The Young Turks - Trump Congratulates Putin, and Facebook Controversy

Episode Date: March 22, 2018

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from March 21, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. Hour 1:  Texas bombing update. Geraldo on TX boming. Geraldo–Austin terrorist probably targeted Lib town in sea of red Texas. Backlash over Trump congratulating Putin. Trump–I called to congratulate Putin on his electoral win & talk arms race. Trump–We talked arms race, that no one will have what we have. McConnell–Calling Putin wouldnt have been high on my list. Sessions releases memo regarding death penalty/drug dealers. Man holding cellphone killed. Supreme Court Penn gerrymandering; impeachment.  Hour 2:  Facebook: where is Mark Zuckerburg?; #deletefacebook trending. Cambridge back to their old tricks; starting a new company. Millennial women increasingly going away from Rep. Junk food warnings on labels in different countries. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Thanks for watching. All right, back on a young church, Jenkin, John, with you guys. Captain Jingle Pan says, My mood instantly perks up when I hear that TYT intro music. Well, thank you. Appreciate that.

The math and magician says, yes, but John, he was white, so by conservative logic, he's not a killer. He's a lone wolf. Well, Gabby picks up on that theme. It's good that the FBI figured out that the Austin bomber was an unemployed white male. It would have been scary if there was a terrorist in Texas. Carrie says, these bombings have had me rattled.

He was caught 15 minutes from my home. My stomach lurched a bit when I arrived home this afternoon and saw a large package at my door. Oh, my God. And look, we all get large. We all would get packages at our doors, right? I use Amazon every day. Yeah. And so everybody in Austin was terrified of every package.

because they came to their door. And then Old Turk says, folks, he was homeschooled. We need to stop homeschooling until we figure out what the hell is going on. And you'll notice there was nothing like that. There was just, The Killer is Dead. Great work, FBI. That was the only tweet.

Yep. That's it. And finally, a sexy speed racer says, happy birthday to Jank Yugar. Thank you. I appreciate that. A good way to celebrate the birthday is becoming a member.

TYT network.com slash join. All right, guys. Much love. All right. What's next, chat? We've got a scandal for you. Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin was reelected. We'll lead Russia on until 20, 24, I believe.

He's been obviously been the leader for quite a while at this point, but he won. He got something like 74% of the vote, which I think was a nice subtle way to run things. I think that driving it to 90, 95% would probably be crazy. You can't do 99, not Saddam Hussein. So he kept it around 74%. And so in the wake of that election, which obviously had significant concerns in terms of how it was run, the fact that the chief opposition to him was legally barred from running, made it a little bit ridiculous.

The question then became, would various world leaders call him and congratulate him, which is the sort of thing that happens typically? And a number of world leaders did. Would Donald Trump? Well, here he is to talk about it. 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 historical narratives that were taught in school.

For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must not learn 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. I had a call with President Putin and congratulated him on the victory, his electoral victory. The call had to do also with the fact that we will probably get together in the not too distant future

so that we can discuss arms. We can discuss the arms race. I want to return to that arms race thing because I didn't, I wasn't aware that we were in the of an arms race right now, but apparently we are. So he did in fact call him, and we found out later on that he was specifically told not to. We're going to turn to that just a little bit later on, but some Republicans had an issue with him calling to congratulate this authoritarian leader for what is effectively a sham election. John McCain said an American president does not lead the free world by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections.

And Chuck Grassley, ahead of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, I think Putin is a criminal, what he did in Georgia, what he did in Ukraine, what he did in Baltic, what he's done in London, poisoning people with active nerve gas. That's a criminal act. I wouldn't have a conversation with a criminal. Sarah Hockby-Sanders was actually asked about this at a press conference, and she said, we're focused on our elections. We don't get to dictate how other countries operate, which is both a big change of stance for America historically.

But even recently, I hadn't actually known this, but last summer, the White House slapped sanctions on what it called the illegitimate Venezuelan government after President Nicholas Maduro tried to bypass the legislature to rewrite the nation's constitution, which probably justified. The Trump administration also announced last month that it would cut aid to Cambodia, citing deep concern about restrictions on democracy there, which are likely acts worthy of praise from the Trump administration, but there are limits on how they'll interfere. So what do you think? Well, we got a couple of late breaking things that happened. Some of the Siberian counties came in. It's now up to 77%. Okay. In all seriousness, the final results at a preposterous 77%.

Partly because there's, he did not allow his main opposition to run against him, which is convenient, but not quite what you do in a democracy. I'll get back to that in a second. And there, and Congressman, I'm sorry, Senator Classy Ben Sassy just spoke out right before the show. I know it's SaaS, but it's more fun the other way. And he was very harsh. He gave six minutes of remarks on a Senate floor speech.

And he said that Trump was, quote, very foolhardy to have done this. He said, Vladimir Putin is not a friend. Vladimir Putin is a despot. The president of the United States was wrong to congratulate him. We were weakened as a nation and a tyrant was strengthened. And the call was terribly ill-advised. So some very strong words from other Republicans that are in office. Now, where do we come out on this?

Well, first of all, I can't believe I'm about to say this. And I know, John, you have a firm stance not to be fair to Trump, okay? But to be fair to Trump, as you pointed out, other leaders also called Putin, Germany, Japan, Israel, called to congratulate him. And, you know, Israel's massively right wing, but Japan and Germany, it's okay. So, and by the way, another world leader that had called Putin after his last election was Barack Obama. Obama did in 2012. Now, this election was particularly loathsome, but I said at the time that the 2012 election was a sham. It's obviously a sham.

When people talk about the stuff around the edges, it drives me crazy. So in this case, there was ballot box stuffing, according to international observers. Poll watchers were blocked from carrying out their duties. But to me, that's just the appetizers. The main event is he won't let people run against them. The leading opposition figure is Alexel Navalny, sorry for the terrible pronunciation, Navalny. So, and he put him, he had him arrested on total nonsense charges and said, well, now you're a criminal and I guess you can't run against me. a lucky break I just caught.

So it's a, like, I don't want to entertain any talk of, well, did all of Putin's political opponents, top political opponents throughout all these decades, were they all criminals, that they all happened to be arrested before the elections so they couldn't, they would be disqualified from the elections? That's not fair. Some mysteriously die. Okay, yeah. So these are not, dude, 77%.

It's not a real election. None of this is real. It's Hussein-like And so I'm not entertaining any of this So look, I don't think Trump calling is that big a deal Look, I don't really care Yeah, I mean, so

Sham elections unfortunately all across the world Anyway, I don't want to get into ours But I will in a second So, but we got to do diplomacy So if he calls people, I get it. But he didn't need to go over the top and congratulate. I'm like, oh, well, I do, Mr. Vladimir. Very good, very good, sir.

Very good. Congratulations. Are you elected, right? You can just call me like, okay, I guess you're still the president for the 18th time in a row. Lucky break for you. Anyway, let's go on. If we're going to have a summit, let's have a summit. And we'll go on with our lives. But there is something curious.

And then that leads to finally the Sarah Huckabee Sanders lie. So we don't like to meddle in other people's elections. Well, you can break this apart in a couple of ways. One, they seem to like the medal in ours. And it's not like we meddled in their election, but it's okay to say, hey, next time, could you have a real one? Okay, which leads to the much more important point, which is we tell people that all the time. We just did it in Venezuela.

We just did it in Cambodia. So, in fact, we're thinking of doing sanctions and arguing for sanctions. I think it's this week that Mike Pence is a. arguing for sanctions of Venezuela because he didn't like their elections. What happened do we don't meddle in other people's elections and whatever's the result is the result and we don't question it? That is demonstrably false, preposterously false, let alone all the coups and et cetera that we did in the past.

But right now we tell people that is an unacceptable election. We will do economic sanctions on you for that unacceptable election. And then Putin puts on a clown show and Trump's like a circus, great. and calls to congratulate him on his three-ring circus. Yeah, look, in terms of the caring about how other elections work, I think it's a tragedy that Russians don't get to have an actual democracy. I think that anyone, even to the extent that our system is continually manipulated in a hundred different structural ways, is a tragedy.

Everybody should get to have their desires translate into government action. I believe in standing up for progressive values, not only here in the U.S., but also abroad, and that includes Russia. In terms of the call, I don't care. Maybe I've just been so battered down by the news over the past couple of years that I don't have any caring left in me. Certainly, if the general topic is something Trump is doing and it has to do with Russia, this is pretty far down on my list of things that I actually care about. The only thing that makes me vaguely interested right now is the timing of it.

I mean, I guess, yes, it does have to come after the election. So that makes sense. But I mean, they did just assassinate someone with a nerve agent they released inside of the UK like a week ago. That seems kind of relevant. And we did just find out last week that Russian government hackers hacked into our power grid, our air traffic control, our nuclear power systems, and all of this so that they could install the capability to theoretically turn it on or off whenever they want. That seems important. I don't know a lot about the energy sector necessarily, but they just did that. I don't know, in the wake of those two things, now I know in 2018, you're not allowed to care about those things because it has to do with Russia, so you're supposed to pretend that none of it matters.

And if you do care about it, you probably want nuclear war with Russia, even though you don't, and you're explicitly anti-war. But those things did just happen. And so timing-wise, maybe he could have held off. Maybe he could have slid into his DMs or something, so that it wasn't as explicit. But overall, the call, lots of other people are doing. I'm not going to get down on Trump just because he had a call. Yeah, so I think that we're allowed to be rational, and I believe the rational middle ground is not whether some of the Republican and Democratic senators are, why didn't you call Putin and punch him in the face and then split his throat while you were on the phone with him and have him bleed out in those two and a half minutes, right? What would be the point? Yeah, okay, all right. Or, oh, no, it's okay. You can give him a big, you hug it out.

Like, hey, way to murder that person with a nerve agent in the middle of the UK. Oh, great job. Congratulations, the big guy. I think it's fair to ask for something in the middle. Like, we can do diplomacy while not congratulating an obvious tyrant who runs these ridiculous. You know who's most hurt by those Russian non-elections? Is the Russian people. They've been robbed of their democracy.

Out in the open, it's brazen. So he destroyed their democracy. As progressives, we should be furious about that. But that doesn't mean that we should be stupid about it and demand war or some sort of more action. that lead to further conflict. Now, I don't know what the hell Trump's talking about with the summit to stop the arms race, what arms race. And my guess is what he's doing is, oh, no, no, no, I'm being nice to Putin.

Not because I'm in his back pocket. No, no, not at all. It's because I want to do diplomacy. Yeah, that's it. Diplomacy. You know me, I'm very diplomatic. And some people believe it. Some people will even know, Trump wants peace and he wants diplomacy.

Okay, we're looking at the same guy, right? No, he's not at all belligerent. Trump being belligerent? No, he's belligerent. I guess everyone, Jake Tapper today made a good point. He's like, Trump has been more belligerent towards Jake Tapper and Don Lemon than he has to Vladimir Putin. Let alone Chuck Todd. That sleepy-eyed, son of a bee.

Yeah. I don't need or want him to be belligerent to Putin. And if we're going to lower nuclear weapons, that would be amazing. Although Trump has said he wants to do 10x of the nuclear weapons we have. Make up your mind. But look, guys, the bottom line is it's obvious that he is never, ever, ever going to criticize Putin. And there is a reason for that. He criticizes everyone else on the planet, including his closest allies.

And he will viciously attack anyone that crosses him for a second. But when it comes to Vlad, he's, oh, congratulations, Flood. So why the Beta Act? You know why. Okay. So what if you are still pretending that, no, no, Trump's treating Putin like everyone else. You're on a different planet, dude. Just wake up and realize and just raise your hand and go, okay, I can't see straight.

To me, it seems like he's treating Putin just like everyone else. Okay, fine, you live with that. But that is nowhere near true. The one area I disagree with you on is that he also treats Souterte pretty well. He isn't like Kim Jong-un, to be fair. There is a tyrant he will attack, but there's some other tyrants that he's been very easy on in recent history. Okay, you said that they're saying that we should be furious. But I don't know about that, but I do know one person who is furious.

Donald Trump is furious about a leak having to do with his call with Vladimir Putin. Trump was reportedly fuming on Tuesday night after the Washington Post reported that Trump's national security. Abisors specifically instructed him not to congratulate Putin on his electoral victory. They were subtle, to be fair. They put in all caps, do not congratulate. And so that was leaked. And what's interesting about that is that apparently there's a very narrow circle of people who might have leaked it.

Those documents are not widely distributed. Apparently, it might actually have been a crime to leak those particular documents. But it's out there now, and he's not happy about it. He's not happy about the fact that he might have done a bad thing. He's just mad that we found out about it. And specifically that he was instructed not to congratulate him in, I would say, sort of childish terms. Yeah. And so I have perhaps a unique take on this.

First of all, I don't think they should have leaked it. I'm uncomfortable with the national security leaks. So it's one thing that when they're doing internal White House drama and Ivanka's leaking against John Kelly and John Kelly's leaking against Jared Kushner, I don't care. That's all fun in games. And they're giving dirt about each other. Although that dirt is true. It's amusing. It's dangerous for the country. I understand all that. But you should always think what if the shoe was on the other foot. So if Bernie Sanders was president, would you like people in the national security team? leaking memos to him. So, yeah, so that's unacceptable, and they got to stop doing that. Now, on the other hand, now that we know, is it embarrassing that they have to bold things for our president? Hey, third grader, this is in bold, like your tweets, do not congratulate, that is not

the official American position. And there's two reasons for that. One, he's stupid, and they know he's stupid, and they know he's a child. Number two, they know that he's in the back pocket of Putin, and he's going to congratulate him. And they're like, do not set American policy, no other part of the government agrees, right? And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll take that under advisement. But do you have tapes on me? Did I do money laundering with you?

No. Oh, congratulations, Vladimir. What a wonderful election you had. I can't believe you got 137% of the vote. I think that is a great idea. I stole that tweet from John. And also, it's amazing this stuff that you think about, you see it, it's news, and then you forget about it like a week ago. Like, wasn't it just like a week, maybe two weeks ago where he was talking about how, was it Xi Jinping that had set himself up as president for life?

Ha, maybe we should look into that. I mean, maybe it's just that he likes the idea that people are calling the shots in their own elections. Maybe it's sort of a general thing like that. Like, if you can effectively make the elections just like a rubber stamp on your presidency, that's certainly consistent. Well, and maybe set up like, you know, an air later on like a son, not Eric, but maybe one of the other ones, maybe Ivanka. So there's two layers to this. One, of course he was going to congratulate Putin because that's all he's ever done. He's the one guy that Trump acts with kids' gloves towards. But the second layer to it is you're absolutely right, John. He loves authoritarian leaders.

Duterte great. The Chinese leader, oh, you get to be president for life. Oh, I like that. I'm just kidding, kind of, but not really. I was kidding when I said, I like how Duterte is killing drug dealers. And then I wasn't kidding, and I made an official policy of my administration. So, and does he like how Vlonomere rules with an iron fist and everyone must be loyal to him? Yeah, I mean, that he insists on loyalty over and over. He doesn't even understand our form of government.

He was genuinely confused why the FBI director would not pledge his loyalty to him instead of the Constitution. He doesn't believe in democracy, doesn't believe in the Constitution. He thinks, I'm the president, so you should be loyal to me. And we should end this stupid thing called elections and the law, rule of law. Why do we have prosecutors investigating the president? I'm already the president. Can't I do whatever I want? No, that's not how a democracy works.

And you kind of hate that, and it's obvious. And that's why he's got all those Republican betas that follow him, the right alt-right and the right wing. they love being cucked by him. And so they're like, oh my God, an authoritative leader. And we lose our democracy and all free choice. I didn't want choice anyway. I pledge loyalty to you, Donald Trump, and everything you ever do. Because that's in their nature.

They have a large amygdala. They're afraid of everything. And so when a so-called strong leader or an alpha comes by, they can't wait to be betas. And so that's the situation we have here. The only thing that I'm a little surprised with is that they're not a little bothered that Trump is a beta to Putin's alpha. Except for the fact that now in the all right, and in a lot of the right wing, you're starting to see like this reverence for Putin, the strongest of the strong leaders. These guys who used to tell us to attack Russia all the time, now they're like, oh, they're more authoritative and more dictatorial. Well, I love that.

That means I don't have to think for myself anymore. I give you everything I have. You do whatever you want with it. Maybe it's just like a personal thing. Like they used to want to have a beer with Georgia Bush. Now they want a president they can be a cuck with. He's just like us. Oh, right.

Cucks of a feather. I don't know. I just don't even like saying that term ironically. Yeah. I despised so much. Yeah. All right. Okay.

Why don't we take our second break? Because we've got death penalty for drugs. And then we have another unarmed person being. killed by the police. Yeah, the second stir is absolutely tragic. But I thought that he was just kidding with the trick. Oh, he's not kidding. No, it's a policy.

Interesting. All right, we'll talk about that when we come back. 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 the Young Turks. Brett Ehrlich's here, everybody. Yay. The bass. This is bass.

Oh, that's base. Whenever anyone's elbow goes up, that means they're like, want you to know that they know how to play bass. Oh, okay. I am not in the air community. So I don't do your cosplay. All right. More good wishes coming in. I'm reading this because I'm partly amused by all the different places that it's coming in from. And thank you guys. So YouTube super chat.

Lizard Lilliel writes, and happy birthday from Nova Scotia too, love from Canada. Like we're littered with Canadian good wishes today. Thank you. Lars Nilsson writes in many happy wishes, Jank, from a progressive in Gothenburg. Wow, all right. Karanola writes in on YouTube super chat. When you use YouTube super chat, it helps the show too. Happy birthday, Jank.

Many happy returns of the day. Thanks for all that you do for us. You're looking great. Keep on salading. See you here in Tokyo someday. Yeah. Look at all over the world. Thank you guys.

Now, you are unlikely to see me, although my wife might be going to Tokyo suit. The guy you're most likely to see in Tokyo is this guy. Oh, I got this sweatshirt in Tokyo. Oh, you did? And it came with matching sweatshirt. for like $19. I feel like you go to Japan every other week. Oh, I love it.

It's five times in two years. It's fantastic. See? Like, you can't go on Brett Earleck's Instagram without getting bombarded with pictures of him in Japan. Yeah, I read an article that was like, that's the most annoying thing on Instagram is people sharing their vacation photos. Horch is there right now? Oh, is that right? Oh, and she's having, and the cherry blossoms are happening?

That's right. So, Brett, of course, on Pop Trigger as well, and Kim Hortcher is on Nerd Alert, check those out. Last one, Lores writes, and if two police officers who mistake a cell phone for a gun fire 20 bullets into a guy, what that is a teacher going to do with a gun in an active shooter situation? Excellent point. That's right. Okay, there's so many more, but we've got to get going on the show. Brett, take it away. All right, Mark Zuckerberg hath spoken under his eye.

Mark Zuckerberg is, you know, the head of Facebook and founder. And in the wake of all of this Cambridge Analytica, it wasn't exactly a data breach, it wasn't exactly a data hack, what actually happened. In the wake of it, it took five days before Mark Zuckerberg made a statement. People were calling for it, Amy Klobuchar and others, according to this graphic news, Senator John Kennedy, and I just sent a bipartisan letter to Chuck Grassley asking for a judiciary hearing with social media CEOs, including Zuckerberg. This isn't the first time we've made this request, but now 50 million people. who had their record stolen should add to our numbers. John Kennedy himself said the behavior from Facebook lately has been kind of getting into the foothills of creepy. He also wanted to know if we've been, you know, Facebook is enabling us to live in some kind of weird Truman show environment where they create our own reality for us.

The UK has launched formal inquiries into this kind of data issue. The UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said she is producing a warrant to search Cambridge Analytical. as servers after the firm missed a deadline to voluntarily cooperate. Even people who have been themselves absorbed into Facebook have been absorbed into weighing in on this. Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014, posted to Twitter. It's time to delete Facebook. We are going to skip forward to graphic, I think it's 66, because Mark Zuckerberg,

after five days and his company losing $50 billion in market capitalization finally made his statement. He said, we have a responsibility to protect your data. And if we can't, then we don't deserve to serve you. I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again. I started Facebook and at the end of the day, I'm responsible for what happens on our platform. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform. further and make our community safer for everyone going forward. All right, a couple of small points and then the really the heart of the issue. First of all, I don't know, like it's not my business, but Brian Acton speaking out against

Facebook after he sold his app after them for $19 billion. I don't know, man. I'd have kept that one internal. He no longer works for Facebook. I know he doesn't, and I know he gets to say it. I know that once they sell, they always leave the building as soon as they possibly can. And I know you already got your billions of dollars. He doesn't get the whole $19 billion.

There's investors and stuff. But I'm sure he got plenty of money. Be cool. Yeah, right? And maybe that's wrong. Maybe that he's principled for speaking out. It's a small point. Okay.

And number two, I don't care about the timing issue. He took five days and how posted an investigative story about how he likes some pretty pictures on Facebook. Yeah. So he must have been hiding in a cave. Look, man, they lost $50 billion in market cap. Zuckerberg himself lost $9 billion in his net worth. Now, it doesn't really matter. He still got $66 billion.

But losing $9 billion, it's a bad week. It's a bad week for anyone. How would you respond? Like, first of all, I don't even know how to wrap my mind around having the remaining dollars that he has. But I don't even know how you could function after losing $9 billion. No, but again, if you started with $75. billion, it probably doesn't matter. Look, I've done the math on it. First of all,

40 million is an outrageous, monstrous number, okay? But I'm positive that anything beyond 40 million is really unnecessary. Yeah. Okay. So when you get to a billion, which is 960 million about 40 million, let alone 75 million, anyway, so don't shed too many tears from them. But my point is that they're going to take a little while to figure out what the right way to respond is. They're They've got investors suing them. They got users suing them. They've lost, they're reeling right now. They've got everybody attacking them.

They're going to huddle with lawyers. They're going to huddle with PR people. They're not going to just go out there and give an earnest statement. Like, oh, man, I saw what happened. And college, gee, that sucks, right? Also, it was just like, oh, God, let me get. I didn't know. I got to get everything together.

Yeah, this is a gigantic business with a ton of financial interests. they're going to take their time to figure out what is the best strategy. And now, on the flip side to that, is that when they come out with statements of being incredibly contrite and that we are taking personal responsibility, etc. Mark Zuckerberg didn't go in there, hold on, let me write, type this thing out, right? It's PR people, and that was looked at a thousand times over by 100 PR people. And that's okay, that's okay, he runs a giant company. But understand where that's coming from.

So it's not like he's like, oh, man. at t yt 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 express vpn express VPN hides your IP address making your active AD more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers express VPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and site and it's also easy to install a single mouse click protects all your devices but listen guys this is important express vpn is rated number one by cnett and wired magazine so take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top vpn solution available express VPN and if you go to expressvpn.com slash t yt you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for t yt fans That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT.

Check it out today. No, personal responsibility, it's mine. I got own up to it, my bad, right? No, that's what you're supposed to say to put people at ease and yada, yada. I'm just keeping it real with you guys as to what's going on. Yeah, I just don't know the, I've seen a lot of Mark Zuckerberg apologies, you know, because there are so many changes that they introduced to Facebook. there are so many decisions that they make. I remember when they invented the feed,

the feed, which is basically so far in the rearview mirror of Facebook, but it was the idea that instead of just going to your Facebook page and then going to someone else's Facebook page, they would take all the data that you're already sharing, compile it, and put it in the Facebook feed. And that's what you scroll through. And when that happened back in 2006, Zuckerberg had to write an apology saying, wow, we really messed this one up. And I don't remember the exact words, but that was the beginning. And then he made that statement recently where he had to go and he's sitting there looking straight into camera and is like, you know, work uniform and behind him is like people going around the office. It's just, it's just so strange. And I don't know how

accountable to hold these social media companies. And I don't know how accountable they're holding these other folks. Because when you look at Cambridge Analytica, they did access this this data inappropriately by acquiring it from someone who wasn't supposed to sell it to them. But I don't know to what extent Facebook can turn around and say, you know what? We are going to levy an appropriate punishment to people who did these inappropriate things. So look, we are partners with Facebook. We don't, there's not a lot of money at stake there. I'm just telling you to be over the top, careful and give you any kind of conflict of interest we might have. Now, having said that, I am going to be both more generous to Facebook than others are being,

and I'm going to explain why, and more harsh to Facebook than you hear anywhere else. So let me explain what I think is the reality here. So were they, as some writer put it, aggressively disinterested, and I think that was the same Huffbox writer that I criticized a second ago, were they aggressively disinterested in how their data was being mined? Probably. And the reason for that is they're making money. They're selling ads. So they were, this Cambridge Analytica was supposed to only had like a couple hundred thousand people download the app.

But somehow they got the information of 50 million users. So some are saying Facebook looked the other way to make more money. Now, they'll have to investigate that. That is not proven. We'll see how that plays out. But is that a real issue? Yes, that's definitely a real issue. And one that they got to get on top of.

and they can't let their greed get away from them. Now, on the other hand, it's important that you guys know some of the ulterior motives going on here. So the rest of the press is loving this because they despise Facebook. Now, why do they despise Facebook? Not having anything to do with Cambridge Analytica or the elections. It's because Facebook was unreal jerks to them.

Okay, so how? They're like, come here, come here, do instant articles. do put all your articles on Facebook and we'll reward you and we'll put all your videos on on Facebook and we'll reward you and on and on everybody come to Facebook we've got a wonderful little trap for you because I mean one wonderful thing that's going to give you more viewers and everybody got hooked on Facebook and then they changed the rules and they did it over and over again and it destroyed a lot of companies it hurt a lot of those media companies tremendously so they've been looking for payback for a long time so the minute

Facebook's in any kind of trouble, they got no allies left. And everybody jumps in for the kill. Ah, Facebook! Cambridge Analytica! So there's definitely Schadenfreude here as they try to pounce and do the hashtag delete Facebook and push that on and on. I've got more. But yeah, I was just, when I, my gut reaction to all to the Facebook stuff, because I know people who work there and I, there is, I don't think anyone over there is like evil. I think it's very much. Like, hey, we're a tech company. We have all this information. What can we do with it?

Well, I think more than what we can do with it, we can see what you guys can do with it. And that's how it's presented in those big original Facebook platform meetings. And they did that. And then, you know, as much as they thought they knew what would come of it, that same entrepreneurial spirit that they were depending on to grow their product turned into this. people taking that spirit too far and making it turn to like an evil demon spirit that mines psychographic information by starting out asking you like little quiz questions. Yeah, and you, and so it's a lesson not just for Facebook, but for all other companies out there digital or otherwise.

There should be some cap on your greed because once you've alienated everyone on the planet and anyone who might work with you, well, then when you need them, You're not going to have any friends. And so ironically, their feet is pretty barren here because everybody unfriended them for how they treated everyone else in the business. Now, another really important part, though, another part that's illegitimate is that they also have those other media outlets now that they realize they're not making any money off of Facebook and it was a trap in the first place and they got nothing out of it. Now they're viewing Facebook as a competitor. And the TV guys hate all the online guys. So they view Facebook as a giant competitor that's sucking away audience.

The content producers don't like Facebook because they get paid almost nothing. Whereas on TV, they get gazillions of dollars. So now all the TV guys are like, Facebook is not legitimate. They're not legitimate, right? You must. And by the way, what do they demand then? They say, don't do any independent media. From now on, if you want to be legitimate, the only people that you can,

can favor are CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, etc. New York Times, Washington Post, all the old media. If you do anything else, Facebook, you're part of the problem and Russia and Analytica and this and that. And why do the politicians care? Well, they love the incumbents, love the system where they have all the money and can use TV to win every election. And digital media allows upstarts to beat them. They hate that. They're like, let's go back to the way that it was. So that is part of the attacks against Facebook.

And I understand that that's the context nobody else tells you. So when you look at the actual strategy of Cambridge Analytica, it was to find out what they called a psychographic makeup of all their users. And it was crazy where they would just be like, I can go through your likes and find out if you're neurotic and scared. and now I can give you, serve you up an ad that is essentially going to play on that. I think that's the terrifying part of it. And I think when it comes down to it, I also just want to urge people to, in an era where, you know, should I depend on the old mainstream media, or should I depend on independent journalists? And if so, how do I know the difference between the real independent journalists and the ones who are just Russian bots?

When it comes down to it, it's just you have to be able to think for yourself. And you have to not, you know, crater to those instincts in you that see things. It's the same instinct on Facebook as it is with like your best friend who's now in a, or your enemy who had a breakup on Facebook where you're like, that's the end of you. You have to fight against that instinct and just actually focus on the truth and see and see where that takes you. And look, the old media is going to use this scandal. And it is a real legit scandal. The privacy concerns are legitimate.

They're going to use it to try to destroy independent media. You have been forewarned. And they will demand of Facebook and every other giant digital media company. You must favor the quote unquote legitimate media. And you must destroy all of our competitors. So that is what they're going to set out to do in the algorithms going forward. And that's the part that none of them ever tell you. That's an uncomfortable truth for Facebook, and it's a super uncomfortable truth for the old media who go, no, no, I am just concerned about Russia and that Cambridge thing.

I'm not concerned about my competition at all, but the algorithm should definitely favor me and not anyone else. Keep it real. That's also what's happening here. All right, we got to take a break. All right. We'll be right back. 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.

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At apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Jank Yugar, and I'll see you soon.