 It's Wednesday. It's 11 o'clock. It's October the 6th, 2021. Time for only one thing, one thing only. It's time for What Now America? I'm Tim Appichell, your host. Thank you for joining us. Today's title is Facebook under Fire. Whistleblower comes out. Back in 1996, there was a scientist by the name of Dr. Jeffrey Wygan. In 1996, he did an interview for 60 minutes that changed the nature of the tobacco company forever. It was what he provided in the interview and testimony before Congress led to the biggest settlement in the United States history, and that was to break down big tobacco. What Dr. Wygan discovered was that the cigarette companies were spiking cigarettes with nicotine to ensure that their consumers would be addicted to them. And of course, we know what cigarettes does. It causes cancer and all sorts of bad ill health effects. So now it's 2021, and we have yet another Whistleblower, but she's not talking about cigarettes, and she's not talking about nicotine spiking. What she's bringing forth in a 60 minutes interview last Sunday and her testimony before Congress, before the Senate committee yesterday, was to talk about Facebook and how Facebook has basically not regulated their own content, the content that is separating and polarizing Americans, not only about political leanings, but also regarding the virus, the COVID virus and the vaccines. And that's how we're getting into polarization about the effect of this, of a vaccine that ultimately has led to over 700,000 deaths, and many of them needlessly. So we're going to talk about this Whistleblower. Her name is Frances Haugen. And again, she's a former employee of Facebook and the information she provided in the 60 minutes interview and before Congress. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce Jay Fidel. Good morning, Jay. Good morning, Jim. You know, it's not easy being a Whistleblower. And she certainly, Whistleblowers by and large are often ridiculed by both sides. And it's a hard road to, you know, to handle. Yet in the 60 minutes interview and her testimony before Congress, plus the treasure trove of thousands of documents she came up with from Facebook, the internal documents, internal studies and analysis, she's coming off very credible. What's your impression of Frances Haugen and how she's performed and handled herself with the allegations she's brought forth? She's competent. She's been with several social media companies, a handful at least, from various points of view. She's worked on, you know, their algorithms and their policies. She was part of the team that was supposed to, you know, cut out some of these objectionable postings on Facebook. That team was disbanded, which really started her and a bunch of her colleagues down a road of Whistleblowing. And I would say she's courageous too. There was something in the press this morning about how some people feel that although your testimony in front of Congress is, you know, privileged and is not subject to, you know, your immune from suit over it, especially as a whistleblower, her testimony, her comments to 60 minutes and in the press may not be so privileged. And she may not be so immune to be those people who don't like her, who might go after her. But the bottom line on that is that's nuts. You know, she's obviously doing this for the right reason. She's doing this to help the country and the public and the world who is ever going to go after her for revealing things that are true from an opinion of competence. So I have great regard for her. I would note to you though, Tim, that a few years ago, the name of the movie is not in my head right now. There was a movie about Facebook and about Cambridge Analytica and how Facebook collaborated with them and they represented, you know, Russia and its efforts to with the employment research agency and disinformation to affect our elections. So Facebook has been involved in this kind of thing for a long time. And, you know, Zuckerberg, in my opinion, Zuckerberg doesn't have a conscience. He doesn't have a sense of humor either. He's spent on only one thing making making more and more money, even though he's one of the most wealthy individuals in the world right now. And he has more influence. And the third thing I want to point out to you maybe we should discuss is the coincidence of her testimony and their bad experience was it Monday, where they were offline somewhere between five and eight hours. They and their chat and their Instagram programs were all offline. A lot of speculation about that. But I think you have it. It hasn't happened before. It's very unusual and it was worldwide. And it came on the heels of this whole affair. And I say to myself, that coincidence is not a coincidence. My view of it is either A, they did it to garner sympathy, possibly or more likely somebody else in the company did it in order to, you know, whistle blow from the inside to do sabotage on the inside. Maybe it was give the world a break from Facebook and how delightful that was. Well, they lost. They lost a lot of money in that one day because you know, I do want to point out, you know, first off to be a whistleblower against one of the richest people in the country and one of the strongest $1 trillion asset based companies in the world. That's a pretty daunting task. But I think she may be somewhat immune because she has filed claims against the Securities Exchange Commission. And part of the Frank Dodd laws back in 2008, one of the provisions was that if an employee can bring forth a whistleblower complaint that underroads the confidence of that corporation to its investors, internal documents are part of that whistleblower protection. So I don't know who her attorney is, but she's been advised quite well to not just go on 60 minutes and not disappear before the Senate Committee, but also to file claim directly with the STC and preserve her protection rights as a whistleblower. Pretty smart attorney and pretty smart of them. Yeah, well, I think the philosophy was they wanted to get it out in all directions because they were concerned that if you go to Congress with this, it may not it may not get public. And so she went public. And of course, that agency is in itself, it may not be so public. But when the business community finds out what she submitted to them, it will get public from that point of view or the business community part of you. She's doing everything she can. And it's right. It's right that she does everything she can. When you hear her speak and you hear the conclusions and prognostications that she draws from what she knows right now, it is terrifying. And she made this statement in so many words from the point of view of our democracy. You know, here on American What Now, we talk about this all the time, those factors that he wrote our democracy. Well, Facebook hasn't done this country any benefit, any good, as far as I'm concerned. I don't use it myself. I don't really appreciate it. Well, remember, a month ago, you took Think Tech Hawaii off that platform. You made a decision that Facebook was not overseeing the divisiveness that's being posted, the algorithms that were being used to polarize Americans against each other, and particularly regarding the COVID virus and the treatments for COVID, and certainly now the political conflicts that we face. So you made a conscientious decision to take it off. I don't know if a lot of people have done that yet. No, I don't think so, because they are in the same ball game as Zuckerberg is in. Let's hear all the raw meat. Let's get excited. You know, it's very clear from Francis, it's her name, Francis. Algen. Algen. It's very clear from her testimony that this is not a mistake. It's not accidental. It's not, like you would expect in the random selection of news and postings. It's an algorithm that prioritizes, it pushes to the top of the heap for more public inspection, more public engagement, the stories that are the most outrageous. And so this kind of approach to engagement, which is written in their algorithm, which is part of their essential technology, is wrecking things. Now, I'm not saying that nobody else does this. Some others do this too. On a lesser scale, even the local networks, they'll focus on more automobile accidents and crime, celebrities, little social feature stories that don't mean anything, weather and sports. But national news commentary about the national scene on COVID, on public policy, on our democracy, they don't cover that very much. And so they're going to cover the raw meat because they think that the public wants that only. They think the public doesn't care about the national news. And it thumbs down the public when they take that analysis. So I feel that Facebook is part of something, but it is a leader in this regard because it reaches so many people and it provides such a disservice not only to us, but the world. One of the most ridiculous things is that Facebook was in Myanmar. And Facebook caused an insurrection there. It caused violence by fomenting these two opposite sides. You can do that so easily. That's what Russia does with the ERA. They'll write notes probably using Facebook to both sides of an issue, tell them to meet on the street corner and beat each other up. What's this about? You've gone to something because these algorithms, I mean, they really target your anger and your emotions. I mean, there's a very psychological tool that's being used. And it is being used to obviously get more hits and the more hits, then they go to their advertisers and say, see how many hits this particular topic is getting. And advertisers say, okay, let's put our ads on it. And that ad, more ads means more profit. So this is really a very Machiavellian corporate strategy to not only get more ad play, therefore more profit, but also unlike what Dr. Wygan tried to portray is spiking of nicotine. But in this case, it's psychological addiction to hatred and people's emotions. And that's where I think Congress really needs to focus on to say what kind of portrayal are we doing for our kids that are also on Facebook and Instagram and what's up. So another thing that Francis Haugen pointed out in their testimony and the 60 Minutes interview was that despite Mark Zuckerberg's claims that he's companies transparent, and they've hired thousands upon thousands of employees to oversee content, her internal documents that she's portrayed is that at best maybe 10%, 5 to 10% of contents really being discovered. And that leaves for 90% that's not being touched. So the underscoring of how many employees that Facebook hires is woefully low. And their public relations department has really put out a nice news story on what a great job they're doing to prevent this content. Yeah, and the group they had in place, I mean maybe it was just the charade, but the group they had in place before the election to stop false news was disbanded at time of the election. And they haven't been doing that. What did she say? Haugen said that they had dispersed the team to among the company and our own Brian Schatz was questioning her at this hearing a couple of days ago with it. And maybe yesterday, maybe it'll go on more today, I don't know. But what's happening is that they are not changing the algorithm and the people they dispersed from the team essentially represented the fact that the team was terminated. And that effort was terminated. So we got a problem in River City here. They've been shining us on about their efforts, you know, really going forward and going forward is much more important to social media than looking back. That algorithm is still there. And that algorithm doesn't require a million, million people to get the stuff off the web. It can be automated. Everything here can be automated. Change the priority of the news. Take that stuff off. Don't even let it go on. They can use word search and all those things. The same thing that the government uses to try to identify the bad stuff using artificial intelligence and just not let it on. Reject the post. It's so easy to do that. They don't need to spend a lot of money on it, but let me assure you, they have tons of money to spend on it. They do have tons of money. Actually, they have a trillion dollars or a trillion dollar company. So, you know, one of the things that she revealed that I thought was really on the smoking gun was they knew that the election was coming up. They knew that their algorithms could potentially lead into a, you know, some horrible violent event on election day. So they turned off the algorithm. And then once they got past the election, they turned it back on. And lo and behold, not soon after, we had January 6th. So I'm wondering if the January 6th select committee in the house will actually want to bring her forward and ask her a little bit more about that. Did Facebook have a hand in, you know, providing information for those who went to the Capitol that day and stormed it? Was there a causal connection? Was there a correlation? And so we'll find out more about that too. I remember the story of the 2016 election where Facebook actually embedded its consultants into the Trump campaign, but they did not embed their consultants into the Clinton campaign. Now that could be what they said was she didn't want them. But the bottom line is that wasn't fair reporting. The bottom line is they were in one camp, but not the other. And they were using their remarkable influence to help him in that election. I don't know what happened in 2020. Maybe they were not involved because they had been criticized for the one in 2016. But the bottom line is there's no regulation of this company. They're not regulated by the FCC. They're not regulated by any governmental agency. Maybe the SEC is a really new and important idea because they have to have some respect for the public interest. What's happening here is this runaway reporting. I'm not even reporting. It's a runaway platform and they know it and they don't do anything about it. And it has done extraordinary destruction to our health and to our democracy, among other things. It has exacerbated the division, the dividing of our country. It has done extraordinary damage. Well, you know, not only did she paint what Facebook is doing behind closed doors and some of the misrepresentation via their public relations department, but she also has some recommendations for Congress. And one of those recommendations was clean up Section 230 and make Facebook accountable and potentially liable for lawsuits in the future. So that's something that's been kicked around for now a year or a year and a half, two years about amending Section 230, which I think went in place years ago, 20, 25 years ago. Also, it was surprising that she said, don't break up Facebook. You're only going to create more little Frankensteins. I think the term Frankenstein was used. You're going to create more little Frankenstein versus one big Frankenstein. So her recommendations don't break them up. And then of course, she was saying that this isn't just a Democrat or Republican issue. It's an American public issue. And as part of that, the figures point at Instagram and how teenage girls are being adversely impacted, particularly about their body image and the fact that this is causing all sorts of mental illness for these teenage girls. And teenage girls, boys at that age have enough problems not to be amplified by Facebook or Instagram or any other social media. They have a hard enough time as it is. So her testimony was really a lot of revelations, I thought. And I wanted to get your opinion about what you thought about some of her suggestions on what Congress could do when it comes to Facebook and other social media companies. Yeah, but first, let's emphasize that this is global. It's not just the US. And it may be in some places even worse because people are suggestible. Remember that everybody in the world has a smartphone. There are billions of smartphones out there, even in developing countries. And what do they look at at the smartphone, Facebook? She's going to have testimony before in Canada. She's going to be providing testimony before their bodies of government. So you're keeping that in mind. I think the question here is leadership. It's not only taking some action about what's happening in the US. It's a US company and we are most familiar with the effect in the US. But it's also global. And leadership means that the United States government has to do something. If you recall, it was a year, a year and a half ago during the Trump administration where the Congress had hearings and they invited Zuckerberg and other big tech guys to come down and talk about it. And I remember in Zuckerberg's testimony and my own reaction was that he was bamboozling them. They didn't know it well enough. They didn't know how it worked. And he was, I would say, giving him information that was confusing them. So they didn't do anything. And they went back to the drawing boards for a year, a year and a half before they had any other hearings on this. And which I find remarkable because you think that those guys who walk around in the Capitol building know what they're doing, think again. Maybe a handful, but most of them not. And the result is they developed no political intelligence or will in the first set of hearings. They just put it off for a year or more until now about what to do. So query, are they more sophisticated now? Is she going to be their path to sophistication? Are they going to conduct other examination of other witnesses that are going to look for other whistleblowers? Are they going to formulate a plan to deal with this? You know, I really, I have no confidence in Congress. Does anybody have confidence in Congress? Let me suggest something. Let me suggest something. The House of Representatives, by definition, because they're every two-year term, by definition have a much younger demographic than the Senate. And because of that demographic by definitions, a lot of those representatives understand technology a whole lot better than their counterparts in the Senate. And so therefore you might see the House actually come up with some more palatable reforms of social media than you will see come out of the Senate. Yeah, but the Senate is a brick wall. You know, Biden can't get any of his initiatives through. And neither can the people, you know, presumably awaken people in the House. And by the way, I want to make a distinction. You know, you can have people who are Akamai about Facebook all over town, but they have to be Akamai about the public policy impacts. I mean, if they tell you, oh, yeah, I know about Facebook, I use Facebook every day. That's like a point against them. They have to see it from the 50,000-foot level, what it's doing to us, not because it gives them a thrill somehow. The other thing I wanted to mention is that, well, aside from the fact that Congress can't get anything done, it's hard to stop them. You have to regulate them. This First Amendment issues, there's the Section 230 approach, which she is right. That should happen. Congress should do that immediately. That will allow anyone who has been injured to come forward. And they can attack Facebook legally on the basis that they've been injured and Facebook cannot have the defense to say, oh, we're observers, that's all. We just let everybody come on. Even in a classical newspaper, there is an editorial process. And hopefully, other media is not doing what Facebook is doing, although I think in some cases it is. It's allowing news on that is raw meat news, trying to excite people, get viewers. Let me say also that what's happened in our news consumption and production in the world today is that viewership is everything, because viewership converts to advertising dollars and advertising dollars convert to the bottom line. So in our capitalist media society, and it's all capitalist media, what happens is the bottom line drives the media company and all its management and staff to put that kind of news on first and to focus on it and do it again and again. Even on a cable, you can see how interested they are in making a buck. Out of every 10 minutes, you get five minutes of commercials. And the same commercials over, it's really insulting to your intelligence. I really can't stand it anymore. But that is all over town. What's happened in our media community is the same process you're describing and Francis Haugen is describing in Facebook. Put on the hot stuff. Put on the raw meat. Get more advertising bucks. That's the way. And this is ruining the country. The culture has gone south. Congress has to do something. So section 230 would be good. But I would like to see somebody get in there and evaluate that algorithm and all the algorithms. Oh, they're not going to let that go. They're not going to share that. I guarantee you, that's not going to be shared for one minute. That's proprietary. That will be their position and it will not be shared with Congress or anybody else. Well, remember, they have hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby and hundreds of millions of dollars to litigate those issues in a regulatory forum. I agree. And that's why they're not going to see those algorithms. You know, I want to take issue with one thing you said about the Senate being a brick wall on this issue. You know, if you watch some of that testimony, usually when it comes to Senate hearings and even the House of Representative committee hearings, you see a lot of grandstanding from both sides, a lot of posturing. I didn't see a lot of that yesterday. I didn't see a lot of long winded speeches from politicians. What I saw was a well thoughtful and directed pointed questions to this witness. And she answered them very well. But I was impressed that the politicians in that room on that committee weren't grandstanding. And that led me to believe that maybe this is a bipartisan issue to clean up this issue with social media companies and what they're doing to the American fabric. I understand that we're not on the same page with that. And let me say this, that whatever they do and say in these hearings is a long way to legislation. It's a long, long way. And if you look at the composition of the Senate under right now, under Mitch McConnell, and you look at it after the 2022 elections, it could be much worse. So who's driving the negative force in the Senate? Well, it's the Trumpers. It's the ones who don't want to talk about investigations over the insurrection. It's the ones who want to limit Biden's initiatives or stop them all together. And this is the important thing. It's the ones who seem to be encouraging division in the country. And if you say, just so logistically, Francis Haugen is making the point that Facebook divides the country. It also provides a platform for these guys in the Senate, in the legislature, to make negative statements of one kind or another about the Democrats and their initiatives and divide the country that way. At the bottom line, at the end of the day, when Mitch McConnell has his control over the vote in the Senate, I don't think they're going to vote one vote, not one vote, to protect the public on Facebook. Okay. We're almost out of time. We didn't get to what Facebook responded. Maybe that's for another conversation, another day. But I was taken back on, you know, with a company that has these kind of assets, the lame response that they came out against Ms. Haugen. And they basically said she's a lowline employee, never had exposure to senior management, and misinterpreted what the internal documents stated. If that's the best they can do, it wasn't very good. So, you know, I know then Zuckerberg then did a 1300 word post about, you know, why Facebook would even want to take issue with, why would they do these things? It's not in their best interest. And some of those explanations are very, very lame. And so I suspect they're going to have to go back to the drawing board and say, how do we really address this political public relations nightmare before it affects our bottom line and advertisers start to pull out? Well, you know, if you really want to do something interesting, Tim, go on Facebook and write a 1300 word summary of how you feel about it and why people should, you know, cancel their accounts with Facebook and see how high that gets on the priority list, if at all. Yeah. So your last thoughts and feelings about this story and where it goes from here? Well, you know, we kind of knew they were, you know, gaming the system with us. And I'm really upset that it's not just them. It's the American need for greed and bottom line profit without regard for how it affects the public. But the media has a leverage. The media affects public opinion more than other things. The media has is at least substantially responsible for our current divisiveness. And Facebook is right at the top of the heap, way above the others. And it hasn't done anything to stop that. And the government must act or we will pay a horrendous price going forward. Last question. Do advertisers respond to this? Do they consider their options and their advertising dollars? Do they retract from Facebook in other companies like Instagram? Which is Facebook, by the way. Sorry about that. It is. Yeah, it is. It is. And the chat program too. So, you know, my feeling is that corporate America, which provides a lot of the funding and the advertising revenue to Facebook, is going to be driven by the same principles. If they think they're going to get a benefit in advertising on Facebook and earn some money, have their numbers, their sales go up, they're going to stay around. A lot of them have proven that in the case of the insurrection issues that are emerged over the same question. And my guess is that there'll be a few who are concerned about public policy and impact on the country. But I think a great number of them will keep trucking with Facebook, keep advertising on Facebook, keep paying that money so they can make leverage on it with their own sales. And that's really sad. And we need to change the culture over that. All right, Jay, you get the last word on that. And I want to thank you for your participation on this topic. I think it's something that we'll be watching and we'll see in the news a lot more here in the next six to 12 months. We'll see. So thank you again. I'm Tim Apachele, your host with What Now America. Please join us next Wednesday at 11 o'clock and we'll have a new topic and a new day. Until then, aloha.