Panic World - BONUS: Meta doesn't care anymore

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Producer Grant joins Ryan to talk about how Mark Zuckerberg went from looking and acting like “Every Guy Walking Down the Street in Boston in the Mid-2000s” to his current era, “I Work in the Financial District and I’m Dating A Girl from Bushwick,” and said man’s recent announcement that Meta would no longer be employing fact checkers, instead relying on community notes to flag offensive content. Catch the full episode and plenty of other great bonus content, plus ad-free episodes, by joining our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you ever have a moment where you thought Facebook was cool or is going to lead to something not terrible? Think back. The most use I ever got out of Facebook was in college. This was before smartphones. And it was during this period of time where Facebook put invites out publicly and there was really for events. and there was like no way to really like gate who saw your event like there wasn't like a private event feature as I understood it this would have been like 2007 or eight and so all the houses around my college would do Facebook events for parties and we would print them out like on a printer and we would put down the address and we would make like a pirate map of like all the house parties we were going to go to and that lasted seemingly for about six to seven months and it was great. And I really enjoyed, I felt like, oh, cool, like, I can see anything that's going on in the community I'm in.

That was cool. At those parties, were you rating girls? Yeah, that was. To barn animals? No, but I did do, okay, so if we're going to go down this road, I did, so I didn't want to pay the cover for the frat parties, right? So what I would, what we would do is we had a guy who had a backpack with. all the different solo cup covers because like the frat parties used the colored solo cups to prove that you paid the cover and one of these we got into and we were like okay we got the solo cups cool and we like didn't like this frat but like we wanted to drink free booze and then they had bins of jungle juice like plastic bins of jungle juice but because we came in the back the story's about to get kind of dark we didn't see that the bins were labeled girls and guys oh fuck so i was dipping my cup in the bin that was labeled girls Unbeknownst to us, they had, they created what they called napal, which was full of rehypnal or a similar date rape drug.

So I essentially roofied myself and fell asleep for like three days after like just projectile vomiting and having to be cared out of the house. But apparently a lot of other people did too. And this was one of the original conversations that led me to work at the school paper. So, you know, a little little journalism origin story for me. That's so dark. Yeah, I always think about these stories when, you know, I don't want to get too up on my high horse about Gen Z, like not having fun or like doing things or being social. But then I'm like the amount of the amount of malfeasance that like we experienced in our late teens and early 20s, I'm not sure I would wish that on any generation. So perhaps Zoom calls and FaceTimes are better for them.

If the youth isn't playing Edward 40 hands and friends absolutely refuse to untape your friends. My hands. If you're Gen Z listening to this, you should buy a 40 ounce of Colt 45. You should drink it to the label. And then you should get, I think they still sell for Locke without the caffeine or juice, which is like a knockoff. And you dump it into the 40 and you turn it green and it's called a space monkey. If we reach 1,000 patrons, which is a needed goal. It is a needed goal.

We need that. Ryan and I will record a bonus while doing that. But anyways, good luck editing that. No, no, I'm leaving all this in. But cue up the intro music. You know who would bring a bunch of different solo cups like that? Two parties, Ryan? Mark Zuckerberg, clearly your friend, a guy you clearly admire.

I'm Grant Irving, joining me today, the host of this podcast, the Joe Rogan of the left, Facebook lover, Ryan Broder. I love Facebook. It's the best. I love connection. Thank you for doing your show. Thank you for having me. my show. This is a little technical, so correct me if I'm wrong here. So meta announced they are

really jelly of all the attention Elon has been getting and are going to toxify their platform quoting here again, super hardcore. Do I have that right? Is this factually accurate? Yeah, basically. They are getting rid of their fact checking, most of which was done by third parties. and they are allowing all kinds of new fun ways to torment each other, which were previously banned. The biggest being that you, if I understand this correctly, you cannot make fun of someone for being mentally ill on Facebook unless you're saying that they're gay and that's why they're mentally ill. We'll get it into the specifics in just a moment. But I have three images I want to show you if I can figure out a way to share my screen in Riverside. I think I can.

And I want you to describe the portraits you're seeing. So this is Mark Zuckerberg in college. He has a Vio laptop. Pretty nice. And he looks like every guy walking down the street in Boston in the mid-2000s. Just like absolute New England MPC. And he's got big, stupid headphones on. They're the kind of guy that, like, has casual feelings about the band, Guster, you know?

There's a reference for all 20 of you. You know what I mean? The band with the bongos, Guster. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's like the guy that, like, only goes to restaurants that have TV screens, but he's not actively listening or looking at the TV screens. Mark Zuckerberg is like a classic, just nothing man from Massachusetts.

He's not from Massachusetts, but he's got, he's like a nothing man that goes to schoolmasters. There's thousands of us. What about this guy? This is during his like Hawaii, like surfing phase, right? So he's like got his weird. So this is probably like height of powers. Yeah, he's got his like super short turf bangs. And he's like trying to like move away from the hoodie era.

So he's got like a different kind of hoodie on. And he's like tanning in a weird way. So his like eyebrows are blonde in this. And this is, I believe this is part of the same photo shoot where he has like all the. stupid sun tan lotion on his face or whatever. So yeah, this is like his, this is like his first Trump era look. Yeah, it's from the move from like,

I'm just a baby super genius. You can't hold me responsible for anything to like, I'm an adult, but like guys, I like want to be a relatable guy. Yeah, this is like clearly the moment where like the PR people were like, you have to find hobbies

so that people think you're a human being. And what about this guy? Yeah, so this is his newest era. This is the hype. Mark Zuckerberg. He looks like he works at an illegal dispensary pop-up in Brooklyn. You know, he, this is the like, I work in financial district and I'm dating a girl in Bushwick look that he has right now.

I think in many ways this is his most authentic self. I think this is truly who he is on the inside or rather who he would have been if he like had the sort of social capacity to be that in his 20s. Like this is very much like a midlife crisis Zuckerberg. I like that you can see the tanning goggle line. Yeah, I've wondered about this as well. If this was like on purpose to look like Trump or because like he's a client, like he just doesn't understand how to tan his eyes.

Yeah, it's a strange look. But I do think this is his best look so far. Do you have a favorite? Zuck moment or rebrand? I don't only because, and I feel like I do this every time we do one of these episodes where I'm going to like break your format. I find him deeply uninteresting. And in many ways almost like incidental to Facebook.

And this is based on just my distaste for the man. Once again, think he belongs sort of like at the night wish brewery in the north end in Boston talking about how this IPA is really good, you know. I just think he's a very boring man who takes up space in my home state. No, no. These guys are now into like $14 loggers that taste exactly like Gingling. But not in Boston, they're not. Because Boston is about five years culturally behind the rest of the country.

So I find him boring and incidental to Facebook story, not just because I think he is boring and incidental as a human being, but because I think that he's, think that there's essentially a moment that happens around 2012 or 2013 where Facebook becomes so large that no one person has any sort of say in how it works or operates or even fully understands it. And that kind of opinion that I started to form in the 2010s, I think, has only become more solid in my mind since. I don't get the feeling that any one person inside of Facebook really knows what's going on and couldn't really change it much, except for like minute little tweaks at this point. Does that include the recent changes? You think they're minute? Yes. I mean, I think the changes

that were announced recently are quite minute because most of the bad stuff that's happening on Facebook has already been happening. What this will do is allow Facebook to not have to deal with it anymore. So I'm sorry to tell you, you didn't ruin this outline. I think we're actually agreeing. I look at Mark's different errors and I see a guy who is appearing as whatever is most advantageous to him, and I think that's what we see with the whole company. Always. The only thing that I think is

kind of telling, and maybe it's just because I love this. It is my favorite billionaire fact, but when he had the stupid haircut, it was to style it off of Augustus Caesar, and I think if anyone is styling themselves and is in competition with

a Roman emperor, there should be forced bankruptcy. of that person. I think that's right. I have a piece of Zuckerberg gossip I've been sitting on, which I think I can use here. Yeah.

And perhaps if any meta-employees are listening and they would like to confirm this for me, I have heard that he only eats chicken nuggets. And this is not me doing a bit. I have heard that. So if anyone would like, you know, I want to be, I want to do my due diligence here. if anyone listening can conform or deny that Mark Zuckerberg has a private chef that's making him chicken nuggets every day, let me know.

I'm very interested in hearing that, whether that's true or not. It is so believable. It is. So our timing of our January 6 episode was perfect and also exactly wrong because of a lot of what the episode was. And you should fucking listen to it if you haven't because it is so, so relevant. It was in particular about how Facebook facilitated and or enabled the interaction and how most of their attention was not on combating extremism as a real problem, rather making sure they wouldn't get blamed for ending democracy. Is that a fair summary? Yes.

And I think Charlie and I had sort of different takes on when Facebook stopped trying to moderate itself and, you know, stop. stopped doing due diligence, let's say. But we both are in agreement that at some point between 2020 and 2021, META threw up their hands and were like, we're not going to play ball anymore. And most of their decisions before that period of time were about not getting blamed. And now they're just like, we're not even going to bother stepping in. And the decisions that they made recently around fact checking are totally in line. with that idea, which is like, you can't yell at us because we're not going to, we're just not

going to play ball anymore. Can you give, before this moment, can you give an example showing how Meda cared more about the PR than the problem? Yeah. I mean, the best, the best examples were not in the U.S. So, um, there, there are total inability to admit that they help facilitate the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar is probably the biggest. the most important example of this.

But there were waves of Facebook-led riots across the global South and even in parts of Europe throughout the 2010s. And Facebook refused to ever truly acknowledge them. And they would say, you know, like that actually has nothing to do with our platform and it was people using it poorly. And that's not how it's meant to be used. In the incident in Myanmar, if I remember correctly, essentially, the riots kicked off because a rumor spread about like a tea shop owner in a small town.

People like stormed and it spread on Facebook. People stormed the tea shop and like tried to lynch the owner. And then that spread out into like, you know, sectarian violence across the country, which then literally led to a genocide. And like Facebook's role has been well documented in that. And in fact, when Facebook announced the end of fact-checking this week, Mata employees told Casey Newton, a platformer, that this was going to lead to another genocide. Like, employees inside the company know the power that Facebook has.

And it sounds very crazy when you start to talk about this because what you're talking about is essentially like rumors and you're talking about misinformation and you're talking about harassment and bullying online on Facebook, which then spills on the real world violence. And the jump from online to offline is where meta goes like, Actually, like, we can't, you know, you can't blame us for that. And so they put out all kinds of safeguards. It's like you throw a rally by the Capitol where you say go, go, go, we're going to, let's go march to the Capitol. But what happens once you get to the Capitol? Yes. What do you mean?

That was 30 minutes ago. How could we be held responsible for what these people did on their way from one from point to point B? Right. And like, I think I've talked about this on the show before. but like, you know, I would reach out to meta before they were met if when I would reach out to Facebook for comment on all kinds of stories where I'd find something horrible on the site and they, they'd either lie to me or they would delete it before I could publish. Um, you know, they would, they, can you give an example of that? Um, yeah, the incident where I sort of, where I sort of was like, I'm never going to like, I'm never going to trust you guys again. I was in Mexico covering the 2018 election and my partner on the story, Anigo, and I were investigating a fake news farm in Mexico City.

And we, like, got access into it, got to see it. They were responsible for a very viral rumor that Paul Walker was still alive in Mexico, which, like, apparently, like, a lot of Mexicans just believe is fact because of how successfully viral this story was. Paul Walker, is there Tupac? Essentially, like, they just think like Paul Walker is like living in rural Mexico somewhere. So we like, we talked to this whole, we did a whole afternoon inside this, this essentially like an office space that had been like set up in like a, in like a building in Mexico City, full of 20 somethings just like lying all day on Mexican Facebook pages. And they were being commissioned by politicians in Mexico to spread fake news about that politician, which I thought was kind of an interesting twist. So the Mexican politicians were paying this firm to spread rumors about them so they could accuse their political opponents of spreading those rumors on Facebook. Yeah.

Fuck. It's good shit, right? And so we documented this whole thing. We had all this proof. Like, I mean, we brought a film crew to, like, film how they used Facebook to do this. And Facebook PR people, who, the, the most of them. majority of which at the time, I should say, were former Obama staffers in case you need more reasons to not trust that entire period of history. Most of those people went from the Obama

White House to work in Big Tech. So I went to Facebook and I was like, here's all this proof we have of what's happening in Mexico around the election. It seems like it's actually making some genuine impact, at least in like maybe the local level. I don't know if it really impacted the success of Andreas Manuel Lopez-Abrador, the former president of Mexico. But the Facebook PR team totally gave me a run around and then the thing that like really enraged me and we published like a second story about it because I was so angry like this I've never had this happen to me before before I could I could write my story they turned around and sent all my reporting that I had asked them about to the Atlantic Council which is a NATO backed fact checking organization who I like you know I'm cool with like I've worked with them before but they basically leaked my story to the Atlantic Council who who then called me out of the blue to run defense for meta. And I'm still angry about it this day. That's like a ridiculous.

No, that sucks. I've never had that happen to you before. And maybe it's like just not totally clear for like non-journalists why that's weird. But like it was so weirdly aggressive. And that was the day where I was like, I'm never going to treat meta as anything other than an antagonistic force. Because like clearly they don't care about anything other than protecting their own reputation. And I yeah, I'm still upset.

still mad about that. Like, that's a ridiculous thing to do. Anyways, it's extremely petty. So to recap, meta has been very focused on expansion and keeping the brand out of trouble and will adapt accordingly to accomplish both of those things. And we're seeing that with the recent news. But before we get there, how did they handle the Biden years after January 6th when people were very pissed at them? the Biden era of Facebook and to an extent Instagram as well, I think, has been about minimizing relevance as much as they can without losing engagement. And what I mean by that is like they basically said like no more news on Facebook, no more politics on Facebook.

No, obviously news and politics are still being shared on Facebook, but the levers that control the highest points of the meta ecosystem. aren't showing that stuff anymore. And like Garbage Day researcher and Panic World researcher, Adam and I, we look at this stuff every month. We work with NewsWIP and we can see like what's being shared and engaged with across Facebook. And like over the last two years, it has been largely garbage bullshit. Like clips from like America's Got Talent in America's Funniest Home videos and like weird

beauty pageants and stuff. Like it's totally irrelevant. They want to see how irrelevant they can be socially without having impact. on their bottom, any impact on their bottom line. And now that Biden has lost, they can be like, oh, yeah, actually, you can talk about politics all you want now. Like, you can do whatever you want now. It doesn't matter.

Because what they were trying to do is basically fly under the radar for four years to not trigger any kind of scrutiny or regulatory interest from the Democrats. And now that the Republicans are in charge, they are just the gates are wide open. And that brings us to now. I personally feel betrayed that that creatine Mark would do this. I thought I could get on board with Yoked Mark and that he was now a relatable guy. But, you know, sad day for all of us who like Gaines. But for you, a guy who doesn't like Gaines, this was predictable.

What he's doing is reading the room that like a lot of other people in both tech and culture are seeing right now, which is that America is going through a pretty conservative social backlash. Country music is very popular. Gender roles are very strict. I mean, it's a lot of the stuff that we cover on this show. Like, there's like a real kind of reactionary movement happening. And Facebook has been completely irrelevant for four years. Like, does not matter.

And Instagram is going the same direction. And I think Zuckerberg made a really smart decision right now, which is, to open the floodgates and just see what happens and see if, you know, Facebook can be interesting again if Instagram can be interesting again. We're going to digress for one second. I was talking to an influencer I thought was funny, potentially for a bonus for the show that didn't pan out.

She'd made a video where she, you know, she's the chef and she was like, oh, I woke up craving fried Oreos. So I made homemade OZempic. and then she like, can, like, get speakers and pretends to make OZempic.

She posted it to Instagram and Facebook. And on Facebook, people reported it as a real thing. The idea of anyone taking this series, literally, blew my mind. Do you think that that's actually, like,

representative of the people that are on Facebook? Yeah. Yeah, I do. This is, like, an uncomfortable thing about Facebook, which is that, It is so large and it is so vast that the sort of average media literacy or genuine literacy level of its user base is quite low.

It is like it is the largest connection of human beings in human history. It has surpassed the Catholic Church as the largest organization of human. beings on planet earth. And there are a lot of people who like don't understand what satire is. They don't understand what jokes are. They don't understand that what they're looking at on Facebook isn't real. They just open it and they react. And Facebook has incentivizes that behavior.

So yes. I mean, I, years ago when I was interviewing those magicians that were like eating out of toilets and stuff, they would say the same stuff, which is that we're just doing jokes that are clearly jokes, but everyone's taking them really seriously. And they're taking them really seriously because there's just a lot of people on the app that like don't understand. And it's because they're old or they're uneducated or they don't speak English and they're seeing English content. They, you know, and it happens going both ways. Like the AI images that everyone were freaking, everyone was freaking out about a couple months ago.

Yeah. We're all being made by like Indian hustle bros who were trying to make the most American images possible. So it's like it's a, it's a platform of. constant cultural context collapse happening all of the time. And so everyone is just very angry because they're very confused. So with that in mind, on a scale of one to ten, how consequential do you think the new changes are going to be? I think they're going to be pretty bad. Scale one to ten.

Eight, let's say. We'll discuss how on the Patreon. On the Patreon. Yeah, we're going to the Patreon now. You can pay 50 cents to listen, this month only. Yeah, you got less than 30 days to get it for 50 cents for the first month. And if we reach a thousand, we're going to drink something gross on microphones. And that will happen.

There you go. Just use the code, panic in all. All caps, check out at patreon.com slash panic world. But also, if you're just going to cancel once it's $5, you're a class trader. They are. They absolutely are going to do that. Panic World is a garbage day production. It's written and produced by Grant Irving, hosted by myself with research from the always fantastic Adam Bumis.

A huge thanks to Gabby Cash for designing the incredibly deranged art for this show. And a huge thank you to Kat Rijsk, our lovely video editor. And if you'd like to sponsor an episode, you can reach out to Multitude, our wonderful partners, multitude. dot productions slash ads. We have a Patreon, which you can find at patreon.com slash panic world. And I'd like to end this episode with an important reminder. Log off and touch grass while you still can.