The Young Turks - Kevin Williamson Fired, Facebook Medical Records, Luxury Space Hotel

Episode Date: April 9, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from April 6, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join.  Hour 1: The Atlantic cuts its ties with Kevin Williamson after tweets about abortion. Facebook was working with doctors to conceive hospitals to share information for the purpose of offering healthcare to individuals. There was no talk of consent. Luxury hotel to hit outer space.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. You're about to watch what we call an extended clip of the Young Turks, and the reality is somewhere in the middle. It's a little longer than our YouTube clips, but it's actually shorter than the whole two-hour show, which you can get if you're a member. You can get an ad-free and make sure you catch every new story we do that day. You're going to love it as a full show. That's at t-y-T-network.com slash join.

Drop it. All right, back on a young Turks. Oh, new power panel. Okay, Alona's still here, Brad Erlick and Anna Cusparian. Hey, power, power panel. Is that good enough, Hannah? Yeah, good job, Jank. Okay, I'll do the fact. That's great. New power panel, what-haps. Okay, a couple of quick tweets. Then we've got a lot of great stories for you guys. Art Murray says Trump is his own chief of staff. Buckle up. Agreed. Adrian Ginn says

Drump is trying to put Pruitt in to replace sessions to protect himself and fighting Kelly to remove Pruitt. Now, that's, I think, all very likely and certainly possible. But, you know, as I was reading your tweet, Adrian, it sparked a thought in me. For a lot of other people, maybe even including John Kelly, who's, you know, former general, et cetera, Pruitt's corruption is the bug. It's a problem, right? But for Trump, it might actually be the feature. It might be the solution.

So. Solution in what regard? Like getting rid of sessions? No, no, so you get rid of sessions, and Pruitt is so corrupt, he'll do anything. Right. And so as attorney general, you need me to fire the special counsel? No problem. You need me to do X, Y, Z.

I'm the most brazen guy in government. He is pretty brazen. But if he starts getting more attention than Trump, positive attention in any way, or written articles about how he has more power or influence than Trump, he'll be out. Yeah, I hear you. So it's an interesting drama, of course, which is what Trump loves. All right, last tweet is Sean Phoenix. Teachers are fighting for just a $10,000 raise,

but Pruitt just gives a $56,000 raise and sees no big deal in it. By the way, that was to one of his good friends from Oklahoma. And it was closer to $57,000, which is actually the average salary in America. That was the size of the raise he gave him. He says, crap like this shows how much they really don't care about working class people. Right. Exactly. All right, Anna, what's next? All right, we begin with Syria and an incredible report by the Washington Post.

It appears that Donald Trump is in disagreement with his own generals in regard to Syria and whether or not U.S. troops should pull out of Syria. Now, first, let me give you some context about the current U.S. involvement in Syria. Currently, we have about 2,000 troops on the ground, and we have already spent $30 billion in Syria. And there has been a request to spend an additional $18 billion by the end of this year. Now, Trump wants to take a more Machiavellian approach when it comes to Syria. He would like to take some extreme action and pull out as soon as possible, whereas the generals believe that there's really no victory in sight. In fact, there's a lot of disagreement about what victory means in this case, and they would like to remain in Syria indefinitely. Now, according to the Washington Post, Trump's words, both in public and private, describe a view that war should be brutal and swift, waged with overwhelming firepower and in some cases with little regard for civilian casualties.

Trump also urged the CIA to start aiming its drones in Syria. He had said, if you can do it in 10 days, get it done. So the Obama administration did not want to utilize weaponized drones in Syria. They believed in the use of surveillance drones, but they did not want to do drone strikes in Syria. Trump comes into office and he changes that particular policy. Now, when the agency's head of drone operations explained that the CIA had to developed special munitions to limit civilian casualties, the president seemed unimpressed,

watching a previously recorded strike in which the agency held off on firing until the target had wandered away from a house with his family inside. Trump asked, why did you wait? So he wanted the family members of that target to also essentially die in that drone strike. And that's really the biggest takeaway from this Washington Post piece. And just to be clear, senior administration officials who are obviously close with Trump spoke to reporters of the Washington Post about this. All right.

So three layers to this story. First of all, the most horrifying one is the last one there. They got the guy. It's not like the guy got away. And he's like, damn it, why'd you wait? I don't mind killing the family members if it means getting him. No, they got him. And he's like, why didn't you gratuitously kill his family too?

because the guy's a monster. He's a sociopath. He has no empathy. Kids could be in that building. He's like, why didn't you murder the kids? Maybe there's a three-year-old in there. Why didn't we execute him? And so he's admonishing his military there for not killing civilians.

I just, I can't describe how monstrous that is. So now when you go to the other parts of it, the CIA has intelligence in their name. It's central intelligence agent. They are supposed to collect intelligence. That was supposed to be the whole point of the CIA. Now we know that they've gone far beyond that mandate for a long, long time. Obama did plenty of drone strikes and killed plenty of people, including civilians. So, but in Syria, he said, look, the CIA should stick to intelligence.

So you could use the drones to collect that information. But with that information, if we want to do a strike, it's not like Obama didn't do strikes. He did a ton of strikes inside of Syria. He's like, then we'll have the military do the strike after you collect the intelligence because I don't want the CIA to be a rogue operation that runs away and starts killing people when they're supposed to be just collecting intelligence. Now, the third part of this, you might be surprised, I agree with Trump on it. When he said, let's withdraw 2,000 troops, great, hallelujah.

I think that them being in the middle of that conflict does us no good at all. And some of the people that we have armed in Syria are disastrous. We're getting hit on all sides. and it hasn't even gotten disastrous in terms of being hit as much as it could be. I mean, this is kind of an appetizer for what it could turn out to be. So get them out, get them out, get them out. But what happens? The military industrial complex comes in, and the one decent idea that Trump has, they're like, don't you dare do it.

And then he's a child, and he bows his head and goes, okay, I won't daddy. and so that one good idea is gone. But when, you know, when he yells at him to kill civilians, my guess is that will be executed. And by the way, it has been. The Intercept is reported we are now killing civilians at a much greater rate than we were on, even under Obama. Yeah, from the military industrial complexes standpoint, you'd think they'd be all four waiting for the families to be separate from the targets because no one, no one sees their dad get killed and goes, you know what, Mr. Trump, thank you for Joe. just killing my dad. You know, it creates a lose a terrorist, gain a terrorist situation.

So by Trump's logic, if you follow is ridiculous, if it's logic, you should kill the whole family. You should kill everybody there because it's such a quagmire, the only solution from this logic alone is to get rid of everyone there because all you do is create more and more crap. The problem is Trump looks at this the way, from like a World War II type of war standpoint. We're like there's states and you defeat them and then afterwards you go in and that's And then you get out and you move and you move on. This is more of a Vietnam type situation where people are fighting for the land they grew up on in their lives in relation to other forces that are at work on the ground there.

And that's something that he doesn't understand because he stayed home during Vietnam. Well, that's what I was going to say. the other point is, and I'm not, like, I have not served, you know, overseas in war, but all the veterans I've spoken to have interviewed over the years, anybody would tell you that kind of a statement where all war should be brutal, swift, kill as many civilians as possible, sounds like it's coming from a guy who has never actually been in war and doesn't know what actually happens there. But it's funny because you mentioned World War II.

Do you know what I was thinking of while I was also listening to you, read the quotes, Third Hank? We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be.

Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the history. historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned.

And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. There was a great op-ed in the Washington Post a couple of months ago, maybe, or maybe it was right around the Oscars because we have a number of Hollywood films that have all been lineizing Winston Churchill. And so there was this great op-ed that was like, well, I know that we've now, you know, made him out to be this incredible hero because of World War II. But it listed one example after another where he advocated for using chemical weapons, where he advocated for mass civilian casualties, where he advocated for incredibly racist and prejudiced policy and didn't care.

And it terrifies me. I mean, I hope history won't be kind to Donald Trump. I can't really see how it will be in any way. But it's a good thing to pay attention to these things. And remember, because, you know, one of the things we were also, I think, afraid of during the Obama administration and calling out his civil liberties. violations was the precedent that it would set and how it would open the door for whoever came next to potentially do worse with it. And now we have Donald Trump. That's exactly right. And what's interesting in this dynamic is I don't know who I side with because, well, first of all,

I wish that we didn't intervene in the first place. And I know that there are people that disagree with that and, you know, humanitarian, you know, people will mention humanitarian crises as a reason to get involved. But once you get involved, now you're dealing with a very very difficult question because Trump is approaching this from an ignorant place. And let me finish what I mean by that. He doesn't understand the nuances of foreign policy. He also doesn't seem to understand why we really get involved in foreign conflict in the first place. It's not for humanitarian reasons. It's not to help anyone. It's because we do have that military industrial complex. And as you are about to find from all the different military members that spoke to the Washington Post on this, they want perpetual war.

They want to remain in Syria because there really is no solution to this. Their idea is, no, no, no, we have to stay there forever because the second we leave, then all of a sudden there'll be the emergence of a new terrorist organization. And so, and then so Trump's perspective is, no, well, we need to win. So like, let's go in, let's go hard, let's get out. He doesn't get it. He doesn't get it. He does get it. He does get it. And the thing he gets is that he, if he simplifies, he can win a rhetorical debate in public among the people he seeks approval from. If he's losing, he had this moment where he's kind of losing faith from evangelicals and other people, and anti-immigration type people that were kind of out there in the ether. And then he came out and was like, we're going to, you know, go send the National Guard to the border. And with this, it's like, we're like, we're going to. And with this, it's like, we're. We're just going to bomb the hell out of them and leave. Those are things that are very simple. And something that when you go through what the generals are saying,

you know, one side can interpret that the military industrial complex wants this like, you know, ethereal concept of victory and failure. But he just wants to make it simple again because that's an easier argument to win. And that's whether it's a strategic move or not, or just his dumb stumbling into things that seem to work in the public, you know. That's a question. is certainly, in my opinion, the way Trump operates. I highly doubt he understands the involvement in Turkey.

Turkey's targeting of Kurds in Syria and how, you know, he doesn't understand that, doesn't understand Russia's involvement or what fuels Russia's intentions in Syria. Like, it's a complicated, complex mess. And he has no interest in intelligence briefings, has no idea what he's doing. But oddly enough, the idea of pulling out is much better than wanting to remain there forever. But he's the perfect tool of the military industrial complex in that way too, right? Because you have to create a boogeyman.

And in order to have one, A, but also that's what we've done. If you look at, of course, the war in Iraq, if you look at ISIS. And so Trump is like the perfect guy to go out there and say, we have this enemy, we need to have a decisive victory. Let's do it. Yeah. And it's funny,

the military industrial complex, you'd think they'd brag more about, or in Trump would want to brag more about how much damage they've done to ISIS, because they actually have done it considerable amount of damages started under Obama and has continued under Trump. But they don't brag about that. Why? Because then we might want to leave. So that's that- Trump does brag about it. But you don't hear his generals bragging about it. Well, no, but Trump barely does, though. I mean, you know how big of a braggard he is.

You'd think he'd be pounding his chest nonstop. I beat ISIS. I beat ISIS. But look, last thing on his misunderstanding, which is he thinks, well, like World War II, Churchill was, you know, in a lot of ways monstrous, as Alona pointed out, and we won, and we beat the bad guys, we dropped the nuke, we won, we beat the bad guys. But the Japanese government, for example, and as hideous as they were back then, still cared about their people. They had pride in being Japanese, and they didn't want all their people killed. ISIS doesn't care about the people there. They regularly execute them. They attack them.

Half of them, they despise and would love to murder. So if you dropped a nuke in the middle of that area, they'd be like, thank you on a couple of counts. Certainly not the guys underneath the nuke, I grant you that. Okay, but for the idea and the ideology of ISIS, one, half the people you kill their Shia, so they're thrilled about it. And those are the guys they were trying to kill anyway. Another percentage of the people they were fighting at the same place. You dropped a nuke.

It doesn't discriminate. It also kills their opponents, right? But most importantly, it allows them to say to the rest of the Muslim world, we told you, these guys are monsters. They killed children. He wanted to kill the family members. He wanted to kill the family members. You see, there is no appeasing America. You have to join our fight.

So in that sense, he's their best ally. And look, we drop more bombs in Vietnam than in all of World War II. And we still didn't win. The bombing is not the answer, unless you're in the business of selling bombs. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech.

And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell that. advertisers. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for T-Y-T fans.

That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. And one final thing that I do want to mention, while it is true that the effort to defeat ISIS has been somewhat successful, remember, it's like playing whack-a-mole in the Middle East. You defeat one terrorist group, and then all of a sudden there is the re-emergence of another.

The Taliban is still in Pakistan, seeking refuge, just waiting. And so there's no winning. There's no winning. And it's a difficult, complicated situation. And when you have a president who says, and I quote, things like, we'll be coming out of Syria, like very soon, it makes you worry about our take on foreign policy abroad. But just one other thing I'd add to that, too, is we don't like to admit our mistakes, obviously or acknowledge our

shortcomings or some of our monstrous actions abroad. And that is a very big problem because if you never acknowledge that you lost, that you messed something up, that you killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions of people, then you just keep doing it over and over again. And yet we have

this kind of attitude politically that it's unpatriotic to mention that. And that's what drives me so crazy. Well, look, that's a huge loss for us. It's a huge loss for the area. But again, if you're in the business of selling weapons, it's not a loss. That was the whole point. Yeah.

And like the fundamental idea also behind like the Islamic State. You got ISIL, you got ISIS, you've got, it's just they change where it is at the end. Levant, Syria, that's a great enemy to have because it's just an idea that could pop up anywhere. And so you can still, you know, initiate military moves where you sense that to start arising again. All right, we've got to take a break, guys. When we come back, Facebook, on a secret mission, not a pleasant one, but I might defend them on that. You're crazy.

Talk about apologizing over and over again and doing the same thing. Yeah, well, and someone has created Elysium, we'll explain. Thanks for listening to this podcast. You're only halfway through, so hold, hold, stay right here. Just want to remind you if you want to get all five segments of the Young Turks commercial free, These are just two of them. Every day we do it. So go to t-y-tnetwork.com slash join,

and you'll get the whole five segments, two hours. Add free. Do it now. All right, back on a young Turks. Historically speaking, says Trump is a mob guy through and through. Of course, he wants to kill the families too. Interesting analogy. Julie G. says these NRA TV trolls really don't want to mess with the young Turks, do they?

They must know that the TV. The YT Army is too strong. Those videos are so fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't realize it. I just saw it right before the show. He made like a million videos about us. I know it's awesome.

Okay, then Kank says this and he pretends not to know your name when it was in the graphic. It says Anna right there. It's so good because he's obviously watched a ton of videos where everybody's name is said out loud. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, TYT Army, release the hound. So go forward and trolled NRA by buying this shirt, $5,000 a bullet, shopDYT.com. That's why I worked just to troll them today. All right.

Anna, what's next? All right. The Atlantic has just decided to fire a conservative writer on its site. Kevin Williamson is his name and previously he was an op-ed writer for National Review. Well, I guess everyone's an op-ed writer for National Review. But nonetheless, this all started when some of his tweets from the past came to everyone's attention. Apparently in those tweets, he had talked about the issue of abortion. And since he comes from a very conservative perspective, he had this to say.

So his firing last month had already drawn scrutiny over past tweets in which he stated that the law should treat abortion like any other homicide. and that for punishment, I have hanging more in mind. Those tweets have since been deleted. So when that happened, the editor-in-chief for the Atlantic decided not to fire him. So his name is Jeffrey Goldberg, and he essentially said, look, we can't judge people based on their worst tweets. And I actually agree with him on that. All of us at some point have probably tweeted something that we regret and don't actually mean. Me? No.

Okay. So the editor-in-chief wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. it turns out that media matters did a little digging and found some of Kevin Williamson's comments from back in 2014 during a National Review podcast. Now we have that podcast for you now so you can take a listen and judge for yourselves and then I'll give you an update on what Williamson's fate is. I kind of already told you but still. And someone challenged me on my views of abortion you know, saying if you really thought it was a crime, you would support things like, you know, life in prison, no parole,

for treating as a homicide. And I do support that. In fact, as I wrote, what I in mind is hanging. We already have degrees of culpability in punishment or other words of homicide cases. You know, we have, including some laws that I don't agree with, you know, like laws that enhance penalties for, you know, murder when it involves a government official or, you know,

police officer or something like that. But, you know, hate crimes laws, things like that. But we also make, you know, distinctions between certain kinds of murders in certain cases. You know, these shockiness and the cruelty of the crime, it makes a difference. You know, two guys get in a fight in a bar, and one of them pulls out a gun and shoots the other. I was treated differently from some, you know, guy kidnaps a 90-year-old woman and tortures her. That's a should-be. And that's okay.

So, whereas you and I, I don't think, agree quite on the underlying issue of abortion. at least, you know, the degree of criminality. I mean, I think we can agree on that, that there's certainly reasonable cases to be made for, for differentiating. You know, my broader point here is the course that I am, as you know, I'm kind of squishy on capital punishment in general, but that I'm absolutely willing to see abortion treated like a regular homicide under the criminal code. Sure.

You know, it makes a lot of sense. He's so pro-life that he would like to see women who have had abortions hung or hanged, I should say. So after that podcast came to light and Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief for the Atlantic, had a conversation with Williamson, Goldberg decided to, in fact, fire him. So let me give you Goldberg's reasoning. And this came in the form of a memo that was sent out to everyone at the Atlantic. He said, let's go to Graphic 46, the language he used in this podcast and in my conversations with him in recent days made it clear that the original tweet did, in fact, represent his carefully

considered views. He continued to say the tweet was not merely an impulsive, decontextualized heat of the moment post, as Kevin had explained it. Furthermore, the language used in the podcast was callous and violent. This runs contrary to the Atlantic's tradition of respectful, well-reasoned debate, and to the values of our workplace. You know, so Jeffrey Goldberg's getting a lot of heat, of course, from a lot of different directions. From liberals initially saying you should never hired this guy in the first place, and then you've got conservatives now. saying this is an outrage and, you know, this is the thought police, et cetera. I mean, we just want to hang some women and you guys are being all thought policie about it.

So let me be among the few people who says that I think Jeffrey Goldberg probably got it exactly right. So what I mean by that is the tweet from 2014, you got to have a really high barrier for firing someone over an old tweet. So the fact that he didn't fire him after that, I think was. the right move. You know, people tweet stupid stuff all the time, and it's in the past, and if he's past it, no problem. But to me, the most important part of Goldberg's quote was that he talked to him. This is, that's what we ask for on the show all the time. Hey, instead of just firing people, have a conversation, bring them in, hear them out, whether it's left wing or right wing, and see what their current, you know, ideas are. And then you

might even want to do that publicly at some point and go, and if Kevin Williamson has a a different stance now. Maybe he explains it, not in like a mere culpa and forced apologies, etc. But like, hey, this is what I used to think. This is what I think now. And it turns out Goldberg did have that conversation with him. And he's like, oh, no, he still believes those ridiculous, outrageous things. And if he does, then he's got to go. Right. There's, it's, I'm not arguing that we should lock up this guy for saying what he said. I think that the Atlantic is completely, so that guy originally, the guy with the beard down here that looks like one of of those bald guys with like the magnet hair that you can move from the top to the bottom,

that guy. I think that that guy is totally within his rights to say what he said. I totally get like, his almost like modest proposal approach to it. But the Atlantic gets to choose who their writers are. And they get to choose what their editorial stance is and how they present ideas. And it's totally, they're totally within their rights to disagree with people that that formulate and present ideas in this way? I just feel like there's not enough... I want to know who does the research for all of these organizations.

Not only the Atlantic, the New York Times, other publications have run into the same thing where they hire someone to be an opinion writer. Then, you know, of course the internet does the digging and then something comes out and then they're forced to fire them after the fact. But like, shouldn't that be, especially if you're a media organization,

a journalistic organization, that you do the research before you sign the contract, give someone a paycheck? I hear you, Alona. But no one does research as well as the internet. Yeah, that's exactly right. So it might be media matters in this case, etc. But once people start digging, right, they dig and dig and dig until they get something.

And so in that light, one more note of mixed feelings about this. So I say Goldberg's right, because I wouldn't hire someone or want to keep someone who thinks we should hang women who had abortions. I think that's a monstrous thought, right? That's a lot of, you know, state-sponsored executions, by the way. Just hear him just appear up his own. But I like that he was like, I don't know, I'm kind of squishy on capital punishment. But when it comes to women, I'd like to hang them. Yeah, but I think that's a really important point.

I think that's such an important point because it's, you know, when it comes to, he went on this long spiel about all these different types of, you know, homicide, murder, premeditated, whatever, different standards, he agrees with it. But when it comes to women and abortion, yeah, yeah, hanging. Like, that's what I want. I want to see them hanged. Yeah. It's just like an unfunny stand-up bit that they just want to be like a shock jock on.

That's what it sounds like. Yeah, yeah. And I've been there. So, and I'm going to get to that in a second. The reason I say I'm slightly mixed though is because, look, if he says, I mean, I think it's a life, so I think it's a crime, I get it. That actually is intellectually consistent. If he says we should execute the women because it's a homicide.

and just stopped it there I would find that opinion to be outrageous and horrific but at least I understand it on an intellectual level when he gets to the hanging there's a certain gratuitous joy in that that seems particularly

misogynistic and that's what puts me over the top and goes there's something off with this guy which then leads me to my other point which is you're trying to hire a conservative and I get the impulse to do that good luck to you brother

you're going to find a conservative in this country that hasn't said or done something horrific? I mean, that's not the world we live in today. I saw him as just drawing two columns together. He has the one that's about the, if it's an abortion is murder, murder is the death penalty and another column where he's like, when we do the death penalty, why do we put someone in a chair and inject them with stuff? We should accept it for as brutal as it is and hang them.

But by putting all those things together, I think the Atlantic is totally within their rights to say, like, whoa, you just said we should hang mothers who've been through some crap. But I think the problem is more of, you know, the propensity within the media to want to make everything equal, right? Give everything a fair side. And so when you're saying

like we want to put a good conservative onto our roster, rather than just finding someone who is smart, who writes and says things that are nuanced, do you want to make sure like, oh, do they have some positions that we consider to be really right or really conservative that might be like a, you know, a punch to someone's

face? And then you think that that's just to Right, and then in your search for the token conservative or token liberal, whatever you're doing, right? Unfortunately, what ends up happening is you find someone who's on the extreme end of the spectrum that doesn't actually represent the thoughts and beliefs of the majority of conservative. I don't think, I hope, by the way, I'm right on this, that the majority of conservatives believe that women who have abortion should be hanged. But, you know, again, when you look for that conservative perspective for your paper or whatever publication you have, I think that you're going to end up running into the wrong. people. Maybe that'll be kicked up. That editorial will be kicked up being so polemic in the Facebook algorithm. But it gets so many clicks. But that's exactly right. But actually that phenomenon has been around a long time because I know it because I lived it. Look, a part of the reason I say that

is because there is a bit of a competition to out shock jock one another when you're a conservative. I did that. And I wrote terrible things when I was a conservative because the idea is like, oh, I'll show you. I could be an even bigger dirtbag than the other conservative. And because that is what is rewarded. That's when people go, oh, my. This guy is bold. He's going to hang women in the public square. Go get him. And that's what helped Kevin Williamson to rise in the first place.

And then it caught the Atlantic's attention. Then they hire him. And they realized, oh, that's why conservatives get popular in this country. All right. So let's move on to the Facebook story because I want to make sure we get to this. And I think it's terrifying. Jank might disagree. New information indicates that Facebook was working with.

with specific doctors in an effort to convince hospitals to share anonymized information on their patients and then essentially match that data set with their own data set in order to offer certain healthcare services to individuals. Now Facebook asked several major US hospitals to share this anonymous data about their patients such as their illnesses and their prescription information.

Now Facebook proposed using a common computer science technique called hashing to match individuals who existed in both data sets. Facebook says that the data would have been used only for research conducted by the medical community. So I will give you an example, and this is actually similar to an example that a Facebook spokesperson gave to the media. So for instance, let's say there is a particular patient at a hospital who has heart issues,

and that person, based on the data on Facebook, is kind of lonely. Doesn't have a lot of friends, doesn't have many family members. Essentially, what would happen if this project came to fruition is the doctor or the health professionals would know about the lack of loved ones in this person's life and then offer like a follow up to check in on that person just to make sure he or she is doing well. So that's an example of how this data could be used. But here's the biggest issue. There was no talk of consent, right?

And there was no talk of disclosure or transparency. Now, it was intending to match up with user data. It had collected and helped the hospitals figure out which patients might need special care or treatment. After the whole Cambridge Analytica thing happened, Facebook decided to table this. And they claim that this work has not been progressed, past the planning phase, and we have not received shared or analyzed anyone's data. So here's my defense of Facebook. First, let me explain what I'm not defending them on.

So when they say, oh, no, it's not going to reveal personal information, but you match the two records so you know who it is. And in fact, even in your own example of sending the nurse over to them to help them, how would you know who to send the nurse to? Exactly. Right. So don't get me wrong. I get it. They're going to know your identity.

And they're going to use it to market, like, at home care facilities to the distant relatives to live in Arizona, even though the patient is something in Florida. Yeah, you know what? Look, you guys are preempting my argument. And I might have a preemptive surrender here in a second. But look, on the other hand, I think that it could be helpful to the medical community. And maybe I'm being naive here, but I'd be a little surprised if the higher-ups in Facebook didn't think that they were doing some good in the world and thought, like, hey, maybe this will earn us some positive goodwill. And then after Cambridge Analytica, they're like, oh, we have people's private health information.

No, no, no, no, no, no. We didn't mean to do that. So I'm naive? What do you guys think? No, I'm kind of with you in a way. A, there's Silicon Valley people. Of course, they think that they're saving the world. Yeah, there's a Zuckerberg hospital.

That to me is not shocking at all. But I think that we genuinely have a problem in this country where we don't collect enough data. And I don't say that. You know, in that kind of way, obviously the government does it. Obviously, these companies do it. But we don't study and research problems on a mass scale enough in this country. And so, of course, we have to find a way to really address health problems, address the problems of people not having certain support systems, but you still have to ask people. You still have to have consent, and you can't just collect it without telling you. So, look, sorry, I just come from a much more pessimistic position on pretty much everything.

And so I understand that, look, Facebook's, I'm sure they think they have the best intentions in mind. So I'll give them that. However, Facebook's whole business model is selling our data to advertiser. They're doing this so hospitals and health care professionals can advertise services to us. That's what this is all about. It's not about offering, you know, better health care. I just don't see that happening. I mean, we have a huge issue in the country with really bad health care already. And it seems like there's a lot of pushback from the health care community in terms of improving it. I don't think that Facebook is going to be that puzzle piece that Facebook is hiring 10,000 people to monitor news.

That is a lot of people. That gives you an idea of the scope of how many people work at Facebook. So I don't think that the project managers on the medical research project are evil people. I know for a fact that people who are the higher ups at Facebook are really great, fantastic people who do want to make a difference in the world. But there's another team that's going to monetize this eventually. There's another team in charge of protecting that data and that might fail and this might get into the wrong hands. The frustrating thing that drives me absolutely crazy with Zuckerberg and the people in Silicon Valley is how good they think they're. being. And they need like a shock collar on their neck. They don't realize that they're doing

it again. And every time there's another apology, they're doing it again. You're going to be like, no, information will save the world. Well, you're doing it again. You need to, when you have an idea that requires getting information that people have not necessarily explicitly and knowingly given permission for you to mine, you need to not just take that from their internet profiles, You need to go to their house and get that information that way. So that maybe you can realize just how freaking creepy you're being. It is creepy. And by the way, I mean, look, there is a lot of attention placed on Facebook and just think

about all of the different platforms you use to buy things related to your health. I mean, they have that data on you, right? I have used Amazon, for instance, to purchase supplements. And so they know what kind of supplements I like. They know what kind of vitamin deficiencies I have. It's concerning. We sometimes, without really thinking about it, give away certain data to companies that have a vested interest in selling that data. But I think that's the important thing here is obviously, like we're going through a shift mentally when it comes to the way that we look at these tech companies, which I think is very important because we've looked at them as these, like, benevolent beings for such a long time because they're leaders in progress and innovation and technology.

They're driving us forward, but they're trying to make money. know, at the end of the day. And we, though, as the users, have just been doing it willingly. It's not like anyone, it's not like there has never been a story out there telling you that all of your data is being collected. It's not like you don't have the option to read the terms of service agreement on everything. But we just click through, we just move on by. I understand, but I think that we need to, like, take a little bit of responsibility then in, in at least pushing back, right? I'd say there's a difference in the reasonable presumption. If Facebook never got the big pressure put on them to make opting in rather than having to opt out of privacy protections until now, right?

But it wasn't until like people made it a really big deal. They have made that change from being like, we're just put stuff on our platform to like, okay, we will start to try to make a more active, take an active role in it. It's just they sound like Bruce in finding Nemo, that shark who's like, consumers are friends, not data. And then they get a little sniff of how they can get the data. And then their eyes glaze over and they voraciously eat everyone's information. Yeah.

No, let's just call it what it is. Brett has won the day. So I switched my position to Brett's minus the shock collar. Okay, you're right. A lot of people probably want to do right in that building. When they first started the project, you're right, they can't resist the data. There's no way they're going to go for a system where you have to opt in instead because that would cost them billions upon billions of dollars. And people would not do it.

Like, let's keep it real. Right. No, and that makes a giant difference in how much data you have and data is their business model. And finally, there's apparently a building eight in Facebook where they do experimental projects. Sounds great. Okay. Oh, boy. Building eight, area 51, whatever you want to call it.

I know. Let the conspiracy theories begin. Okay, don't do that, by the way. Don't do that. Don't do the shock collar and don't do the conspiracy theories. All right, we've got to take a break. Elysium when we return. Thanks for watching what I hope was a lovely edition of The Young Turks.

Now, you know that that is two of the five segments that we do because that's free. We want to have you support independent media and come watch the whole show that we do every day. That's five segments overall. No ads at all. That's at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. Come become a member. Thanks for watching either way. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks.

Support our work. Listen ad-free. Access members. only bonus content and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.