Hi, Tristan, how are you? Hey, Ellen, it's
so good to be here. It's so nice to meet you. I watched this
documentary, which I said, "I hope everyone watches it." Please, explain what
The Social Dilemma is. Yeah, The Social Dilemma is
that we are all, three billion of us, forced to use technology
platforms that are not aligned with the public or social good. That their incentives
are different than what would be good for us,
for our mental health, for our democracy. And the fact that we
don't have another place to go that we are forced to
use this infrastructure, which is contaminated, that's
what The Social Dilemma is. Right, so you worked for Google,
and at some point, you said, "This does not work from me." What happened exactly
that made you leave? Yeah, I was working
on Gmail team, and I was noticing I was
getting addicted to email. And I was noticing I was
getting addicted to all of these social products. And all my friends-- my friends in college
actually started Instagram. So I saw how in general I felt
like we were losing our way. That more and more of our work
was about manipulating people into getting their attention
and less about what's really good for people. Why are we here in
the first place? And I made a presentation
saying never before in history have essentially 50
white guys in California decided what three billion
people's attention is going to look like. And we have a moral
responsibility in how we're shaping the
collective pool of attention. Right, and nobody
agreed with you? Well, there was a time when
the presentation exploded. It went viral within Google, and
people said, "I totally agree." But then really
nothing happened, and so since then, we've brought
together a bunch of ex-insiders to really try to
change the industry. And this film is the latest
incarnation of, I think, what's hopefully a Silent
Spring or An Inconvenient Truth moment for the tech industry. Because these
business models really are not aligned with the
well-being of society. No, and when you say that
they keep us addicted, and that's part of tech
companies' business model, explain that. Yeah, well, we think
that we're the customer, and they're just
offering us a product. But really how
much have you paid for your Instagram account or
your Facebook account recently? Not very much, zero. So how are they
worth $500 billion? Well, they make money from our
attention and our behavior. They need us to spend lots
of time on the service, and they have to--
we call it the race to the bottom of
the brain stem-- that who is willing to
go lower on the brain stem to get that attention. So a person who's checking
addictively is worth more. Are you checking
your phone right now? No, I'm kidding. [LAUGHTER] The person's worth more
if they're addictively checking their phone. Like a slot machine, sometimes
you pull that slot machine, you get something nice. You get those five
new likes or rewards. Other times you
pull the refresh, and you don't get anything. And it's that randomness
that makes it so addictive. Right, so who is the customer? Well, the customer
is the advertiser. They're the ones that are
paying for all this to happen. And so long as
that's true, we're worth more when we use the
products in certain ways, because outrage, narcissism,
addiction, polarization, disinformation are
all profitable. So the line in the film is
just so long as a whale's worth more dead than alive, and a tree
is worth more as lumber than as a tree, in this
model on technology, social media today, we're
worth more when we're addicted, distracted, outraged,
polarized, and disinformed. Because that means that
we have been successfully influenced to use these
products and to be successful for advertisers. Yeah, it's really, really sad
that everything that you just said, and it's true. We live in such
a divisive world, and social media definitely
plays a part in that. And in what way though? Yeah, well, so the way
that social media-- this is the most important part
in the film actually I think-- is if we don't have a
shared reality, where we can say there is a
shared set of facts, democracy doesn't work. Because you can't just get rid
of the other half of people who don't agree with you. So how we got here is that
imagine you're Facebook, and you had two different
kinds of newsfeeds. One was called the
affirmation feed. It just gave people things
that agree with you. And then other feed they had was
the challenge your views feed, and every time it just
shows you something that was like the world
is not as you think it is. Which of those two
feeds are you going to use more often and
more addictively and keep you coming back? The affirmation feed. And so between those
two, we say it's like a polarization-for-profit
business model, because they make more money
the more they divide society into narrower and narrower
Truman shows, where each of us get our own reality. And this has been going
on now for 10 years. And I think we haven't
really come to terms with the massive mind work,
the funhouse mirror that has reflected back
this false image of who we are as a society and then
causes these divisive changes to happen. Yeah, it's certainly
interesting, because you don't think to
blame social media for that. You blame politics. You blame everything. But it really is true, when
it just keeps giving you only what it knows you want to see. And like you said, if you
put in global warming, depending on where you
live and who you are, you get a different answer. It's fascinating. We have to take a break, but
more with Tristan after this. Are you addicted still? Do you find yourself-- I'm sure you're better
now, but are you addicted? Well, yeah actually, this
is so important, Ellen, because the thing I
really want people to know is I've literally studied
how all of this works. And it doesn't really
change the fact that we're all susceptible. Because as an
example, we're evolved to care about other
people's approval of us. So if you got 100 likes,
or if you got 100 comments, and 10 of them are
negative, we're evolved to really
care about that. And just because I know
how all this works doesn't mean that if you use
it and you're in there, it doesn't affect
you the same way. In fact, with the film's
coverage on Twitter I'm addictively
checking to see what do people think of the film. And I think that's
the thing, I think, is hopefully
illuminating for people. Is that you shouldn't
feel like it's your fault when you feel
so addicted to your phone, because there's a massive
asymmetry between the 1,000 people behind the screen
and the supercomputers that are pointed at
our brains to try to predict the perfect thing
to get us to stay longer. Hopefully, that's illuminating
and clarifying to people and gives us back some agency. Yeah, what should
parents be aware up to help protect
their kids from this? Yeah, I'm so glad
you brought this up. This is-- in the film, and it's
also deeply, deeply concerning. Because when I say it's
universally affects all of us, it affects both
adults and children. And children, if anything,
are just affected more by it, because when you're
in high school, and your self-worth and
social approval are, "Well, my friend Susie got
2,000 views on her video, and I only got 300." Even if you as a kid opt
out of the system-- let's say someone watches
the film, and they say, "I'm going to get
off of Instagram," well at that school,
everyone else is still comparing each
other based on how many views and how many likes and
what people are saying, which is what's so
diabolical about it is that they have co-opted
our sense of belonging. Because you now feel excluded
if you don't participate. TikTok, for example,
the way that they got a bunch of teenagers to
go from Instagram to TikTok is they said "Well, if you
could post a photo here, we'll give you even more
likes and more views." Because they're just
better at cycling it through different
people, and that's how they get us so addicted. It's almost like
social growth hormone. They give us this false,
inflated social approval that only leaves us
wanting more afterwards. Yeah, that's what tWitch
was talking about that this morning, about TikTok. Absolutely, and it's just-- and it is addictive. I literally just got
off TikTok right now, like right before you came on. No lie. Really? Yes, and I can open the app
without even thinking about it. And that's I guess that's
the craziest thing too. It's built into muscle memory. And yeah, this is very helpful
and scary at the same time. So what are the solutions
for parents who want kids? Because you can't
just, like you said, you can't just say you're off
of Instagram or social media. What do they do? Yeah, well, the first thing-- and we learned this from
the big tobacco movement-- if you tell someone
something's bad for you or don't do that,
they just think you're trying to control
them, and kids won't listen. That's what happened
with tobacco. What really works is if you
show the way it's manipulative, because no one wants
to feel manipulated. And so that's why this
film actually, we hope, is a conversation
starter for families. And we're seeing people across
literally the entire world in 190 countries
having conversations with their families. You can watch the film and say,
"This is how manipulatively it's designed." And then you can have a
conversation about what do you want to do to change it. I think that knowing that
an individual can unplug is one thing. But again, like we talked about,
if you're going to be excluded, another thing is to get a whole
family or group of families or a whole school to
say, "Hey, as a group, what if we get all of
our kids off of that and onto something as simple
as texting or FaceTime?" We notice that when you do a
FaceTime call with someone, there's no hearts and likes
and number of stars and things like this, because their
business model is not manipulating your attention. That's the beauty of
FaceTime is it's just a tool. And I think that's what we
want people to really get is make a distinction between
when we're the product, when we're the one being sold. Because advertising is
paying for the product, versus when we're the customer. And that's hopefully
what we can achieve by people watching the film. Well, like I said,
you're fantastic, and the fact that you
made a choice and said, "This is not ethical. This is something I don't
want to be a part of anymore." Tristan is the president of the
Center for Humane Technology. If you want to learn more about
his work, go to our website. The Social Dilemma is
streaming now on Netflix. And I really can't
say it enough. It's important for
everyone to watch. Thanks so much, Tristan. Thank you so much. Honored to be here with you. We'll be right back.
