The Ben Mulroney Show - Instagram cracks down on what kids under 16 can do on the App

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Instagram cracks down on what kids under 16 can do on the App with Guest: Mohit Rajhans Mediologist and Consultant, ThinkStart.ca If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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without parental consent. They also won't be able to unblur nudity. And so to discuss this, is it even gonna work? Who knows? Kids find workarounds to everything. We're joined now by Mohit Rajans. He's a meteorologist and consultant with thinkstart.ca and also a very good friend of the show.

Mohit, welcome. Ben, nice to hear from you. Okay, so I heard this I was like, Okay, this is good. Probably would have been a better idea like 10 years ago. But okay, and better late than never. So why don't you let us know the details of their plan. So positives exactly what you described this idea that now teen accounts will not have full control. And parents will need to be able to get permission when it comes down to things like live streaming. Obviously, you and I have spoken about the fact that when it comes down to a certain demographic,

Metta is losing its audience a little bit when it comes down to Instagram and Facebook use. So what they're hoping for are two things. One, they're hoping to philosophically protect teens from and feel who can feel safe while using their platform and also really combat this idea of what exploitation has felt like online. And in the EU, they're really clamping down on big platforms like Metta to make sure that they're not building on some of this inappropriate

content that is lingering on this on this platform. So we are in a place now where these these social media platforms are being held accountable and trying to at least be somewhat proactive. But you and I can kind of smirk about what that means. Well, yeah, I mean, I listen, my my kids have Instagram accounts and I don't even know what they use them for. I mean, it's not their platform, right? But I don't remember them even asking me for that gain access, which means they probably didn't say they were 14 years old.

And I know that that sounds irresponsible, but you gotta know my boys, they're responsible. And so I have to imagine that kids will find a workaround to this. If there's a blurred nudie on a teenage boy's feed, they will find a way to see it. I think more so what's significant about this, honestly, Ben, is that it's pretty clear that Metta is about to indulge

this world with a bunch of AI-related work. And the last thing they want to be held accountable for is the fact that, you know, some of the stuff that's on there wasn't necessarily vetted properly, things that are being trained on the wrong things. And I think it's important for them to be able to at least create these safeguards moving ahead. All right. Well, now you just brought up the buzzword du jour AI, and we've we're now moving past AI is something everyone needs to learn at work, AI needs to be integrated into how you work, how you optimize

your workflow, it is now becoming an expectation in places like Shopify. Yeah, this is fascinating to me, I'll be honest with you, I followed Shopify since its inception, it was one of those companies that I've always thought to myself would be very interesting to see what it would be like to work there. And you know, the only reason I'm saying that is because it really is a wonderful Canadian startup story. And now it's really pivoting into the sort of being one of the leaders of the thought process that AI is no longer a skill that you might sort of indulge in. But hopefully some of the internal employees consider it as a vital task and skill set that they bring to their daily

operations. What do you think about that? What do you think about a big company like Shopify coming out there fully and saying you better be AIing? Listen, Shopify has been bold in a lot of the moves that they've made. They were bold when they bought this incredible space for their Toronto downtown office. And then once the pandemic hit, they got rid of it and they went fully remote. I think the president, Harley Ficklestein

is a tremendous thought leader. I think he's somebody who puts his opinion out there and it's very valuable. I think a lot of people, whether they are in that ecosystem or not, could learn from his insights. So these are guys who are not afraid to be the tip of the sword.

And if they think this is where the world is gonna go, I think they wanna be the first guys at the party. So good on them. I agree. And I think it also would be counterintuitive for them as a company to say, no, don't be this proactive considering the business that they're serving. You know, they were the type of business that you didn't necessarily have to be at your desk when you're working there. You could be anywhere. And that's the freedom that they've afforded people. And I think that

infusing AI in this adoption to their employees is going to be a bonus for them moving forward because of so many of their vendors that are already starting to use it. So Mohit, I heard a new catch phrase, a new buzzword, vibe coding. And I just assumed that it was something very silly, but it turns out it's not. What is vibe coding and where is it being adopted and how can it be used? Yeah, it's fascinating because it does sound like a term that we don't want to ever hear again, right? When we first heard the word influencer, we roll rolled our eyes. I rolled my when I heard vibe coding, I was like, Oh, my god, this is gonna be insufferable. But no, tell us what it is.

This is where it becomes kind of tricky. Think about yourself as you know, you're not a professional DJ, but you really know how to blend some good tracks together for a good 30 minute set, okay? This is what's happening with coding right now. You have seen a problem as a normal person and you think to yourself, well, what if I made an app where I didn't have to be on Team Snap with the parents or I didn't have to be on Team Snap with the parents, or I didn't have to be on Facebook

when it came down to learning the school code, et cetera, et cetera. What people are doing are they're using this new AI world and they're just creating things that are not necessarily for business purposes or to make money. They're doing it faster, they're willing to fail, and they're just vibing, as they say, and creating these actual solutions that don't cost a lot of money. So they don't cost a lot of money. They're personal, they're bespoke. Is there, I guess, like through a network effect, could these things find social relevance

and relevance in the business world and could all of a sudden, could they accidentally stumble on a solution to a really big problem? This is the new Reddit. If you know, if you think about it, right, this is the new way that open source is going to create things. And of course, the job displacement, unfortunately, became the broader conversation. Whenever anyone talks about AI, they're like, well, what about the world of work? But so you know, yes, it's true, it might not take 100 engineers to do a certain app, but not you don't need 100 engineers to make the app

for your parenting group. So I think vibe coding is really this idea that people who don't necessarily feel extremely technical can have a little bit of a say on the operational side. All right, well, that's an optimistic take on the future. Let's look at something that's sort of a pessimistic view of the present. Talk to me, there's an article in the New York Post about the challenges of Gen Z being branded the ghosted generation. What does that mean?

There's this real like disengagement idea about what to expect from Gen Z in the workforce right now. And I think we're going into summer season right now, an internship season for many people, and it's probably something that they're all facing, right? So on one hand, you've got Gen Z looking to really show that they're able to work in a modern world and based on rules and regulations, but they're also very typically labeled as unreliable,

never on time, don't pick up the phone, don't necessarily even respond to text unless it's by certain people. And I think what's happening, it's it's reflecting this cultural distrust, this collapse. And, you know, you can't sort of be in two places at once in this, you can't necessarily ask Gen Z to come in and fit into a work environment and also be extremely accessible and know how to work from anywhere, et cetera, et cetera.

So I think we all have a little bit of responsibility to understand that a connected generation is there to work hard, just takes a little bit of an influence from multiple generations in the process. And that's the thing, I'm willing to live in a world where their experience, their inputs are, their outputs are gonna be different because their inputs were different but I do

not believe we're not we're speaking different languages and there there is a way to get them to appreciate that there is a larger culture that they need to be absorbed into and ultimately effect but mo hit thank you so much for joining us I really appreciate it have a great rest of your Tuesday always a pleasure take care a lot of people have been watching the stock market. They've been watching what the president says, what his advisors say and how the markets react. And generally speaking, it has seemed that when he doubles down on his tariff talk, the stock market has gone down. When there have been rumors of a reprieve or a pause, you see a rally. I'm

not suggesting that it is a hard and fast rule, but that's something that has been noticed. And Donald Trump was asked if he's looking at a tariff pause because he's taking a number of meetings with leaders around the world who are looking to reset their trading relationship with the United States. They're looking to lower tariffs. They're looking to give this guy what he wants. Here's what he had to say about the prospect of pausing the tariffs. Well, we're not looking at that.

We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us and they're gonna be fair deals. And in certain cases, they're gonna be be fair deals and in certain cases they're going to be paying substantial tariffs. With China, as you know, against my statement they put a 34 percent tariff on above what their ridiculous tariffs were already. And I said if that tariff isn't removed by tomorrow at 12 o'clock, we're putting a 50

percent tariff on above the tariffs that we put on. So he's doubling down. He's got his, every one I've talked to says that he believes in his bones, in his bones, that this is the right course of action for the United States. Now, I am not suggesting that because he believes

that he's in any way right, But this is how he views the world. This is how he views the problem that he's going to solve for America and the tool that he's going to use to solve the problem is tariffs. Pierre Poliev on the campaign trail looked at the stock market from the Canadian perspective. And here's what he had. Here's what he thought about that. We have to acknowledge that this chaos is the direct result of wrongheaded, unnecessary, chaotic policies coming from President Trump. These tariffs are a massive distraction.

And they remind us why it was such a mistake for the liberals to make us so dependent on the Americans over the last liberal decade. Yeah, that's completely fair. I don't even think I'm being partisan, that we have spent 10 years on, I don't know what the liberal government was trying to do. They were trying to reshape Canada

in the image of a green country with no carbon footprint and no carbon whatsoever, where everything was free and nothing cost anything and they could print money nonstop. And we didn't have to worry about natural resource extraction and we didn't have to worry about tankers or pipelines or any of that stuff didn't matter because the Canada of the future was here today.

And had we actually dealt with building the Canada of today for tomorrow, we would not be feeling the impact of Donald Trump as strongly as we do. We would have our liquefied natural gas being sold to Europe and to Japan and to all points in between. We would have diversified our partners

and who we sell our oil and gas to. We would have been extracting critical minerals from the ring of fire in Ontario. We would have built out the trades in this country so that we could build the houses that we need. All of those things could have been done and they weren't. We could have lowered taxes on investment, on capital gains, meaning people would keep more

of what they earned. Entrepreneurs would be incentivized to open businesses. All of that could have happened and it didn't because we were too worried about the carbon footprint of the country. Meanwhile, we could have lowered the carbon footprint of the globe had we the country. Meanwhile, we could have lowered the carbon footprint of the globe had we sold our LNG,

our liquefied natural gas to places like India. We could have actually moved the needle on a global level, but we didn't do any of that. And so now we find ourselves where we are today. Stephen Harper showed up yesterday, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, showed up yesterday at a rally that defied even the most bullish Pierre Poliev fan's expectations

when was it 16, 17,000 people showed up in Edmonton to show their support for the conservative leader. And Stephen Harper had a few things to say about the leader who's running opposite Pierre Poliak. Don't let anyone tell you that he was born to be prime minister or that he can just somehow parachute into the job fully prepared. Political experience, elected, accountable political experience and the capacity for growth with that political experience. That is what Pierre has demonstrated for two decades.

And that is the single most important characteristic a prime minister needs. I am so tired of this argument that Mark Carney's resume makes him eminently qualified to be prime minister. Listen to him on the campaign trail. He gets asked simple questions and it takes him two three seconds of humming and hawing and uh and uh and finding his words to ramp up to an answer. And the reason for that is because he's never spent any time thinking about those things up until three weeks ago when he decided he wanted to run to be prime minister. He has not thought about the water crisis for First Nations. He hasn't thought about the housing crisis

for new Canadians. He hasn't thought about those things because he didn't have to think about those things. He didn't think about the massacre at the École Polytechnique, which is why he called it Concordia, because he didn't have to because he wasn't here. He wasn't here so these things didn't matter to him. And so it's only now that he's putting these thoughts together in his head. He may very well one day come up with a good idea, but we don't have time to allow him

to grow into the role. We have problems that have been festering for 10 years, caused by this government, caused by the people who stand behind him at that podium, caused by the people who voted in favor of all of these things that have led to the crises that we are enduring today. I don't have time for a man who's going to lean into it and learn about it on the job. The evidence is in front of you if you wanna see it. He hasn't thought about these things before because he hasn't had to think about them.

And I am tired of that being somehow a positive. Don't gaslight me into believing that a guy with no experience who has never thought about these things is the right guy for the job. The guy who's been in the trenches, who's been fighting for his vision, and who, by the way, had his vision been enacted over the past 10 years, we would be in a better place. Those are facts.

Those are facts. Okay, so I'm a little emotional. Someone who's never been accused of being emotional, Stephen Harper. Here was another take of his on the guy who wants to be prime minister. And by the way, I say that as the guy who actually did lead Canada through the global financial crisis. I hear there's someone else claiming it was him. It was, of course, our government, the late, great Jim Flaherty and our conservative team who were responsible for the day-to-day macroeconomic management during that challenging time. Yep.

That's all fact, too. I put that to bed, period. Fold, end the sentence, turn the page. And we turn the page to the cracks that are appearing in the Trump administration. Elon Musk went after Donald Trump's advisor, Peter Navarro, who I would call a court jester

if he wasn't so aggravatingly insulting and dangerous on social media. And Navarro made comments about the auto industry and was critical of Elon Musk saying he and Tesla are not car manufacturers, he's a car assembler. To which Elon Musk said, Navarro is truly a moron.

What he says here is demonstrably false. Tesla has the most American made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks. By any definition whatsoever, Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of US content. Navarro should ask the fake expert he invented, Ron Vara. We can dig into that story later.

He created a fake economist to justify his support of Donald Trump's tariffs. And now it's been uncovered that Ron Vara is an anagram for Navarro. Idiot. All right, we went digging for a little audio gold that Ron Vara is an anagram for Navarro. Idiot. All right, we went digging for a little audio gold because every now and then you wanna have fun. You wanna turn down the outrage, the indignation,

the bombast, the bluster, the bravado, and you wanna have a little bit of fun. I found this, this made me laugh. I had to watch it three or four times because it was so funny. There's a guy on Instagram who he said, this is why I don't use Facebook anymore. And I need you to keep in your head as you listen to this,

there is a man and a woman. Keep that visually, remember the man and the woman because otherwise you're gonna lose your place. And it is a story with many twists and turns. Let's listen. This girl just posted posted as her status, my husband came home crying because he said that he had a mistress and she's pregnant.

Then she started crying and he was trying to comfort her and she was pushing him away. And she said she was pushing the wife. The wife is pushing the husband away because she the wife knows that the husband is infertile but they have two kids so because the wife knows the husband is infertile but she wants kids but she's married to him she knows that if she tells him that that mistress's baby is not your baby, that he'll know that them two babies ain't his babies. She don't know what

to do. Y'all, it's a mess. Oh! I love that. Okay, look, the internet, just like every piece of technology, is a tool, right? And you can use it for good or for evil. I commend this man for using the internet for good. If that doesn't take whatever mood you're in and make it better, I can't help you. God love that man. I salute him and I thank him for his service. And here's another piece of audio gold of a dad explaining how he was presented with a problem and he solved it in a way that only a man of this caliber could solve it. Let's listen to this genius dad. I'm at work with my son.

My son at work too at Domino's. So he ain't got no way home. I sold him an order of Uber. So he just called me and said the Uber was $35 because of the time of day. We stay in Davidson. Uh-uh, he worked at Domino's. I just called and ordered a $15 pizza for delivery and told

him to catch a ride home with his mother. $15 pizza delivery to the house. Don't have to cause your coworker going there anyways. They got't. Now smart, no hustler. You know, the people in Donald Trump's orbit always like to say that he's playing 4d chess when everybody else is playing checkers. That man that dad was playing 4d chess again, he gets another salute. That's two salutes in a row. So now I mentioned Donald Trump. So let's mention Donald Trump. There's a lot not to like about that man if you're Canadian.

Let's just let's be honest. But every now and then, the thing that makes Donald Trump Donald Trump that annoys us, that irritates us, that angers us every now and then that that same part of him says something that is truly funny. Here he is hosting the the LA Dodgers at the White House because they won the World Series. And he takes a partisan shot at some senators, but he does it in a way that only Donald Trump would. Congratulations, Brian.

And others. We have a couple of senators here. I just don't particularly like them, so I won't introduce. Over the course of this amazing season, the members of this team... I didn't think it was that big a deal, actually. Look, to anybody who criticizes, I'm not trying to normalize Donald Trump, I'm not trying to normalize Donald Trump, I'm not trying to humanize Donald Trump, I'm not trying to make you like Donald Trump. That was just funny. That was just genuinely funny. And he even, he didn't realize it was funny. He didn't realize that Donald Trump being Donald Trump could actually be that funny. And it

was genuinely funny. Here's a Donald Trump clip that's funny for a different reason, and we'll talk about it on the other side. Likewise, an old fashioned term that we use groceries. I used it on the campaign. It's such an old fashioned term, but a beautiful term groceries. It sort of says a bag with different things in it. Groceries went through the roof and I campaigned on that.

I talked about the word groceries for a lot. And I campaigned on that. I talked about the word groceries for a lot. Okay, look, the problem with that is what it demonstrates is Donald Trump doesn't think about groceries. Donald Trump has never thought about groceries. And those are the issues that are affecting everyday Americans and Canadians. He didn't think about.

And that's why when we're watching the stock market tank and people are saying, we're losing our 401k We're losing our investments. We're losing our retirement fund Those things don't cross his mind. Those things do not cross his mind. Those are not issues that he deals with Donald Trump lacks Empathy he lacks the ability to put himself in somebody else's shoes And so when he talks about groceries being an old-fashioned term, it's not an old-fashioned term, it's a word everybody uses every day except for Donald Trump.

And I know he thinks he's being cute. It's like an alien coming down to earth and seeing a dog for the first time. To that alien, that dog is the weirdest thing it's ever seen. To Donald Trump, the word groceries is an old fashioned term that he needs to spend 18 seconds on because it's such a weird expression to him because it doesn't collide with him in his everyday life. And so that is actually a symptom of a larger problem for him and consequently for Americans.

And I guess because he's made himself our problem, it's our problem too. But I wanna finish off with this clip. So this is from a few years ago. And this is from Jerry Seinfeld. He found himself being interviewed and he did what a comedian really does well, a good comedians do.

They highlight a problem through comedy. They highlight an issue through comedy. And well, let's just listen. We'll talk about it on the other side. Notice that most of the guests are mostly white males of 22 episodes. Yeah, let's get into that. No, but you...

Take a look over here, Peter. What do you see? A lot of... A lot of whiteys! What's going on here? But... Oh, this really pisses me off. But go ahead.

No, no, no. Really pisses me off. People think it's the census or something. I mean, this has i i represent the the actual pie chart of of of america who cares it's just funny you know funny is the is the is the world that i live in you're funny i'm interested in a funny i'm not interested

and and and i have no interest in gender race or anything like that but everyone else is kind of with their little calculating, is this the exact right mix? You know, I think that's, to me, it's anti-comedy. Yeah, and like I said, that's from a few years ago and it does feel like the world is swinging back into that part of the order that makes more sense to most of us.

And so that was a conversation about his Netflix show, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. And the host was pointing out, oh, it's not very diverse, you know, got a lot of white men. It's like, so what? Like honestly, so what? That, that, that is, that is unhelpful. It is unhelpful. It is unhelpful and he highlighted it.

It is not the census, it is not my job to do a show that represents a cross section of America. You're either gonna watch it or you're not. If you don't watch it, we won't make the show anymore. But you know enough people watch it, I think there's six or seven seasons of it. So this notion, and by the way, I was part of media organizations that

pushed this incessantly. And it was something that we have to remind people of. And don't get me wrong. I do subscribe to the idea of you can't be what you can't see. Right. And so for far too long, there were people in society who had never saw themselves on screens, big or small. And that seems to me to have been righted in a lot of ways. I don't have any data to support it, but I'm done taking stock, engaging whether something is successful or not if it doesn't completely accurately reflect

the demographics of America or of Canada. I'm done with that and I'm glad we don't live there anymore. Want to transform your space and your Sundays? Well, Home Network is giving you the chance to love your home with $15,000. There can only be one winner. Tune in to Renovation Resort every Sunday and look for the code word during the show. Then enter at homenetwork.ca slash watch and win

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