel like facebook has just kind of added that layer um and made it worse in two ways so one is it's like much more efficient it does it like quicker and you use it more and like people use i think people will use facebook more than people watch tv uh it's possible that it's around the same but i think that it's more um but the other thing it's done is like made it international um and i think that is like the effect that Facebook has had on countries where that are like less sophisticated

in terms of like mass media that have less journalism. So like Facebook is sort of like the a much more dominant form of media because it doesn't like compete in those places with kind of traditional like fact based accurate journalism. In those ways like it has made kind of like the key to kind of human cooperation is like trust and like giving people like the benefit of the doubt and like sort of having like good faith relationships. And I think that Facebook makes all of that stuff worse. Like it like it reduces it gives you like this very like deep in group bias. Like you're you think that the people on Facebook that you see are like, are like, you know, you trust them a lot. But I think it like soes distrust in for you toward.

like the outer people not in your group and in that way like our species is one of like cooperation like everything we've done up until you know like even including like the terrible things in our world

like World War II you know we've had we've had like the way that we overcome those things is by like humans working together in like larger and larger groups and and we like work on our problems but like

that seems much more difficult to do Like, you know, we have, we have in this country, like, no ability to turn, like, with either political party to, like, pass major legislation in this country. And we were able to, like, for a few months after, like, extremely, like, world-destroaring pandemic, but, like, now it seems like we can't anymore. Like, so there was, like, four months, like, earlier this year where we could pass legislation. And that seems, like, crazy to me. Like, we can't, we can't, like, solve in this country, like, our sort of baseline problems.

But it's, like, seems to be happening. I mean, lots of other places around the world. Like, politics has gotten so tribal and, like, extreme in, you know, everywhere you can think of in, like, most parts of Europe, in South America, like in Brazil, in parts of Asia. And, like, unless you are living in places where, like, the Internet has been, you know, completely censored, it's difficult to say that it has had, like, a positive effect on, like, you know, sort of knowledge and, like, trust and cooperation, it just seems like it has made a lot of problems worse. Yeah. I'm going to be careful when I say this, but it seems like the internet is both,

you know, a, well, I just did a story this week about how Facebook's pitch. It's a whole strategy of communications is going to be that it levels the playing field, right? And it levels the playing field for, like, underrepresented groups, no doubt, and social movements. But the internet and in general just seems to be, and, you know, Facebook, but more broadly, you know, the full internet also seems to be this accelerant for terrible ideas where they might have been just sort of, you know, something that a few people talk about in a bar or like, you know, stocked away in some tiny corner of society. But I'm thinking about, obviously, like this massive anti-vaccination movement when it comes to COVID. And I have people close to me are anti-vax.

I understand the arguments, but it's still like the positives and the evidence we have today, you know, seems to far outweigh any, um, any logic to not get it. Yet we still have this massive movement against vaccines. And you've written about this. I'm actually, you wrote that it was in Facebook. And I'll just say one more. I mean, think about the fact that we had this internet-borne, uh, insurrection that tried to, you know, disrupt the counting of the votes on January 6th. continues today. And you have legislators that are like, and state governments that are putting into place people who are very happily try to overturn the election results in the next election. And, you know, they posted into these in groups, these travel groups, I think that you referenced. And no one tells them that they're totally out of their mind. And so it builds momentum. Terrible ideas seem to really take off in a big way online. And that's extremely

concerning. Yeah, I agree. And it seems like, I mean, the other part to add to it as like Facebook's particular way of monetizing like seems to have um seems to favor the terrible ideas like you know because like um outrage and um and you know untruths kind of just sell better um and they work better on their on their platform um it's not like oh like that you rarely see like the the story about like everyone needs to stop using water because there's a drought or something like some some kind of like positive thing that creates like that like we've had we have seen positive social movements um less on facebook though then like on twitter um because like uh one thing that twitter does that

facebook doesn't do is like leads to this sort of um like you can have small groups that like then amplify into like traditional media which is like facebook is sort of on the other side of that where, like, traditional media, um, report something and then it goes on Facebook. So, like, Twitter, you know, Black Lives Matter was on Twitter. Me Too was more on Twitter than on Facebook. Um, and, uh, those kinds of, um, social movements, even, even, um, like the Arab Spring, which had, you know, less of a long-term effect than I think people thought at the time, but that was like a more Twitter-focused, um, uh, phenomenon.

And I feel like- The criticism of that will be that, like, what you're saying is, so, you know, social movements that I like, you know, should spread. But social movements I don't should be. Yeah, I mean, I'm just saying like social movements that I find positive. You can cite some of them. But like in general, like I feel like it has led to just like a shallowness in how we think about the world. Because it just sort of short-circuits a lot of discussion. Yeah.

The trouble is like it's very. difficult to think of ways to solve this problem because it has gotten Facebook has gotten so big and it's sort of like so it seems so difficult to police that like I find a lot of the proposals for fixing Facebook to be like as dangerous as Facebook is currently so it's hard to know what to do about these problems well the incentives right like I spoke about this on the podcast last week, but the incentives really are for folks who are outside of power to go full hog

on social media. And that leads to the acceleration. So you have, like, for instance, like the scientific consensus, like they're not going to use social media with the same amount of fervor as, you know, anti-vax folks or people who are like, you know, talk about an issue close to your heart trying to dispute the validity of climate change, right? like if you know once you have this consensus and it's the established value you don't you're not going to spend your day like on social media trying to convince people of it because it's the consensus but people who are outside of consensus you know there is an incentive to break through and you gain clout and followers um and it is this sort of like the media is not telling you this stuff and it does lead to i i was thinking about it today i almost thought about starting the podcast with this but the state of affairs right now is fairly depressing it seems like the extremes on the right and the left are dominating the data center is nowhere to be found.

You know, again, like I mentioned with the fact that like the election manipulation domestically in the United States is just, you know, reaching levels that you never really felt possible here. And then again, like the COVID situation is extremely disheartening where you're, we're just not in the U.S. or least, it just seems like we're going to be far away from ending this pandemic as long as we have such vaccine resistance. And, you know, I think you might have mentioned it. The internet, once this stuff goes out of the bag, it's really tough to stuff it back in when you're talking about a society that lives, it's information and consumes this

information and, you know, disseminates it online. Yeah. I mean, I think that the anti-vax movement is really interesting in that respect. It started, you know, in many ways sort of before the internet or before the internet was like the force that it is. And in some ways, it was like more of a lefty phenomenon than a right wing phenomenon. Oh, yeah, it's like Marin County is. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Marin County. When I, when I, I worked at Salon for a long time, which was a lefty online magazine.

And I spent a lot of time there after the 2004 election, like disputing both like this question of whether George W. Bush had stolen the election and, um, they uh and the anti-vax conspiracies and like it was both because like a lot of lefty readers were saying that those things were true um and like we were trying to sort of shut down like our audiences um bad uh you know miss mis like beliefs imagine imagine actually trying to dispute that as a yes exactly like you don't see a lot of that anymore but um but like you know um i remember it being like a very lefty phenomenon and and like the way that it has it has morphed

is entirely due to Facebook and Fox News. Like it's, you know, and like Trump and others, but like in terms of media, like it's, it's just kind of like these two forces that have made those beliefs

like is given like a platform to those beliefs that has spread far beyond you know, what we thought their original like extreme audience was. Like, it's a different audience, and it found that audience through these, through these platforms. And, like, at some point, so I wrote a column recently. I think you just referenced it about the anti-vax misinformation on Facebook. And I think what I tried to say there is like, the anti-vaccine movement is much bigger than Facebook.

Right. I think, you know, I think Facebook played a big role in it. but it's hard to um it's hard to sort of um like quantitatively say like what was worse like um tugger carlson sort of talking about it like having kind of these crazy guests on about about vaccines all the time and the tucker carlson segments just like go on youtube and people watch them on youtube and then um people post the youtube segments on facebook and like who do you blame there do you blame youtube or facebook or fox news or like all of them all the above right a lot of these systems are like they work like together and so um you know

facebook like has some share of the blame there and like facebook has like um done something about it like posted on this like whatever if you think they're there if you think they haven't done enough like i i don't know exactly what they have done they posted like all they seem to do is like post more and more labels about how things are not true and and youtube does that too like and like i think they deserve criticism for perhaps that's not enough, like they should change their algorithms or whatever. Like, Fox News hasn't done any of that. Like hasn't, hasn't sort of addressed the criticism in any way. And Fox News doesn't have to because, like, people think of it as traditional media and, like, you can't, like, tell traditional media what to do. But, like, it's weird how we have

this different view for Facebook and YouTube. Totally. And don't you need a vaccine card or something to enter the Fox News building? Like, all those hosts are vaccinated. Yeah, it's totally. Hit for critical, right. Yeah. All right. I want to do a lightning round with you. So why don't we take a break? And then we'll just come back and talk about your cats and Apple and some other stuff.

How does that sound? Okay. Sounds good. Okay. We'll be back here with Farhad Manju right after this. And we're back here for one final segment on the Big Technology podcast with Farad Manju. We've been talking a lot about Facebook and Internet. and the internet in our society?

What is internet? Do you remember that video clip? I do, yes. Good morning, America. What is internet? Is it an email? What is internet? Yeah.

Oh, Lord. Well, we found out. Anyway, I thought we would do a lightning around just to end this off. We don't have to go too fast, but it's sort of my way of saying there's a grab- slow lightning. Slow lightning, yeah. It's a good, bad name.

But yeah, there's a grab bag of stuff I want to talk to you about. Um, so first of all, you, we've talked about your cats. Um, you wrote a New York Times column about, uh, how you wonder what's in your cat's heads, um, which I think everyone who's been around a cat wonders at one point or the other. How did you get the New York Times to let you write a column like that? Yeah. Well, um, one thing is a great column, but I just can't even imagine being in the pitch meeting and being like, all right, I got it. What are in my. Yeah. So, um, one thing. about being an opinion columnist at the New York Times is like you can essentially do whatever you want. I mean, people will say no. People will say no to like the worst ideas, I think. But like, we have a lot of freedom to do it. And like, I think I sort of made a convincing case that I could write an article about it. Yeah. It's, it's been like, so I wrote this article about, yeah, what the cats are thinking. But like, it has like sparked a lot of, um, I don't know,

I know you wanted this to be a lightning run. No, no, no. This is, we have 15 minutes, so lightning was a misnomer. I think there's like a lot of applicability about, to technology here. Because one thing that I've been thinking about a lot recently is VR. And VR, really like when you're in virtual reality, it really makes you question like what consciousness is. because you're getting all of your inputs from like digital systems and you know that it's not real but it feels real and um and like it makes me wonder like crazy things about like whether we're in a simulation whether um and and like

those kinds of questions or like questions i also ask about my cats like what the cats are thinking like what the cats are thinking makes me like wonder like um about my own sort of sense of self and like whether that is affected by uh like how that will be affected by like VR um and so they're like interconnected in some strange way do you think we're in a simulation um yeah i think that it's i think that we don't know i think that i think that reality is like indistinguishable from a simulation so we don't know yeah yeah i'm open to the idea also i at initially thought it was ridiculous then uh this what happens when you live in the bay area for more than a couple years. Right. There's this philosopher, there's this philosopher David Chalmers who's like writing,

who wrote this book that's coming out about this question about VR and, like, consciousness. And it's the most interesting thing I read and watched. So I'm going to write about it. Oh, cool. How often do you hang out in VR? And what do you do there? Not a whole lot. So a lot of things like, like it doesn't kind of great content and like the best content seems to be games and so I've played some games and I've tried a little bit the like Facebook like various meeting

rooms and stuff but they don't seem like that great but I think it has like enormous potential you know like the way that we've seen in the pandemic is like we have we just moved our lives over to screens completely and and it seems reasonable to me that if screens were sort of bigger and like immersive they would like people would use them um and you know

early in the days of VR it seemed like there were lots of I don't know practical concerns like it made you nauseous and also the the technology was huge but I feel like it's it's gonna become as small as like smartphones are whatever even smaller like contact lenses or something and at that And, like, if it's, it's going to get to a point where it's practical enough that I feel like people, people use it or, or things like AR glasses or some way of like getting the digital world into our real world is going. Does a future where so much computing is layered on top of reality make you optimistic, nervous? How do you feel about it? It makes me very nervous. Like, it, like, I feel like all of the problems we have now with misinformation, with like, yeah.

like the inability to distinguish like what's real from what's not will all get worse in VR like to the to the extent and especially if Facebook runs it I was about to say the good news is that the company that's going to usher it in has never had a problem with misinformation great no I mean the good the good news is like I don't think Facebook is going to become like the big player there like it seems like at some point Apple or or someone else will create a device. I don't know about Apple. I mean,

well, anyway, we could talk about Apple, but they haven't, they have, they just haven't done a good job of developing out, anything outside of headphones under, under Tim Cook. I mean, they have their own chip.

They give them credit for that, but groundbreaking products. Bravo, I don't know, I've been feeling bullish about Apple. I think that, like, their, um,

their M1 chips are amazing. The, um, the way that they've been sort of, like I think the iPad is great like the iPad is sort of my main computer now um really and yeah I use it all the time I use it to write I use it like for most of my most of most of what I do are you tapping on the screen like do you write your new York no I use the iPad pro with the keyboard like 400 dollar keyboard or something yeah it's crazy expensive but it's so great in that like because it has a cellular connection you can use it wherever it's like crazy great battery life and um and like it has phone apps on it. So you can like, it just seems like, because I use my phone so much, switching to the iPad is like a lot less of like a mental break than going to like a Mac. Okay. You don't like the Apple tax though, the 30% that they charge. Yeah. No, I, I really hope

Epic wins that or the FTC does something. That's like a real opportunity for regulation that I I think it's sort of the argument, not to get into a whole deep discussion about this, because we're lightning here, but why do you think that regulators have authority to come in and say Apple can't charge that 30%? It is its store. That's what people tell me. I mean, I'm with you, but. Yeah. I mean, I think that you can make a sort of very, like, if it's not, if it's not, and I think it might not be technically a monopoly in the, United States. But like they have like something like at least 50% of smartphone share in the United States. And they have a lot higher share of like if you if you think of like app users or

just sort of like high value users. And they are the only they on that platform, they are the monopoly app provider. And there should be a rule that says like you could you should be able to get apps on your device from other places. Yeah. It just seems like. It just seems like, Like, it worries me when, like, computing is, like, so locked down by a single company. Even if the company makes good products, like, it seems like these extremely useful devices should have, like, a wider range of utility. Yep. Okay.

Moving on in our lightning round. There's one thing that folks wanted me to, I asked on Twitter, what should I ask far out about? And folks wanted to hear about your Thanksgiving. situation where Thanksgiving was uh was so we so you well let's give the context yeah yeah so I wrote this article about so last year um Thanksgiving time um I wrote about sort of how large my kind of extended bubble was and how and then I said sort of that with like various precautions that we were going to um visit my parents for Thanksgiving anyway

And it caused, like, the greatest, like, negative response I've ever had to. Yeah. Did you become, like, the main character on Twitter for the day or something like that? I did, yeah. And it really, like, soured me on social media for months. Like, I think I didn't go on Twitter. Like, it was, like, very, like, psychologically painful. Okay.

I think I was right still. Yeah. I feel like. Yeah. Went through. I feel like the criticism was. I think, didn't you decide that you didn't want to go. You shouldn't go for Thanksgiving, but you said you were going to go anyway or something at the end.

I said something like that, like, I understand the dangers, but like we were going to do it anyway in a safe way. And they, like, listed the things we were going to do. Like we were going to, we drove, we didn't fly, and we were going to, and we did all this. Like, we had dinner with my family outside and we did stay there. Fairly safe. Yeah. And so, like, I thought that we were completely safe and we turned out to be safe. Like, no one got COVID.

But I think that what I did wrong was sort of, I don't know, wrong, but like, one thing I didn't anticipate, I just didn't read the room correctly. Like, like, people were, like, I should have written it in a way that was more cautious and explanatory about what I was doing. because I feel like people were especially jumpy at that time about anyone who was not sort of following like the main rules. And I got like a lot of private messages from people saying like they were also going to their family for Thanksgiving. But like saying it publicly, I think at that point was like just far too far for people. Yeah. I mean, I like I don't think that I did anything sort of technically wrong and like a. journalistic sense, but like in terms of like a tone sense or like a understanding like what

the audience, what the audience is, um, uh, sort of response or pushback was and sort of like anticipating and responding to that, which I try to do in my articles. Like I feel like I didn't do that correctly. Well, tell me more about the psychological pain. It's just really terrible to feel like the internet is against you. Like like it's hard to tell yourself like, oh it's just people on Twitter because first of all like I know people on Twitter like Twitter is huge and like I know a lot of people and like a lot of my sort of like public persona is there so like Twitter and like what people think of me on Twitter is like valuable to me and also um one thing that happens is like at some point it gets disconnected from any facts

and it's just like like there were lots of like follow on articles where it's like elias new york times writer like it's sort of like becomes just like ad hominem attacks and like people who didn't read the article i just retweeting it and stuff it's not it's used at all like not at all like a pleasant feeling to be the main character on twitter yeah um and um even to be a a minor character on twitter on twitter is also not good right yeah um i i feel like um you know of all the social media like I use Twitter more than anything else I think I use TikTok and Reddit often too but like Twitter is sort of like the main place that I am and I feel like there's a lot of good things about it but like it also has this very very like toxic effect on

the world and probably also is like a net negative in the world like Facebook I agree I wrote about this I think I for me the jury's out on Facebook but I do think Twitter is a negative. And I wrote this column about how Twitter should be cognizant of this main character behavior that's incentivizing by putting people's names in the trending bar, which is just ask. That's true. They talk about conversational health, but every single day, you know, the reason why this main character analogy is caught. And so for people who don't know, there's a tweet that says every day there's a main character on Twitter and your goal is to not be it and the reason why this exists is because Twitter will put their names in the in the spotlight

and say essentially go dunk and that is it's just like you know if they if they can do that and they have no claim to this notion that they're going to try to be good to society because it just turns people into savages yeah no I agree I mean I think I think uh the trending bar um is bad and the court treats are bad like the way that people use quote tweets are to direct anger from their audience to like another audience, another person's audience. And it becomes contagious. Like there's very few sort of good ways to use that power. Yes.

I agree. Okay. So the last question. You've had an interesting, like, I feel like you've publicly started trying to like reckon with like your Twitter use and you've gone through like various different personas on Twitter. What's your relationship with now? I probably use it less now than I did sort of a year ago, definitely like two years ago.

Like during the, during the 2016 election, I think was my sort of height usage. And I think it was like unhealthy in various ways. Like, you know, looking back, like my kids were much younger then, but I basically don't remember their lives because I was just like looking at my phone the whole time. Yeah. Um, and so that was bad. Um, and I think it has a way of, um, like it has a definite risk to me as a writer in that like it has a way of affecting my thoughts and like sort of bringing me into like groupthink, uh, that bothers me.

So I, I look at it. So I write a column once a week and I post the column and I look at the responses to the column. And so like the column runs Wednesday. So I look at it Wednesday and Thursday and like, by. Friday, I tried to, like, from Friday to, like, Tuesday, I try to not look at it. Yeah. Or look at it just, like, once to see, like, if I'm not missing anything big. I was very happy for you when we were trying to schedule this podcast, and it was, like,

a couple days between your responses. And I was like, good. I like this. Like, you DM me on Twitter. And, like, that day, I think I didn't look at Twitter. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And here we are. So we're a week later, but it's great to have you. And one thing I'll say is, I do like when you, you know, ask, I don't know, the kind of goofy questions are like interesting observational questions about the world and everyone replies far hot but i think they're super fun and the responses you get so i hope that continues yeah no i mean i think that like those kinds of things are like old twitter and i loved like old twitter like yeah before it became all about politics it was like awesome and um it's that that kind of twitter is just lost now yeah sadly it is okay where can people find

your work. Yeah, where are you saying? The New York Times opinion page. That's Twitter. Okay. Manjou. Yeah. Yes. Manjou on Twitter. Farhad, thank you for your time. You've been very gracious answering all these questions. It's been great hearing your perspective. And the column is a most read for me. So I appreciate you being here and coming on to chat with us. Thanks so much. It's been fun. We've talked about a lot of things. It was great. Indeed. Super fun. Thanks again. Thank you, Nate Gwattany for doing the mastering of the and the edits. Thank you, Red Circle, for hosting and selling the ads. And thanks to you, all the listeners without you, there'd be no show. We appreciate you coming back here every week.

If it's your first time, feel free to hit subscribe. If you've been back a bunch and you're using an Apple device and you want to hit the rating thing, that would be helpful. No pressure, but I would appreciate it if you did it. And that's all the announcements. So thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next Wednesday here on the Big Technology podcast. Until then, take care. Thank you.