Joe Rogan/ Mark Zuckerberg: The Interview

Democracy needs to destroy social media; It is self defense

On a long flight recently, I listened to the interview between Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Rogan.  The dialog left me more concerned than ever about the future of discourse in America, the seduction of online worlds, and the fate of democracy.

Mark Zuckerberg has access to essentially infinite resources as CEO of the formidable company Facebook.  I suspect that prior to this interview—and interviews in general—he has had considerable coaching.  The topics he discusses can be anticipated (algorithms, election, Hunter Biden laptop), and he will have consulted experts to put the strongest arguments to preserve Facebook’s empire of advertising revenue.  It is likely worse than that.  Every word choice and phrasing has likely been subject to A-B testing or focus groups.  Despite, all that effort.  He is clearly not a natural communicator and comes across as stilted, flat, and robotic.  You wouldn’t want to get a beer with him—as the old political heuristic goes.

I imagine that a person of his resources goes beyond this. Every fact about his work life and personal life that he chooses to make public is carefully chosen to portray him as everyman; smart, innovative, a visionary.  And yet, the focus groups failed because mixed martial arts training with private experts and riding around Hawaii on a hydrofoil (whatever that is) is not exactly within the reach of most Americans; comes across as elitist, Silicon Valley bullshit.  Where I come from in rust belt Indiana; my friends would deservedly mock me for these pastimes.

I say this merely to emphasize why the interview concerns me so much.  With essentially unlimited resources to assuage concerns about his platform and role in the modern media and political ecosystem, he falls short.  He comes across, at times, as childish. A simplistic thinker who does not recognize the sheer importance of the choices he is making.  Nothing scares me more than knowing this guy is in charge.

My job is to “build technology to help people connect.”

That’s how Zuckerberg describes Facebook, but that isn’t his goal or job. His goal is to capture the attention of people. At times, he discusses how Facebook takes the time you would otherwise spend watching TV-- so it isn’t so bad. But that runs counter to most of our experiences with social media. People check it at elevators, in cabs, at restaurants (even when there are others at the table), they check it during meetings, coffee, dates, dinners, the birth of children—and some even during sex.  Facebook isn’t an object that sits in your living room that you watch between the hours of 9 and 11 pm; it is a constant never-ending attention capture device from the moment you wake till the moment you are supposed to go to sleep.

This is strictly his profit incentive, and he knows it, but does not acknowledge how caustic it is.  He lives in a delusion that he is “connecting people” but he may well be poisoning people with never-ending social feedback and anxiety.

Joe Rogan asks wisely—what would an algorithm look like that is neutral; gives equal footing to all posts, and lets the market decide?  Zuckerberg cannot process the question. He distracts with an answer about how businesses would then just constantly post to always be at the top of your feed, but if this happened you would unfollow those businesses (aka market deciding); Instead, he says Facebook shows you what it thinks you want to see--- a cousin’s baby—but that seems dishonest. IT shows you what keeps you using the product the longest. That is his core incentive.

Facebook spends 5 billion dollars on security and counterterrorism for the Facebook network; 10 billion on researching new ways of augmented reality.  Zuckerberg dreams of wearing glasses that allow you to attend zoom meetings in virtual reality with an avatar that looks like how you feel inside. He talks about a bracelet that can let you send a text with thoughts without actually moving your hand—so no one knows you are texting.  He views this as a positive contribution, but it sounds like a hellscape.  More and more distracted people not living in the moment.  More and more people projecting their image as they want to be seen, not as we really are.  I find it a sick dystopian vision.

Joe Rogan asks him about the Hunter Biden laptop story, and his answer is evasive and frankly piss-poor.  The FBI told him to be on guard, so they de-throttled the NY Post’s reporting.  This resulted in considerable loss of views.  He is playing God with a federal election, and he happened to be entirely wrong, and he says its because he trusted the FBI. But he does not say specifically the FBI told him this story was false.  They just said to be on the look out in general. So who the hell made that decision?

Mark Zuckerberg won’t own his responsibility.  He has created an independent board to help make these decisions—that’s passing the buck. Facebook outsources fact checking to third party websites. I investigated their health fact checking, and it was frankly abysmal.  In 1 instance, they used fact checkers who already tweeted their critical opinion.  Fact checking is just liberal, misinformation busters who are mediocre scientists (at best) enforcing their biased views on others.  It is a complete disaster. Yet, it’s a third party—so Facebook absolves itself of responsibility.

Facebook and other sites that commodify attention are doing to the human mind what the industrialists of the early 20th century did the environment. They are pouring filth and pollution into the streams and rivers—except this time is directly into our lives and brain.  But unlike the industrialists, who transformed our real physical world; all they have to show for it is transformation of our virtual world.   And it is unclear if that has any value.  I prefer to live in the real world.

Capitalism and the free market are powerful tools and I support these ideas.  But Facebook, Twitter, linked-in, Youtube, are companies that are out of control. They decide truth from fiction. Those decisions are made by young people who lack wisdom, courage, compassion, and scars.  They don’t understand the implications of their product on the fate of democracies. They have no oversight—because they donate richly to campaigns.  They are not up to the task.  They are failing us.

If I were in charge of Government, I would bring them to their knees. I would ban them from directly measuring and optimizing attention. I would break them into tiny pieces. I would force competition; I would regulate them to bits.  Mark would become a single digit billionaires, but that is ok with me, and should be ok with him.

Ultimately, people—through democracy—decide what would we want to live in. Just because Zuckerberg has amassed the empire of a small country does not mean he has sole claim to that.  Over time, I suspect more people will see that mega social media companies cannot exist.  We need an ecosystem of smaller, transient platforms; we can’t let the coders decide which stories should be throttled. 

These companies will fall, but only through the action of democracy.  History will see it for what it is: an act of self-defense.