 Alan, welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to discuss the real face of Facebook. And I have with me two authors of the book, The Real Face of Facebook in India, and the real face of Facebook, which has been published in Hindi. Cyril Sammukh is the author of the book, and Poranjoy has helped Cyril with this book. So he has helped Cyril with this book. Of course Poranjoy, as you know, has been formed. And we thank you because NewsClick also published the first five long articles, which were published in English and Hindi. Cyril, you've been the lead author of this book. What led you to this topic? Because Facebook has been covered extensively abroad as well. It's one of the companies which has come under the scanner, and particularly after the Cambridge Analytica has been on, shall we say, the hot seat. Mark Zuckerberg has been called to different places. Of course he didn't come to India, so it didn't seem to work. And in England also he's been called, which he didn't respond. But did it appear in the US Congress? What led you to write this book in the sense that since already a lot of information has come out? A lot of information has come out about how Facebook has a technology or infrastructure functions, how certain kinds of things go viral on Facebook, how Facebook prefers a certain kind of content, etc., etc. But I don't think a lot of people have looked into Facebook's politics in different countries. We have very little information about Facebook's politics in different countries. We know that Facebook worked with the Trump campaign at some point. We now know that Facebook worked with the far right in Germany at some point. And in that I was curious what is happening with Facebook in India because the company is more or less opaque. We don't know what Facebook does in India. So I was just curious about what does Facebook's work in India, what are they doing in India, and that's how this came around. Your book goes into details about, shall we say, a revolving door of personnel. It also seems that Facebook has shared a lot of information which it doesn't normally do with outsiders with the BJP, maybe with other parties we don't know, but certainly with the BJP. Do you know for sure which country they have chosen or which political power they are going to be in? They are trying to create a relationship with them. If you look at the different countries, Cyril spoke about America, Europe, it happened in Argentina, in the Philippines, and this is also a very important tip for the United Nations, how Facebook and WhatsApp helped to kill Rohingya Muslims. So there is no reason for this to happen, that Facebook is trying to create its own profit. Those who have money, they go there, and who have the money? Those who are in fact, they have more money. And while maximizing profits, what they end up doing is supporting majoritarian regimes, dictatorships, and there are a lot of examples which, like the politicians who believe in Tana Shahi, they got a lot of help. And what Cyril said, I would like to add a couple of things, that six months or eight months ago, when this work started around June 2018, at that time a lot of people were saying, how did Facebook help them? And let me give you one example, about Shivnath Thuklal, you said about the revolving door. Shivnath was a television anchor in NDTV, then he joined the SR group from there. Then in 2013, when the elections were coming, 2014 elections, he joined a website called Meera Barossa, which helped him to support Iqdam Modi. And then for a few days, he joined the Carnegie Foundation. And then Facebook, that in a way, after Aakhidas, he was in the number two position. So we asked Facebook this question, that when you made Shivnath Ji your employee, did you check his background? Yes, we have followed, we have due diligence, international best practices. We have also written that Shivnath Ji's partner, Shaili Ji, Shaili Chopla, he was also an anchor in NDTV, he also has a project, he has a YouTube channel and television program, She the People. So I said, Facebook, you are helping them, you are financially supporting She the People. Isn't this a conflict of interest? Their answer was that we have been supporting this project, even before Shivnath joined us. So, there are not many people who have all these thoughts. So that's why we, in the previous news click, published a book, and now in the book, we have said all these things to encourage people. How does Facebook really work, doesn't it really work? It is not a truly agnostic platform. It is not that any political party, or any individual can help them. In a way, those who are in power, and those who are worried about the South, helped a lot in the same way. And not just Facebook, WhatsApp. I think today, if around 22 crores, people around India are using Facebook, more than 30 crores are using WhatsApp. I mean, those who are giving money to India, around 22 crores, are using WhatsApp. And Malviya, the IT cell of the Indian People's Party, once in the economic times, when he was in power, said this is going to be India's WhatsApp election for the first time. You know, when you talk about the WhatsApp influence, it's also true that in the Brazil elections, the WhatsApp, the last seven days played a very important role. It's not documented. A huge number of WhatsApp messages, supposedly about 2 billion messages were sent on WhatsApp, and it was essentially fake news saying that the Pepe, that they are going to bring in sex education by which all your children will become gay. And this was targeted towards women, particularly, and this led to a huge shift in the last seven days of the election. Otherwise, Bolsonaro was trailing till that point of time. Of course, all of these are publicly known in Brazil, but again, the Bolsonaro did win the elections. But leaving that out, that WhatsApp is going to play a huge role, the question still remains, and Seril wanted to ask you what is the reason that right-wing has a lot of money, that obviously business prefers right-wing politics to even, shall we say, social democratic politics or even welfare politics which should be considered bourgeois politics by any standards, that which argues that tax revenues should be such that the rich should be taxed in order to provide basic minimum education and health to the people that the right doesn't like this. It wants tax breaks and so on. And they have the money, clearly. And increasingly, the welfare structure has been weakened. So they have even more money than before. This has been, Piketty says, the most unequal society that we have seen for the last 100, 125 years. In this, do you see Facebook as a this exercise of supporting certain sections, in India particularly, especially, as it's ideological predilection, ideological wishes of its people, policy of the company or that profit maximization means it's a natural alliance or is it a matter of both? Do you have any opinions on this or objectively, what do you see? I think it's a mix of both because Facebook as a company is answerable to its shareholders and they want to increase their value. And it kind of couples with the right-wing's tactics because the right-wing has always been at the forefront, especially in India, they've been at the forefront of using technology. I mean, we've had the Vishwa Hindu Parish at the RSS using the Internet to mobilize people in the U.S., in Europe, even before Internet was a reality in India. And in that, yes, they've been far ahead of anyone and it's just a natural alliance. I mean, it just comes together. They were looking for a client, they found a convenient client in the BJP and they've worked together since. I want to add one or two points to what Cyril has said. Look, the age of the Internet is 27 years, the age of Facebook is 15 years. So in the last 15 years what you would call social media platforms, what kind of digital monopolies their use has increased. We never thought that it would grow so fast. It has grown so rapidly. And as we just talked about the benefit of this which is believed to be the biggest benefit for them. So the Internet we were thinking at one time that it's a universal good, it's a universal common which is like a public utility. Today we have reached a point where you are also aware that there are two major social media platforms Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube. These are the two digital monopolies of Maharashtra. The number of messages you are sending on the Internet is more than 70% Coming back to this I still have this interest that when we talk about what we have also written fake news that both WhatsApp Facebook partly also used to have become purveyors of fake news in a big way and a lot of it is due to also what people want to spread so it is sort of also feeding into that. So do you think that this needs to be controlled by regulation of some kind? Is it Facebook's internal regulation, external regulation or do you think the people by large as this phase becomes more and more shall we say past it becomes old, that people will become more and more educated and will stop believing a lot of this. So the problem essentially is with the architecture of these platforms these platforms are built to maximize time spent and engagement engagement is comments, likes shares etc. and that happens primarily and that architecture essentially prefers certain kind of content so say politics or crime or local news so that kind of content spreads a lot faster. So what we are seeing in fake news in India for example is that it is extremely hyper local so your local RWA guy is also producing narratives local panchayat leader is also producing narratives and it is happening at that level and these platforms therefore prefer to pick up those kinds of things and they try and push that kind of content. Will any kind of regulation help this? I don't know if any kind of regulation will help this because the entire commercial internet's economics today runs on engagement and in that it prefers sensationalist content it prefers things that look scary that will scare people so it is essentially Fox News or Republic TV transferred on the internet that is essentially what is happening here Regulation could be Elizabeth Warren saying she is going to break up all this Even then the fundamental architecture remains the same and the manner in which they make money but you know at the end of it there is no hope that would be a very unfortunate one So here is what the hope is and I think when we talk about all of this we assume the permanence of these companies every software has a life cycle of around 10 to 12 years and Facebook for example has been around for 15 years yes day before actually Facebook announced a whole bunch of updates to all of its platforms they are moving away from public to private Facebook says that the future of internet is privacy at some level Facebook understands that their game is over people are migrating to other platforms and in that this is an attempt the new updates are an attempt to consolidate what is left behind and in that give it another 5 years I don't think Facebook is going to be around ok there are two things one is that today there is a Facebook that is using around 40 to 33% of the world there must be some reason they are providing some services to communicate with each other 40 years ago we said to each other what happened to us all of a sudden one thing is to think and one is to not and when Facebook becomes viral they are making people emotionally react when you are in anger they like it when you are in anger then your post is going to be viral and if it becomes viral we think look at these two new words thanks to Facebook one friend that we have thousands of friends if our health is bad they will come to our house we will not help them to show this second thing is these digital media platforms social media platforms you understand that all these services are available to us for this digital platform you have become the product you have become a service that's ok we really do or have discussed this earlier also but yes, I apologize more discussion of what the disease is is what matter what is the solution to the disease this book is written by us and we have published it in Hindi we hope that in other languages we will be able to publish it in the future that one is awareness second thing second thing is because if people don't know the problem we have no hope of a solution now there is a reason as they have said when people's awareness will be filled the thinking that is coming you will not believe you can send anything so you talk about the education of the that is one the self education of the awareness together which is in the government in our country how do we control the internet and the social media let me give you a small example in Rajasthan a few months ago in Rajasthan one person what is the murder of another person and there is a video in their website so there was a worker he was killed and when the question was raised what is the murder what is the bad thing who made this whatsapp video who did it how did they do it and whatsapp said this is end to end encryption we don't know you can forget about that also look at the Christchurch shootings it was on facebook and for quite some time facebook failed to pull it down and already quote unquote viral by which time number of people had died by which time number of people had died but it went on propagating even after the incident was over facebook was aware of it and there is no end to end encryption in facebook so this is the problem of quote unquote virality and the fact that controls work much slower the internet changes the logic of publishing whereas initially you have filter and publish and then filter and that is also the reason why there is a lot of conversation around the loss of power of gatekeeping that editors, news organizations etc had because once everyone has access also because one of the first problems that the internet solved was the problem of publishing and distribution which was a huge bottleneck before the internet came around and we have made and we have continuously even today we are making progress in terms of how do we publish and distribute so facebook is one example, medium is another example blogspot at an earlier at an earlier point in time it was an example so the internet has solved that problem of publishing and distribution which media companies at one point had a monopoly over now publishing and distributing is the cost theoretically is zero I can sit and write something and put it up on the internet and ask me anything and I can ensure that it reaches the price you are paying for that internet but that logic of filter and publish I think that's turned on its head the second thing is any form of regulation if we go and regulate these companies right now what will happen is they are going to be around here forever you were saying it's better to have the natural life cycle of these companies rather than try and regulate them which will create how much of this you know the cycle, the march of technology the business cycle of technology will influence so Microsoft had a virtual monopoly on browsers today it's been overtaken by Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox which are offering their services free similarly do you think that ok just because Netscape was killed by Microsoft and Microsoft got marginalized by Google Chrome and your Mozilla Firefox will be see a similar kind of thing will now a new avatar of Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp come to occupy that position I am not so sure I think the jury is very open on that one because we are forgetting one thing that once you have say you are reaching a near trillion dollars size of a company your ability to buy new entrants is so much more today that competition becomes much more difficult so anybody who becomes a competitor WhatsApp was a very small competitor was bought over so unless they make stupid mistakes which Microsoft did when it came to the internet it is difficult to see how by natural competition life cycle of software which really is more hopeful of this will really happen if I can get a brief point in Zuckerberg himself has written in his article in his op-ed piece in the Washington Post and he is talking about privacy and freedom of expression I am saying that whatever Zuckerberg says don't take it so seriously it is a crisis of credibility Facebook and Zuckerberg is a credibility crisis therefore they are saying a lot of things in the trust of the people talk about privacy these are today's buzz words people are a little worried Standard oil is broken up AT&T was broken up maybe the time has to come to break up these companies or at least create a more even playing field through regulation Regulation necessarily does not have to be policing censorship controls of different kinds give us access and so on that with 1 billion people are producers of news today against 3 billion consumers by the way that is the ratio 1 is to 2, 1 is to 3 is the ratio then we have to think of new models of how do you regulate content no easy answers to this question if there was we would have given one earlier but I do think that your book raises very very important questions because if people do not know the disease if they do not know the disease then what kind of medicine they will not be able to cure how they will be able to cure so now in our opinion we are at the moment on the analysis of the disease and when it will be cured how it will be what to say to reach the beginning we will have to wait a little more and we hope that the treatment of this disease will be cured thank you this is all the time we have today do keep watching news click