The Chaser Report - The Australian Vibe

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

The team celebrates Scott Morrison’s latest announcement for Australia’s plan to face the climate crisis, which almost nearly sounds like a plan. Meanwhile Charles deep dives into an underground social network called “Facebook”, and Gabbi delves into the true backstory of her new favourite stage play about an FBI whistle-blower spy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by a sibling rivalry. Gabby, did you eat all my fruit loops? No, I didn't. I was saving them. I paid for them. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't eat your fruit loops.

Oh, so they just walked into my bowl, poured some milk in, and then ate themselves. I didn't eat your fruit loops. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report for Wednesday, the 27th, the October, and with me are Gabby and Alexa. Hey. Hello. And big news yesterday was that Scott Morrison finally came out and announced his plan for

the climate change conference at Glasgow. Oh my God. That's huge. We're all going to live. Apparently. Well, I wouldn't go that far. No, no. There's always a catch with these things.

No, so what he did was he announced a thing called the Australian way on climate change. Right. And other than that, there will be no changes to any underlying policy. So what he's announced is that he's going to get 35% cut in emissions by 2030. And how's he going to do that? And he's going to do that using all the existing policies that they have, which will not change at all. Right.

So, and I know, look, I know you're both looking a little bit sort of skeptical at this. point. But listen to what he said. So the current government policy would see us cut about 26 to 28% by 2030, right? Okay. He's going to achieve 35% using the existing policies because, and I quote, we believe we will be able to achieve a 35% reduction in emissions by 2030. That's good enough of me. He believes it. And then, quote, that is something we actually think we are going to achieve. If there was a word that could equate to a nose tap. That's it. We actually think... Do you ever feel like, do you forget the vibe that you're living in a Scooby-Doo plot?

That's what this whole thing, I've just waited for him to peel back his mask and reveal like, the Cripskeeper was him all along. What did Labor have to say about this? Do they actually think something too? Well, they actually, they criticise, amazingly, they criticise Scott Morrison, saying that it wasn't so much a roadmap as a vibe. Ooh, nice. Yeah, which is, I mean, they're going to win the next election with their. heavy criticism.

No, but it's appealing to young people, you know? It's like Bill Shorten's usage of simp, you know. I like that they're using vibe. You reckon they have a book? Urban dictionary. Yeah, they have the... Whenever they're sitting in question time,

all of their laptops aren't actually open to policy documents or anything like that. It's all just urban dictionary going, what will suit the next speech. But there must be urban dictionary from 1995 or something like that. The vibe, it's the castle. Yeah. Yeah, Anthony is he's about to step up in Parliament

and be like, everything's totally righteous, man. It's grue there. I mean, I think the point is that we're fucked. And I know that we criticise Scott Morrison a lot, but I think in fairness to him, I think it's really audacious to get up, make a huge announcement without actually doing anything at all, claim that you've solved everything.

Yeah. And it just literally be nothing more than the announcement itself. Not only that. It's audacious to do that not once. Not twice But like three times a month The guy gets away with it every time It's actually kind of incredible

I wonder I mean aside from tourism Australia If he's ever really been fired Or if he just kind of quit jobs Because no one like you can't How do you convince a man like that That he's ever wrong? It's not audacious anymore It's positive reinforcement

He's just doing the normal right thing to do And look I think You know like he truly believes That he's Oh well he would wouldn't he Coming up on the show I'm taking a deep dive into the inner workings of Facebook.

And Gabby is looking at the strange tale of reality winner and whether we could say turn to the FBI as a way to fund the arts. But first of all, let's go to Rebecca Day and Muno in the Chaser Newsroom straight after this. The Queensland Government has allegedly contemplated placing a bid to host the next COVID lockdown after announcing two daily COVID cases. The Premier, Anastasia Palishe, said, it's time that we finally brought such an iconic national tradition to Queensland,

especially now that New South Wales and Victoria are finished with it. Crown Casino has declared bankruptcy after betting all their savings on the Royal Commission stripping their gambling licence. A representative for Crown said it was hoping that another unethical, blatantly corrupt group like the Australian Liberal Party, would purchase the casino in order to continue its legacy of making absurd profits for rich people.

The government's new climate policy has committed to saving the trees by cutting back on 100% of all paper advertising materials. Instead, the government has decided to spend $12.9 million on television, cinema and billboard advertising to become a global leader in greenwashing. I'm Rebecca Dana Muno. And you're listening to the nation's hottest breakfast show, Charlesian Domino. Okay. And now it's time for another edition of.

Deeper deep dive. Oh, yes. So lots of podcasts will deep dive into things. Some will even do a deep, deep dive. But only the Chaser report has a deeperer deep dive. You're so proud of that intro, aren't you, Charles? I've heard it three times now And it's still just as titillating

I think it's just because Like I think we've cornered the market in deep eyes It was a niche that was waiting to be exploited Yes No one's dives We're just deep So today we're going to delve Deeply

Oh my God Into Facebook Right So we've had We've had the Pandora papers And the Panama papers And yesterday Came the Facebook papers

That's a shit name. You've had Pandora, Panama. Why not go with another P? Oh, yeah. The Pacific Papers. But at least you know what these are about. Oh, I suppose that's true. I think...

I wasn't the other one about the jewelry store? Pandora, no. Anyway, so these are a trove of papers that were initially leaked to the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. But there's so many of them. that actually there are now 17 major news organizations who've been going through them all and they've all got different angles on what's wrong with Facebook right and it's all from this one whistleblower

who spent I think about four years in Facebook and then about mid-last year she just decided this is absolutely fucked up the ass I mean sorry this is absolutely fucked and started just photocopy just she just started photocopying all the documents for months and months and months systematically and just got all this

She had receipts. Anyway, so guess what the Facebook papers are about? Oh, Twitter. Money laundering in Samoa? The colour of blue that wasn't quite right that they argued over for five years. They're about Facebook. What?

Yes. Who could have foreseen? So, I don't know whether you know, but Facebook is this, it's a social media company. They've got 2.8 billion users. Wow. Which is about 60% of the world's internet users. That's bigger than the viewership of the chaser.

It's about the same. Just a little. A little bit. So I thought we should start, you know, at the beginning. Very good place to start. Studies of Evil, which is Hannah Arendt. 60 years ago this year, she wrote a piece in the New Yorker about Adolf Eichmann, was one of the great war criminals of the Nazi era, you know, operated a lot of.

lots of concentration camps and oversaw that whole thing. And she expected that Adolf Eichmann would be a sort of evil pervert at the center of this Nazi war criminal empire. Instead... He performed evil deeds without evil intentions, a fact connected to his thoughtlessness, a disengagement from the reality of his evil acts. Yeah, so this was the concept of the banality of evil. The fact that Adolf Eichmann was just this regular guy who just went, oh, well, who cares what happens?

I'm just doing his job. I'm just doing a job. Trying to get ahead. I mean, look at his name. What else could he have done? Yeah, exactly. He had the name Adolf. He was going to be evil.

It's a shit joke. I'm sorry. Terrible. Flip forward 55 years. And, you know, from about 2012 onwards, Facebook was facing a massive problem, which is that Teenate. Too many arts were on it, talking about their wine time. Well, no, exactly.

That's exactly right, which is anyone under the age of 30, which is like you, Gabby. Yeah. Just thinks of Facebook as old people's. Oh, I didn't realize I was actually correct. I was just trying to make a little quip. No, that's true. And so it's had this huge problem, especially in the last few years. Like, it was 13% in 2019 it declined in terms of teenage use.

And it was projected to be 45% decline in teenage use over the next two years, right? So they're facing, and it's an existential crisis for them, because they're all the most valuable, but advertisers want to hit teenagers. They don't want to hit aunts talking about wine time. Maybe not now. Again, a market needs to be cornered, I reckon. And the other thing that they're very aware of is that their predecessors,

you know, companies like Friendster, I don't know whether, do you remember Friendster? You're probably too young. No. And MySpace. That was the one. That was the one. Social networks tend to sort of evaporate quickly.

They just collapse and then nobody uses them. RIP Bibo, truly. So they had to do everything to sort of keep people using their platform right. And that was their job. Their job was how do we juice our numbers? And they did a whole lot of research and they found out that making people really angry is the best way to keep people on their website. And this is a clip from Francis Howgan, who's the whistleblower.

She's speaking on 60 Minutes program in the U.S. And one of the consequences of how Facebook is picking out that content today is it is optimizing for content that gets engagement or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it's easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions. Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they'll click on less ads, they'll make less money.

Yeah, so it's very similar to Adolf Eichmann's sort of predicament, which is you've got a job, which is make people click around more. You've done the research, making people really angry helps you with that machine. If they want to know how to sustain, you know, a company that makes people angry, just by being an existing company. All they have to do is call us. I don't know. Exactly.

If you want the experts, Facebook, we're right here. We're just sitting here. I actually think the Federal Liberal Party would actually be my kid. News Corp maybe actually might have a few tips about that too. They're all about clicks for anger. But anyway, so then over the last couple of years, like governments have started noticing that this is having a real problem. The European governments have actually complained that it's affecting their democracies.

just because everyone's getting really angry all the time, right? And so they actually commissioned some more research on it to sort of find out, you know, are we subverting democracy? And this is what they found. When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarizing content, it erodes our civic trust, it erodes our faith in each other,

it erodes our ability to want to care for each other. The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world. Yeah. So you'll notice that she said causing ethnic violence around the world. Wow.

Because what happened was, in the lead up to the US elections in 2020, Facebook went, you know what, we're getting a bit of heat for causing all this anger. We could actually be really, you know,

the reason why democracy is going so wrong. So in the US, they turned off all their systems and stopped people being so angry. They changed their systems to dampen down all the sort of most extreme parts of anger and spread of misinformation. But they didn't do it anywhere else in the world. They just turned it off for the US elections. And then as soon as the US elections finished, they'd turned it back on because they were losing money. They stopped growing in 2020

when they'd turned off all the things that, you know, all the little methods that they have to to make people engage with their content, as it were. Wow. But meanwhile, around the world, you know, as you say, as this woman was saying, you know, they were using it. Like in Myanmar, the military used Facebook to actually do a genocide. God, it can do everything these days. Plan an event.

Send a happy birthday. Plan a genocide. Love that for them. But because that's so baked into their engagement and their business model, they don't, like they don't see like they have much of a choice. That's what their product is. And, you know, they admit that there's these unfortunate consequences. It's one of these unfortunate consequences, right?

No one at Facebook is malevolent, but the incentives are misaligned, right? Like, Facebook makes more money when you consume more content. people enjoy engaging with things that elicit in emotional reaction and the more anger that they get exposed to the more they interact and more they consume. I have a solution. Yeah.

I reckon we can fix this problem. Instead of using hate to incite anger, they just give us what Bebo gave us, which is a customizable profile that plays whatever song from My Chemical Romance you want when you click on it. Because I guarantee that would still incite anger in a lot of people,

but it wouldn't spread hate, if you know what I mean. Yes. Like, I'd be angry if everyone had different coloured profiles and I couldn't find anybody from a simple search and that every single time I clicked on my friend Lauren's profile, Amy Meredith's songs played. It'd be annoying, but I wouldn't go and commit a genocide now, would I? I think that makes sense.

Also, like, limits the amount of time anyone would ever be on the platform. Exactly. These days, they're averaging like six hours a day. With those annoying songs every time you open it, you'd be there for two seconds, and you'd be out in the real world again. But they wouldn't lose money because the people, because the people who want to spend time customising their profile,

which would, let's admit it, be all of us, they do that for like eight or nine hours. Yes. So worldwide, people are customising their profile and simultaneously never looking at it again, just like Bebo. And look how well it worked out for them. Well, Gabby, I think I'm going to rename this segment

from Deeper Deep Deep Dive to Gabby solves the world's problems. Yes. This is why they should just employ me at Facebook. What I find confusing about these leaks is that they're all, almost like you all kind of knew it before she spoke about it and like it's just such a strange thing to deal with I remember seeing the article come out in The Guardian

and the title was company is putting profit before public goods says whistleblower I don't understand I know I suppose the thing is that it had been theorised for years that this was what was going on but what is so funny

is that Facebook themselves went oh yeah this is what's happening you know we're destroying democracy we're spreading misinformation yeah how can we increase that so that we make more money yeah yeah and and as she said in the last clip you know like you know she says no one is ill intended it's so like the banality of evil like it's like well who cares if we're creating lots of anger around the world as long as we get our little click bait it might not even like it might not even be addressed as anger it's just engagement you know like it's it's such bland words

Look, if Facebook weather's this and doesn't have to change anything after these leaks, I think we should learn a bit from this, take up their angle. I think maybe make our lives look really nice, make our viewers feel bad about themselves, and then I'll keep coming back for more. So, Charles, you need to buy a cheeky cut bikini, get a wax. We'll take you out to a balcony, or maybe even the rooftop. We'll take a really nice golden hour photo of you, and we'll start that plan tomorrow. Okay, done.

Great. Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by Sibling Rivalry. Gabby, Mom says it's my turn on the Xbox. I just got on it. I want to play. Well, that's not fair. I just got here. Mom, Gabby's not letting me play.

Oh my God, okay, fine, I'll give it to you, but don't tell them, mum. So, guys, despite the arts being fucked over by the government heaps across the world at the moment during coronavirus pandemic, the government is kind of helping the arts in a different way. Is Guy Sebastian back? Oh, no, no, no, Alexa, no. And may he never return. But no, in America, I came across just on my Twitter feed the other day that there's this play called Is This a Room, which is based on a transcript, an FBI transcript. Right, yes.

So I don't know if you guys know about the reality winner situation? A little bits and pieces. So basically, reality. Great name. She's got a great name. An amazing name. Reality winner was a former American intelligence. specialist who in 2018 was given the longest sentence ever imposed in America for whistleblowing,

which was five years and three months, for the unauthorized release of government information to the media for leaking an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Right. And also, may I say yes, with a name like reality winner, it's hard that you could be anything other than a whistleblower, but I digress. Her life sounds, after reading about her life, it sounds like no joke, like Lara Croft, like Tomb Raider's life. She was a spy or something? Yeah, she was a full of. on spy, but she was also really young. Like, she had a Pikachu bed spread. It was like one of the

big things going around about her. Yeah, like, she cracked a lot of things from her bedroom. And her dad, this is what, it's so, I want a video game about this woman. Did you live with her dad? Well, her dad sadly now has passed away. But when 9-11 happened, it's reported that her dad encouraged her to seek answers

about the geopolitical motivations behind the attacks. Guess how old she was when she was told this by her dad? Like nine and a half. Right. So her whole life has been like, go find out the truth, go be a spy. So, like, I just really think a video game, or at least a book, or several more books.

I'm sure there's some books out there should be written about her. What was her dad's job? Reportedly unemployed. Oh, he's a spy. Which tells me he's a spy, right? That's how you groom a kid to be a spy. Come on, it's like a full-on-two-rate a story. You can't afford Pikachu covers if you're unemployed.

I'm sorry. Okay, so I'm interested in this idea that the government is funding the arts now or something. Well, they're not, but like when we had no more ideas, is we turned to transcripts, which was... Oh, so they're using the transcripts. Yeah, they said you won't fund us, we'll take your transcripts and make plays. How do you use a transcript? Is that the script?

They're just reading the... Essentially, yeah, so like obviously verbatim theater's been around for ages where you take sort of testimonies from people and make a story out of that. But this is kind of one of the... Well, I don't know if it's the first play that exists of this kind, but to me it's the first one I've seen, where it takes word for word enactment for the actual redacted transcript of the day when she was surprised at her home by the FBI agents

who'd come to arrest her. Oh, wow. So it's like, it's an hour long, and it's the last hour of her freedom before she was taken under arrest. Wait, is some of it still redacted? Do they just say blanks? No, I think they've filled in the gaps.

I would assume that they've probably talked to reality herself. That would be at a very intense air. That sounds fascinating. How cool would it? Right? I really want to see it. So it's on, if anyone's in America listening to this, it's on at the, um, oh, shit. I love this.

You tempt us with this. Oh, there's this great play in many of you're saying. And you can see it if you just head over to America. Mind you, it's actually easier to get to America than to get to South Australia or Western Australia at the moment. Yeah, but anyway, if you are around the Broadway area, it's on at the Lyceum Theatre. Oh, right, that's on Broadway. But I did think, how good. I know that we can't go see it as us because we're in Australia, but how good?

We could just emulate this same thing. Think of the options we have. Yes, we should get when Eddie O.B. got arrested that hour. Yeah, that would have been an interesting hour. You could also have, like, Cirque du Soleil do a tour of a production called ICAC, because to me that sounds like a name of their show anyway. Didn't they have one called O? Jumping through hoops.

Jumping through hoops, burying documents, all of it. The verbatim of Darrell Maguire and Gladys Perigliantian's phone calls, where she's all bored and he's boasting about all his corruption. It's called I don't need to know about that bit. You could have Assange the musical for no other reason and I think it would be very funny to have a singing Assange on stage. Didn't hear that from me. What about like a reality TV show, like American Ninja Warrior,

but based on the collateral damage leaks? So everyone's trying to like dodge drone strikes and like the person who wins is the reality winner. I mean, it could be even a musical, couldn't it? But like a drone strikes verbatim play would have a lot of weddings. Like it could literally be four weddings in a funeral. Well, actually, no, drone strikes, the verbatim play, Charles, would be interviewing the drones. And then it would just be like an hour and a half of women and men standing on stage going,

No, no, no. But you'd have the verbat and script of the people going, Ah, there's a drone striking us. Great. That will go down well at Helmns. You could also have question time, the slam poetry competition. And I also came up with the Australian Royal Ballets production of Sports Rorts, which I thought would be funny because is ballet a sport? Who knows? We'll find out. Call me a bit conspiratorial, but I've got a feeling that this whole leak was set up just to get a Broadway show. Just get this play off the ground. I feel like we want to do it. We need to set up our own kind of leak or some. Yes.

Maybe we could have blind trust. Oh, that's good. It could be. And it could be all the legal documents. We joke now, but I give it about 10 years. Someone's going to write a play about that. Yeah, it'll be horrible. It'll be awful.

It'll be awful. It'll be horrible. But we can say that we... Oh, but we can claim the IP on it, though, if it happens in 10 years. Yes. No one's listening to this. We can just pull it up in 10 years' time. We just got to bookmark it.

Because that's exactly how copy it. Robert. Yeah. Say it on a podcast. You don't know. It might in 10 years. Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for sitting down to speak with me

about the upcoming climate policy plan. Glad to be here. So first question, what is the new plan to reduce emissions? The plan is simply put, a plan to reduce emissions. Could you elaborate, please? Like, what does the plan entail?

Our new plan is similar to our old plan from back when we said we didn't have a plan or need one. Our plan is to have Australia's emissions drop and that will happen. We plan to have serious planning for policies that will allow us to plan planning plans for our original plan. Wait, so has anything actually changed? Well, yes, of course. We're planning to invest in our economy by subsidising more coal mines so we can increase our output because as international demand drops, it will grow and we might finally see a return on investment after years of funding coal. What? As demand drops, demand will grow.

Exactly. Kill me. Well, that is part of the plan. The Chaser Report. Now with extra whispers. Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by sibling rivalry. Today's episode of The Chaser Report is brought you by sibling rivalry. Are you seriously copying?

Are you copying me right now? Are you copying me right now? Lachlan, are you serious? Lachlan, are you serious? Fuck! Fuck! Okay, before we go, we got some very exciting news in the world of the stock market. But the issue is I don't know a lot about the stock market, so I need Gabby and Charles to help me out here and decipher this.

You are asking the wrong people to ask about the stock market. I know quite a lot about it. Oh, you're a stockman, are you? I bought $100 worth of Bitcoin the other day. Did you? Yep, and I am now standing on a paper profit of, oh, minus $9. I know, a profit of $28. Did you actually buy Bitcoin?

$28. $28. So, you know, next time you need to borrow some money, know where to come. When's the next time we get paid? The big news is that Tesla, electric car company is now a trillion dollar company. What? I don't really understand how it happened. But the idea is that Hertz, which is like that big car rental company,

placed an order for 100,000 Teslers. But Hertz is barely four months out. of bankruptcy. So they don't have the money. Yeah. And they bought 100,000 Tesla's and now Tesla's one of the most expensive companies in the world. That is so brilliant.

That's such a symbol of American capitalism, isn't it? Company that went bankrupt buys some. Look, I don't want to say that their name was a prophecy. But what's going to happen to Hertz? Like, I don't like, no, but seriously, I don't really give a fuck about the whole Tesla being trillionaires thing. I genuinely, who is in charge of purchasing it hurts? What do you mean?

Why would they do that? Why would they buy 100,000 Teslas if they're four months out of bankruptcy? But they probably need cars for people to drive. Isn't that their business? So get a Toyota. Like, why are you getting $40,000? I don't know. Well, Gabby, you get to the airport.

You got a choice and a corolla for what, 50 bucks. I go with the carola. Or Tesla for a hundred bucks. You go with the Tesla. And you're coming off a plane, your jet lagged. You kind of hate yourself. You're disgusting. You kind of want to die, right?

You get into one of these self-driving cars. And it's mission accomplished. Yeah, that's right, exactly. Our gear is from ACAST microphones or something. What are they? What? No, our gear is from... I swear, every time you go to do this, you fuck it up.

Our gear is from road microphones. Is that right? Road, just road. I mean, you could just look at the side of the mic you're talking on. Our gear is from cheap Chinese knockoff of road. We're part of the ACAS creator network. Catch you tomorrow. Bye.

Yeha.