1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,505 *rc3 2021 preroll now here @c-base* 2 00:00:04,505 --> 00:00:10,800 Herald: The Facebook files last year, Harvard graduated and Facebook employe, 3 00:00:10,800 --> 00:00:17,840 FH enhanded huge internal Facebook documents to, among others, 4 00:00:17,840 --> 00:00:25,200 newspapers, journals and in fact, the US Senate said it was there to testify about 5 00:00:25,200 --> 00:00:35,440 Facebook's conduct. This has gained quite some, quite some attention, but at 6 00:00:35,440 --> 00:00:40,000 least in Germany not as ambitious as it should have. And I'm 7 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:50,320 welcoming today. Lena? And Svea? HalIo! Will be giving us the better insight into 8 00:00:50,320 --> 00:00:57,000 Facebook files. We believe in having a 30 minute talk by the end about it wasn't in 9 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:02,880 our Q&A after that. So please do continue with your questions on the various 10 00:01:02,880 --> 00:01:10,320 channels. They will hopefully miraculously a few of this week to be transferred over 11 00:01:10,320 --> 00:01:18,720 the air to our mates, who will be giving us many insights. The screen is yours very 12 00:01:18,720 --> 00:01:22,640 much. Svea: OK. Thank you so much. It's great to 13 00:01:22,640 --> 00:01:30,000 be here. Sorry, first of all, for my voice because I'm having the Congress flu 14 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:36,480 without Congress * laughing*. No, just just the bad cold, but no COVID. So 15 00:01:36,480 --> 00:01:42,560 everything is fine. Yeah. Thank you so much for welcoming us today. Before we 16 00:01:42,560 --> 00:01:50,480 dive into the Facebook files and give you a an exclusive view and inside, let us 17 00:01:50,480 --> 00:01:54,080 shortly introduce us. So yeah, I do. Lena, you go first. 18 00:01:54,880 --> 00:01:59,840 Lena: I am Lena. I'm an investigative reporter with the WDR Zeitung in Berlin 19 00:01:59,840 --> 00:02:04,400 and they mostly work on terror investigations, but also anything complex. 20 00:02:04,400 --> 00:02:07,840 So I, of course, jumped on the Facebook files as well. 21 00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:13,920 Svea: Yes. And my name is Svea. I also am an investigative reporter working 22 00:02:13,920 --> 00:02:20,560 freelance for NDR television, mostly on tech issues. And then Lena and I, we 23 00:02:21,120 --> 00:02:28,160 worked very closely together for several weeks or months now on the Facebook files. 24 00:02:28,160 --> 00:02:35,920 We were in the team. We had the contact to FH first and Europe and also 25 00:02:35,920 --> 00:02:41,760 we had to. We had the chance to look and work very closely with the files, and we 26 00:02:41,760 --> 00:02:47,040 did a lot of stories on these issues. And so we thought, this would be a great time 27 00:02:47,040 --> 00:02:54,880 to give some behind the scenes views and to tell you a little bit what's not all 28 00:02:54,880 --> 00:03:00,880 in all the newspapers, some more details about, FH and also what's in 29 00:03:00,880 --> 00:03:07,040 the files and what's not in the files and how they should be read or interpreted. So 30 00:03:07,040 --> 00:03:13,840 this is what this is about, and I will now open the presentation on the screen and 31 00:03:14,640 --> 00:03:24,000 vanish behind behind it. So yeah, have a great time and Lena will start first. OK, 32 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:31,840 let's see. This is who we are you. We just told you. And then let's go, Lena. 33 00:03:32,640 --> 00:03:39,840 Lena: I consider the presentation, Svea: OK, sorry. Then let's just get to 34 00:03:39,840 --> 00:03:48,160 make sure that yes, is it? Yes. Sorry. OK, now this should work. Who is FH? 35 00:03:48,160 --> 00:03:52,400 OK. Lena, you go first. Lena: So who is FH? Most of 36 00:03:52,400 --> 00:03:56,640 you have seen already, but in the beginning wasn't so clear in September, 37 00:03:56,640 --> 00:04:01,280 when, in September 2021, the Wall Street Journal started publishing a series of 38 00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:07,120 articles and podcasts under the name of the Facebook Files. The leaker was still 39 00:04:07,120 --> 00:04:11,280 anonymous. The reports were riveting because these journalists from the Wall 40 00:04:11,280 --> 00:04:16,160 Street Journal had were using hundreds and thousands of internal documents from 41 00:04:16,160 --> 00:04:22,800 Facebook Internal Employee Network, and only after a few weeks it was announced 42 00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:28,240 that the leaker will cooperate with Congress and the SEC, the Securities and 43 00:04:28,240 --> 00:04:34,400 Exchange Commission, and reveal their identity and. By then, we were already 44 00:04:34,400 --> 00:04:40,800 talking to Frances in video call, and she appeared on the screen as a very normal 45 00:04:40,800 --> 00:04:48,320 woman, our age with headphones and on her couch. And until October, the beginning of 46 00:04:48,320 --> 00:04:54,240 October, we knew her under a codename. So until she really revealed her identity, 47 00:04:54,240 --> 00:05:02,320 she was also using a code name with us as journalists. And. Yeah, we learned that 48 00:05:02,320 --> 00:05:07,280 that she was 37 years old, she was born in Iowa. And both her parents are professors, 49 00:05:08,160 --> 00:05:13,040 but her mother later became a priest. And Frances went on to study electrical 50 00:05:13,040 --> 00:05:17,040 computer engineering at a small college named Olin College in Massachusetts, 51 00:05:17,760 --> 00:05:22,960 and she later became a data engineer and product manager for Google, mainly working 52 00:05:22,960 --> 00:05:34,480 on Google books. Then she got a job at Yelp and Pinterest. And then in 2018, she 53 00:05:34,480 --> 00:05:40,800 got offered a job at Facebook. And first she was very hesitant. She told us because 54 00:05:40,800 --> 00:05:45,360 of Facebook, the reputation for being an engine of medicalization and because of 55 00:05:45,360 --> 00:05:49,920 the personal experience. Frances, how happened to her friends? And this is a 56 00:05:49,920 --> 00:05:57,329 clip from our interview last year. *video plays* Yeah, let's try to do what I want 57 00:05:57,329 --> 00:06:05,802 to do to what you do. So I came into Facebook. I was asked by Facebook to take 58 00:06:05,802 --> 00:06:10,176 stock of mobile to give a platform exclusively outage and point system. It 59 00:06:10,176 --> 00:06:13,922 has the internet become easy to talk to? That is yes. No, Oh my God, this problem 60 00:06:13,922 --> 00:06:17,440 is still going to feel so much larger than you might otherwise. *Video ends* 61 00:06:17,440 --> 00:06:26,080 Lena: So as soon as we heard when she arrived at Facebook, the disenchantment or 62 00:06:26,080 --> 00:06:34,363 the the problems she saw started immediately because immediately she saw 63 00:06:34,363 --> 00:06:39,492 that. What she had thought of Facebook as an engine of radicalization was even 64 00:06:39,492 --> 00:06:45,888 bigger. And with her personal experience, just to explain that in a few years back, 65 00:06:45,888 --> 00:06:51,879 she got very sick and she had an assistant who later became almost like a brother, a 66 00:06:51,879 --> 00:07:00,382 very close friend, and she lost him to the rabbit hole. His journey started. Yeah, 67 00:07:00,382 --> 00:07:07,464 on normal social media sites and that 4chan and let him through the of 68 00:07:07,464 --> 00:07:14,127 conspiracy. And she told her that she was shocked, that she lost him and that he was 69 00:07:14,127 --> 00:07:20,014 unreachable for facts. At some point, she wasn't able to have a conversation with 70 00:07:20,014 --> 00:07:24,680 him anymore. So when she got offered the job and was able to do the job and the 71 00:07:24,680 --> 00:07:30,090 integrity method, the team at Facebook that was formed to protect the US 72 00:07:30,090 --> 00:07:40,495 elections and working on civic integrity. She really thought that you could make a 73 00:07:40,495 --> 00:07:52,147 change. But she realized, that the companies, she said, didn't want 74 00:07:52,147 --> 00:07:58,994 to change, although she really admired her coworkers. He said they were really smart 75 00:07:58,994 --> 00:08:03,745 and creative people. But she said the leadership didn't want to listen. And so 76 00:08:03,745 --> 00:08:13,422 in the end, after about two years, she became a whistleblower. And when you talk 77 00:08:13,422 --> 00:08:20,304 to her today. You can see that it seems like she's the perfect person to do that. 78 00:08:20,304 --> 00:08:24,917 She seems really at ease with her role, and she's found her role also to be in the 79 00:08:24,917 --> 00:08:28,567 public and to put a face on the whistleblowing. She says her both 80 00:08:28,567 --> 00:08:32,440 parents are professors, and it feels very natural to her to sit and explain things 81 00:08:32,440 --> 00:08:37,885 to people. And that's what she does now as a teenager. She's really touring the world 82 00:08:37,885 --> 00:08:43,757 to get her message out. And also we learn that she has a photographic memory, a very 83 00:08:43,757 --> 00:08:48,636 good memory, and that she's financially independent because she invested in crypto 84 00:08:48,636 --> 00:09:02,432 in the early days. So, yeah, she seems to be. Yeah, yeah. Whistleblower, almost. And 85 00:09:02,432 --> 00:09:07,366 gone, yeah. But let's go to her motivated way in the end, she wanted to become a 86 00:09:07,366 --> 00:09:19,280 whistleblower. So these two clips from our interview again, she told us that 87 00:09:19,920 --> 00:09:26,640 when she was at Facebook: "I was faced. So this is hard. Patients, I was faced with 88 00:09:26,640 --> 00:09:31,680 information that I believe put many, maybe a million or 10 million lives on the line. 89 00:09:32,400 --> 00:09:37,600 I sat there and you were staring down at a situation where you believe maybe 10 90 00:09:37,600 --> 00:09:42,240 million people could die over the next 20 years. And I knew that I had the 91 00:09:42,240 --> 00:09:46,640 information that could potentially face in a fraction of those life. She has to do 92 00:09:46,640 --> 00:09:52,960 something." And now she says: "It's not about bad people or bad content at Facebook, 93 00:09:52,960 --> 00:09:58,480 it's about a system. And like either the organization incentives or the 94 00:09:58,480 --> 00:10:06,160 incentives at Facebook, they are they. They are wrong. They are skewed." And then 95 00:10:06,160 --> 00:10:11,920 also, she says that she failed to change the system from within, and she realized: 96 00:10:11,920 --> 00:10:14,880 "This problem was so much larger than even I thought it was. I kept trying and 97 00:10:14,880 --> 00:10:18,320 trying. At some point, I read the realization that there was enough 98 00:10:18,320 --> 00:10:23,440 systematic problems that I would have at some point to figure out how to bring the 99 00:10:23,440 --> 00:10:30,080 information to the public." So she tried actually to make her complaints heard in 100 00:10:30,080 --> 00:10:35,315 the company, but that she had the the she was under the impression, that the 101 00:10:35,315 --> 00:10:41,685 leadership didn't want to listen. Svea: Yes. And I think with this things 102 00:10:41,685 --> 00:10:49,952 you have now learned about FH I think if you know all this things you 103 00:10:49,952 --> 00:10:56,920 can understand the leak much better and this is what we're going to do now. So we 104 00:10:56,920 --> 00:11:02,846 will dive into the Files. And if you have all this in mind, so what was her 105 00:11:02,846 --> 00:11:09,044 motivation, then you will now see and understand better, why some things are in 106 00:11:09,044 --> 00:11:15,360 the Files and why some things aren't. Because you now know why she did what she 107 00:11:15,360 --> 00:11:24,389 did and what type of person so roughly she is. So let's go to the revelation timeline 108 00:11:24,389 --> 00:11:34,040 just just quickly here. In December 2020, she worked into the Civic Integrity Team, 109 00:11:34,040 --> 00:11:39,722 but this team got dissolved and there was a Wall Street Journal reporter and he saw 110 00:11:39,722 --> 00:11:46,130 a chance and asked all these, all the people who worked there, and he tried to 111 00:11:46,130 --> 00:11:50,770 get interviews with them. And he also got the chance to meet FH and 112 00:11:50,770 --> 00:11:56,648 probably the and the podcast from Wall Street Journal he tells the story that 113 00:11:56,648 --> 00:12:04,600 they were talking to each other. And yeah, probably this also. Yeah. Get confidence 114 00:12:04,600 --> 00:12:09,187 that there's somebody she probably could talk to, and we assume that then she 115 00:12:09,187 --> 00:12:15,109 started collecting the files, but this stays blurry. So maybe she started 116 00:12:15,109 --> 00:12:20,117 earlier. But this is something not which is not really known and which is not 117 00:12:20,117 --> 00:12:24,300 really answered clearly. So she's always when we asked her, she was always speaking 118 00:12:24,300 --> 00:12:30,085 from summer. So summer, summer, maybe this is the summer 21, then the Wall Street 119 00:12:30,085 --> 00:12:34,865 Journal story just got out. And I think what's also interesting here to see is, 120 00:12:34,865 --> 00:12:40,335 that you have this time period from December to September. So more than half a 121 00:12:40,335 --> 00:12:47,165 year from the first contact, from the reporter to the leakage. So I think this 122 00:12:47,165 --> 00:12:53,408 is quite interesting. And then you have the filing to the S.E.C. and to U.S. 123 00:12:53,408 --> 00:13:00,211 Congress via whistleblower AID. We will talk about this later, too. And then 124 00:13:00,211 --> 00:13:08,846 things get rush and then things get IQ each or then the everything gets very 125 00:13:08,846 --> 00:13:14,014 fast. So there you have the filing, then you have the revealing of the identity. 126 00:13:14,014 --> 00:13:20,037 And on the 5th of October, she is speaking to Congress and then all the publications 127 00:13:20,037 --> 00:13:26,845 maybe you all have read or some of them, who you have read went out. So it's pretty 128 00:13:26,845 --> 00:13:32,628 interesting to see now. Oh yeah. And then we also implemented when we come and 129 00:13:32,628 --> 00:13:37,755 place, what was in the beginning of October. This is where we broke the first 130 00:13:37,755 --> 00:13:43,920 story. And then formed the EU consortium. So we thought, maybe what's most what's 131 00:13:43,920 --> 00:13:48,330 probably most interesting for you here, guys, is not the question what's in the 132 00:13:48,330 --> 00:13:53,840 files? We'll tell about this later, too, about what? What's not in the files? Maybe 133 00:13:53,840 --> 00:13:59,616 this is the more interesting question. And so to get the answer to that, it's 134 00:13:59,616 --> 00:14:05,629 really important to understand the nature of the files where the files come from and 135 00:14:05,629 --> 00:14:10,249 about what kind of files we are talking when we're speaking about the Facebook 136 00:14:10,249 --> 00:14:20,859 files. And as Lena already mentioned, FH was a data scientist within 137 00:14:20,859 --> 00:14:25,427 Facebook. She worked with the Civic Integrity Team and later she worked with 138 00:14:25,427 --> 00:14:30,994 counter-espionage. So she was regular Facebook employee. She had she hadn't have 139 00:14:30,994 --> 00:14:36,754 a high rank or something. She wasn't part of the board or she wasn't an executive 140 00:14:36,754 --> 00:14:44,813 person. So of course, she had limited access to documents. But yeah, luckily for 141 00:14:44,813 --> 00:14:51,334 her, Facebook maintains a quite transparent approach regarding its own 142 00:14:51,334 --> 00:14:55,910 research and a lot of other relevant information, probably a lot more 143 00:14:55,910 --> 00:15:01,206 transparent than other companies. So you, you have and Facebook, you have some kind 144 00:15:01,206 --> 00:15:07,934 of internal Facebook, which is called a workplace and and workplace. You find a 145 00:15:07,934 --> 00:15:15,267 vast, vast amount of internal research reports and people are discussing this 146 00:15:15,267 --> 00:15:22,437 research with each other. And but I must admit so in these research that you have a 147 00:15:22,437 --> 00:15:27,945 lot of technical terms and you have a lot of teams speaking to each other, the 148 00:15:27,945 --> 00:15:35,155 researches made for Facebook employees. Of course, it's full of abbreviations or 149 00:15:35,155 --> 00:15:42,240 yeah, terms you can't or hardly understand as an outsider, so we will get 150 00:15:42,240 --> 00:15:49,178 into that later. So to give you a glimpse of how is a file, how what did we see when 151 00:15:49,178 --> 00:15:55,161 we dived into it? So you have these totally unstructured PDF documents with 152 00:15:55,161 --> 00:16:01,888 more than an estimated 10000 pages? They all photographed. And there you have this 153 00:16:01,888 --> 00:16:08,270 research and also these discussions and you see here where I did the pink arrows. 154 00:16:08,270 --> 00:16:13,480 You can see how it looks and it looks a little bit like Facebook. You have groups 155 00:16:13,480 --> 00:16:18,596 of groups and you have comments, you have smileys and then you have these black 156 00:16:18,596 --> 00:16:23,991 redactions, which were made later on because all these fires were made for 157 00:16:23,991 --> 00:16:30,660 Congress. And so all the names were redacted. And this this is pretty 158 00:16:30,660 --> 00:16:37,870 important to know when you think about what the files don't tell. So what's 159 00:16:37,870 --> 00:16:45,086 missing? As I told you, that FH, she was part of the executive 160 00:16:45,086 --> 00:16:52,374 board, so it is not in the files what Mark Zuckerberg or other key executive know. As 161 00:16:52,374 --> 00:16:58,572 these are not reports directly to Mark Zuckerberg as these are research reports 162 00:16:58,572 --> 00:17:06,605 for the internal network. So they don't say much about leadership or about 163 00:17:06,605 --> 00:17:12,729 decisions from leadership or what was discussed by leadership. Sometimes you 164 00:17:12,729 --> 00:17:18,302 have these postings in the internal Facebook where leadership is discussing 165 00:17:18,302 --> 00:17:23,734 something, so you get an idea or a glimpse what the board or what high rank execute 166 00:17:23,734 --> 00:17:29,360 thoughts. But this is basically something what the files are not telling. 167 00:17:29,360 --> 00:17:36,706 Then the Facebook files don't provide any context. And this is something I've ... 168 00:17:36,706 --> 00:17:42,889 what also FH thinks, what's yeah, really is the reason why she gave all 169 00:17:42,889 --> 00:17:49,270 these files to journalists, because she hoped that we could provide context, 170 00:17:49,270 --> 00:17:56,720 because there are no information on who did the report. So usually the authors 171 00:17:56,720 --> 00:18:02,392 redacted. So you can't see. Is he a good researcher? Is he long working with his 172 00:18:02,392 --> 00:18:08,319 book or what? What has he got for an education? So you don't know how reliable 173 00:18:08,319 --> 00:18:14,360 they are or what happened before the study, or after all? And I think this is 174 00:18:14,360 --> 00:18:19,994 very important and we especially saw this. I don't know if you remember the reporting 175 00:18:19,994 --> 00:18:25,956 on the Instagram study and when you read the Instagram study very closely, you see 176 00:18:25,956 --> 00:18:32,328 that there that they are talking about a dozen people who they have conducted 177 00:18:32,328 --> 00:18:39,700 interviews, qualitative interviews with. And this is a research which is highly 178 00:18:39,700 --> 00:18:46,640 qualitative and not quantitative, so it's not representative. And so this is very 179 00:18:46,640 --> 00:18:53,529 important if you look at the files that you look at the numbers, how many people 180 00:18:53,529 --> 00:19:01,173 with how many people are study is conducted or with how many accounts or how 181 00:19:01,173 --> 00:19:07,574 many? Yeah, what what is it really about? And then you also see in the file that 182 00:19:07,574 --> 00:19:12,369 there are specific areas which are very well represented, like hate speech. I 183 00:19:12,369 --> 00:19:19,376 think this is an issue, FH worked a lot on it and the civic integrity teams 184 00:19:19,376 --> 00:19:24,042 at other areas are missing or not represented. So, for 185 00:19:24,042 --> 00:19:29,333 example, I'm very interested in fake accounts. So this was the first thing I 186 00:19:29,333 --> 00:19:34,791 did when I was sweating through the files and what is what research is down fake 187 00:19:34,791 --> 00:19:41,209 accounts. There is some research, of course, but yeah, I was I was saying, I 188 00:19:41,209 --> 00:19:47,416 was missing content and I thought, Oh, there need to be more or about scam. I 189 00:19:47,416 --> 00:19:52,097 don't know if you know, love scams, though. I did not find anything about this 190 00:19:52,097 --> 00:19:56,775 or click farms, then engagement numbers. They are some engagement numbers, but not 191 00:19:56,775 --> 00:20:03,871 that much. So I I can only speculate about why there are some areas very well 192 00:20:03,871 --> 00:20:09,834 represented in the files, and some aren't. But I think probably this are different 193 00:20:09,834 --> 00:20:17,819 reasons. So on the one hand, FH, she had a specific time, limited time to 194 00:20:17,819 --> 00:20:26,192 get these files and also probably she had limited areas where she could go and read 195 00:20:26,192 --> 00:20:32,442 these documents. And also, of course, these are internal research. This is 196 00:20:32,442 --> 00:20:37,395 entirely research. These are internal studies. So there are only studies that 197 00:20:37,395 --> 00:20:41,948 facebook employes start. This was some kind we definitely should 198 00:20:41,948 --> 00:20:46,711 investigate, and if there's no if they didn't feel the urge to investigate it, of 199 00:20:46,711 --> 00:20:52,862 course they can't be a file. So these are some reasons, I think, why some areas are 200 00:20:52,862 --> 00:21:01,648 missing. OK, so now *laugh* let's get to the good part. So what's In the files? I 201 00:21:01,648 --> 00:21:07,534 think some of you probably have read or heard about the Wall Street Journal 202 00:21:07,534 --> 00:21:13,014 revelations, so we do not want to dive into this because this is broadly known 203 00:21:13,014 --> 00:21:17,880 about, that celebrities were treated differently, that human trafficking goes 204 00:21:17,880 --> 00:21:24,914 on on Facebook. I don't know who watched Jan Bömermann. He began talking about this 205 00:21:24,914 --> 00:21:30,847 on that Instagram was toxic for teens or Mexican drug cartels using Facebook, or 206 00:21:30,847 --> 00:21:36,007 that Facebook changed the news algorithm and polarization got worse. So this are 207 00:21:36,007 --> 00:21:42,774 the this is where the first revelations. So let's talk about growth. So this was 208 00:21:42,774 --> 00:21:47,579 something I was looking into it's, because I'm pretty interested in the whole fake 209 00:21:47,579 --> 00:21:53,398 accounts area. So I looked into growth and I found it pretty interesting because 210 00:21:53,398 --> 00:21:59,636 Facebook is always speaking about growth and that they are growing and making more 211 00:21:59,636 --> 00:22:05,723 and more profits. And of course, this is true. But if you look through the files 212 00:22:05,723 --> 00:22:11,476 and you can see that young users, especially users under the age of 25, that 213 00:22:11,476 --> 00:22:17,128 these are the numbers are decreasing. And that's what you can see here pretty 214 00:22:17,128 --> 00:22:22,720 closely. You have the red line and then you have the blue line. These are 215 00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:31,910 symbolizing the younger users under 25. And even in COVID times where you have on 216 00:22:31,910 --> 00:22:39,543 the right corners, you see this spike and all the other age groups, especially, I 217 00:22:39,543 --> 00:22:44,769 think people above 50 got highly interested in Facebook during COVID. Now 218 00:22:44,769 --> 00:22:50,240 it's just shocking. So you have every age group is highly is using Facebook more 219 00:22:51,040 --> 00:22:58,560 during COVID, but not so that people under 25. And this is pretty interesting because 220 00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:05,200 of the filing for the FCC, the Börsenaufsicht and there because what is 221 00:23:05,200 --> 00:23:10,240 with the advertisers and is Facebook really telling the truth when they always 222 00:23:10,240 --> 00:23:16,720 talking about growth and profits. Then I think hate speech pretty important. And 223 00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:22,720 there are a lot of case studies about especially poorer countries or high risk 224 00:23:22,720 --> 00:23:27,760 countries and that they are the polarization goes on and that Facebook is 225 00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:36,320 not taking enough measures, especially for sub languages on the far right for Arabic 226 00:23:36,320 --> 00:23:43,200 countries or Asian countries or African countries. Even worse, where you have 227 00:23:43,200 --> 00:23:47,520 often a lot of dialects and a lot of languages, and that there are not many 228 00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:53,840 people doing, for example, content moderation. And one of the probably most 229 00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:59,600 difficult documents, but I think one of the most interesting ones, this one. So 230 00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:05,440 sorry, I think you can't read a lot, but I will explain as this report, it's called 231 00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:12,160 the OpEx report. And it's it's really a long document with a lot of numbers, but I 232 00:24:12,160 --> 00:24:16,240 liked it very much because there were so many numbers and it was quite an official 233 00:24:16,240 --> 00:24:23,200 document and not only a study of one researcher did, and in his opex report, 234 00:24:23,200 --> 00:24:27,760 you can see the missed proportion and spending money to fight misinformation 235 00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:34,160 between English speaking countries like the U.S. and ArW, this the rest of world. 236 00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:40,800 So you see here on the document, on the right, you see on the first column you see 237 00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:46,720 misinformation and then you have these rows and then on the row, the right 238 00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:53,280 corner, you can see that money or man hours. Is this transferred into man hours 239 00:24:53,920 --> 00:25:03,200 that 84 percent man hours? Here is the first Quartal quarter of 2020 that 84 240 00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:11,440 percent was spent for misinformation, and rest of world is 16 percent, which if you 241 00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:17,360 compare the U.S. to the rest of the world, you can see definitely see where the 242 00:25:17,360 --> 00:25:23,360 focus, where Facebook focus lies. And this of this also was one document FH 243 00:25:23,360 --> 00:25:28,080 pointed us through and said, You have to check the numbers and then you can 244 00:25:28,080 --> 00:25:34,800 see what I mean when I say they are, yeah, profit and growth is more important for 245 00:25:34,800 --> 00:25:43,600 Facebook than human lives. I hope this very yeah, this document makes this clear. 246 00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:50,160 OK, yeah. What does Facebook say? Facebook says, No. We're doing a lot of course and 247 00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:56,080 everything and the people using Facebook. This is really important to us. OK, and 248 00:25:56,080 --> 00:26:03,120 now for the last part, I give, yeah, Lena will tell you something more about the 249 00:26:03,120 --> 00:26:09,040 fight within. Lena: Yeah, thank you very much. So what is really interesting to us 250 00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:14,560 is to see the discussion in the work culture and the discussions among among 251 00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:19,760 teams and among employees. And you could see that in the chat, that was going on, 252 00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:27,360 especially under some of the studies. And it was kind of confirming our impression 253 00:26:27,360 --> 00:26:32,960 that Facebook, that there was a lot of debate, internal debate and that there was 254 00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:38,320 a lot of frustration among employees because as we have counted, there were at 255 00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:45,440 least 11 major leaks since 2016. Most of them remained anonymous. But there were 256 00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:52,400 also some that happened that went public. For example, Sophie Zangh went public 257 00:26:52,400 --> 00:27:01,520 in April 2000 and 2021, and there was just a few months before FH came 258 00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:09,680 out and became public and made that made it public that she had leaked documents. 259 00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:14,800 Zangh has not leaked any documents that she had talked to reporters. And and and 260 00:27:14,800 --> 00:27:23,600 she hurt her when she entered her employment with Facebook. And she said she 261 00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:28,160 posted a batch post this kind of part of the internal exchanges, and we found many 262 00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:34,950 of these batch posts. And she posted, I found multiple blatant attempts by foreign 263 00:27:34,950 --> 00:27:39,280 national governments to abuse our platform and that failed to mislead their own 264 00:27:39,280 --> 00:27:45,280 citizenry and cost international news on multiple occasions. And she was just as 265 00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:53,360 FH, she was concerned with Facebook lack of content moderation and 266 00:27:53,360 --> 00:27:59,760 lack of enforcement of community standards outside of the U.S.. And so this just to 267 00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:08,320 show you that in term of debate was very, very public internally. So I mean, we 268 00:28:08,320 --> 00:28:18,880 found another batch code. It was called leaving Q&A. This was from May 2000 at 269 00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:31,280 from May 2021, and there this person was concerned about hate speech and this 270 00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:35,520 person said she couldn't take it anymore just to be an on Facebook employee because 271 00:28:35,520 --> 00:28:39,840 she says with so many internal forces propping up the production of hateful and violent 272 00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:45,840 content. The task of stopping hate and violence on Facebook starts to feel even 273 00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:50,560 more sisyphean than it already is and shaming internal forces, meaning the 274 00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:58,240 leadership and this is something that I, this person says, so many internal 275 00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:03,440 forces and the leadership. This is something that FH was also 276 00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:10,000 really concerned about that. On the one hand, there are people working on 277 00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:15,440 combating hate speech and changing the algorithms to make it more a better and 278 00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:21,680 safer environment. And then, on the other hand, that there are some forces in that 279 00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:30,000 in the company that apparently work against these efforts. And this fight that 280 00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:35,520 we could see, could you go back, and this fight that we could see was 281 00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:50,080 especially viral after January six, after the storm of the Capitol and their 282 00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:55,680 employees were very much discussing and they were very they were furious. And one 283 00:29:55,680 --> 00:30:00,480 one person has said, we've been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn't 284 00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:05,200 be surprised. It's now out of control. So employers are giving Facebook 285 00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:12,400 responsibility for the development. And another person said, employers employees 286 00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:17,280 should say employees are tired of thoughts and prayers from leadership. We want 287 00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:22,480 action. And another person said so many research backed ideas get shut down. We 288 00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:26,800 need to do a better job at making decisions from a research perspective, and 289 00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:32,560 this is something that's also very close to FH. She said in our 290 00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:40,376 interview, she says there are solutions that are there are wonderful employers and 291 00:30:40,376 --> 00:30:45,679 wonderful teams, who are working to come up with solutions. But they are they are 292 00:30:45,679 --> 00:30:52,897 blocked by leadership out of a for profit interests. And this here's a screenshot of 293 00:30:52,897 --> 00:30:59,305 another person saying I'm struggling to match my values to my employment here. I 294 00:30:59,305 --> 00:31:04,737 came here hoping to effect change and improve society, but I've seen it atrophy 295 00:31:04,737 --> 00:31:10,033 and abdication of responsibility. I'm tired of platitudes. I want action items. 296 00:31:10,033 --> 00:31:16,755 We are not a neutral entity, so employee seems to be extremely critical of 297 00:31:16,755 --> 00:31:32,230 Facebook. Yeah. And so as a general take away, you could say that we expect to see 298 00:31:32,230 --> 00:31:37,760 more leaks from Facebook. We expect to see more whistleblowers coming out of this 299 00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:42,307 work culture because people seem to be extremely frustrated. And this is also 300 00:31:42,307 --> 00:31:46,696 just to wrap it up. This is Facebook reaction to the Facebook files and the 301 00:31:46,696 --> 00:31:53,169 revelation that came out after October 4th after after FH went public at Mark 302 00:31:53,169 --> 00:31:59,820 Zuckerberg said this week. And in a message to his employees, he said: "We care 303 00:31:59,820 --> 00:32:05,047 deeply about issues like safety, well- being and mental health and the coverage 304 00:32:05,047 --> 00:32:13,160 that misrepresents our work and our motive." And Facebook Communications VP 305 00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:22,045 John Pernetti said. Even that it was an orchestrated campaign against Facebook and 306 00:32:22,045 --> 00:32:27,594 in response to our reporting, he said: "We welcome scrutiny and feedback that these 307 00:32:27,594 --> 00:32:32,021 documents are being used to paint a narrative that we hide or that that that 308 00:32:32,021 --> 00:32:36,655 was terrible, that we hide or cherry picked data when in fact we do the 309 00:32:36,655 --> 00:32:43,199 opposite." So they are they they are kind of blankly refusing FH 310 00:32:43,199 --> 00:32:52,800 accusations. But earn a T. What what's happened to FH during this 311 00:32:52,800 --> 00:33:00,160 process? I think he was talking to a reporter early on and she was on her own. 312 00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:08,080 But when when she started and when when the when the revelations started in The 313 00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:17,920 Wall Street Journal, apparently we don't know. And I am sorry, I'm hearing the 314 00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:24,160 sound from the c-base, and that's why I was a bit confused. But in the process of 315 00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:29,920 leaking documents, she got in contact with the whistleblower aid, which was founded 316 00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:39,200 by a former whistleblower, John Tye, and which is a nonprofit organization claiming 317 00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:42,560 that no one should have to risk their career or their freedom to follow their 318 00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:48,320 conscience. And some of you may know the executive director Libby knew a former CEO 319 00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:56,080 of Open Technology Fund, so they helped Frances to making a protected protected 320 00:33:56,720 --> 00:34:06,960 disclosure. And she also had lawyers who represent her. They are from Bryson 321 00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:13,840 Gillette. That's a consulting firm and law firm founded 2020 by Bill Burton. He was a former 322 00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:19,760 spokesman, the deputy spokesman of Obama and the Bryson Gillette, and that is also 323 00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:23,360 involved with the Lincoln Project. So they are clearly from the democratic spectrum. 324 00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:29,040 And this was also why Facebook could easily make the claim that it was an 325 00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:35,360 orchestrated campaign by the Democrats, an orchestrated political campaign. We think 326 00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:41,520 that. But let's go on to a more groups involved with Francis just to wrap it up 327 00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:47,840 and let us Luminate, which is founded by Pierre Omidyar the founder of eBay, 328 00:34:48,560 --> 00:34:53,600 and also Ben Scott been involved there. He's a senior policy adviser for innovation at 329 00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:59,280 the U.S. Department of State and Hillary Clinton and was there, and they are 330 00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:05,840 cooperating closely on funding. For example, recent tech operating also in the 331 00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:11,200 U.S. and Europe. The nonprofit lobbies a lobbying organization that wants to 332 00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:16,183 regulate the market for Big Tech. So these organizations, they come from the 333 00:35:16,183 --> 00:35:20,636 democratic spectrum. There's no question, but we see that a rethink and our 334 00:35:20,636 --> 00:35:28,301 impression was that they were mentioned matching FH interest. So they 335 00:35:28,301 --> 00:35:35,327 have kind of the same goal. So they came they came together in the process. 336 00:35:35,327 --> 00:35:46,880 Svea: Yeah, really important to see now, OK, what's next? So we have reported on 337 00:35:46,880 --> 00:35:55,200 the Facebook Files in Europe, in the U.S., but it's pretty exciting to see. Yeah, 338 00:35:55,200 --> 00:36:00,560 what is happening? Is Facebook changing something or is there any regulation 339 00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:06,560 coming? So of course, the future is still open and not written, but to give you a 340 00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:12,400 little bit a glimpse what happened after the 7th of October? So then, yeah, FH 341 00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:18,400 went on some kind of tour through Europe? Though she was a London, she was 342 00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:24,560 at this bar Lisbon, and in November she went to Berlin, to Brussels and to Paris. 343 00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:30,160 So why did she do that? Why did she travel from Puerto Rico to the U.S. and then from 344 00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:36,720 the U.S. through Europe? I think every three days another city, it was a tour 345 00:36:36,720 --> 00:36:42,240 like kind of a rock star or something. Why did she do this? Yeah, it is. Because, 346 00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:48,080 yeah, they she clearly has some kind of agenda. She definitely wants to change. 347 00:36:48,080 --> 00:36:54,240 And she did not want to throw a lot of documents in the internet and then hide in 348 00:36:54,240 --> 00:36:59,200 the castle or somewhere else. She definitely wanted something. Yeah, she she 349 00:36:59,200 --> 00:37:07,760 wanted action. So she had big hopes in Europe because as probably some of you 350 00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:14,240 know, here that Digital Services Act is debated. It was debated in the parliament 351 00:37:14,240 --> 00:37:20,640 and now it's up to the commission. So hopefully next year, the Digital Services 352 00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:29,360 Act will be in place. And yeah, she and also many other groups are hoping for more 353 00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:35,360 regulations and control regarding especially content moderation, fiiles and 354 00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:42,640 also transparency, so that you can see what is going on on these platforms and in 355 00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:50,800 the U.S. the hope lies in Congress and in the SEC . So I think I'm sure they hope 356 00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:56,320 that the SEC will have a billion or billion dollar fine on Facebook and also 357 00:37:56,320 --> 00:38:04,000 probably pushes for more regulation. And the discussion centers around that news, 358 00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:10,320 getting more control of that data that that there's more transparency and 359 00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:16,800 probably that also there's more taxation, probably on digital ads just yet to make 360 00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:23,440 the business model harder. Because I think also this is only one way to come by is 361 00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:31,600 yeah, to to do something about the business model. OK. So yeah, we hope you 362 00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:36,480 enjoyed our presentation and we yeah, I want to thank you for listening and also 363 00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:41,600 big thanks to the team who work for that. And I hope we have another five to 10 364 00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:43,600 minutes for some Q&A. 365 00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:48,800 Herald: Yes, thank you. Yes, we have indeed another 10 minutes before we have 366 00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:53,840 to prepare for the next talk. Thank you very much for this. These 45 minutes of 367 00:38:53,840 --> 00:39:03,680 content *Svea laughs* very well, you are. You are giving the impression 368 00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:08,800 your presentation gives the impression that Facebook is basically watching from 369 00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:16,000 within. It's a question when mutiny within the Facebook workforce will break out and 370 00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:22,240 that 85 percent of all the content comes from payments for the ugly content and not 371 00:39:23,360 --> 00:39:30,800 for the good one. How true is this? How how evil is Facebook compared to other 372 00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:36,560 debated evil doers like Telegram or others? What do you think? 373 00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:49,848 Svea: I think that, you know, the Facebook files and you have like the feeling that 374 00:39:49,848 --> 00:39:56,292 you are in a submarine as you're diving into the Marine, you know, and you start 375 00:39:56,292 --> 00:40:01,578 diving underwater and then you go with the light bulb, you know, with one light and 376 00:40:01,578 --> 00:40:07,041 then you shed into the dark and this other Facebook files and you can't see what 377 00:40:07,041 --> 00:40:12,536 surrounds this. So we definitely. So I think it's it's not fair to say like the 378 00:40:12,536 --> 00:40:17,742 whole company is so also it's only fair to say that and, what you can see on the 379 00:40:17,742 --> 00:40:23,400 comments, for example, after the storm of the Capitol, where many employees were 380 00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:28,798 speaking. So I think it's not that the whole company is rotten from within, but 381 00:40:28,798 --> 00:40:33,760 of course, there are parts which are rotten. And this, I think, is shown in the 382 00:40:33,760 --> 00:40:39,446 files. I think it's really hard to compare Facebook to Telegram or Google or 383 00:40:39,446 --> 00:40:46,200 something because I think a Facebook or Meta, as they now called, it's quite a 384 00:40:46,200 --> 00:40:53,297 very unique player on the market. They are. Yeah, they bought Instagram. They 385 00:40:53,297 --> 00:41:00,030 bought WhatsApp. You can't compare Facebook or Meta to Telegram because this 386 00:41:00,030 --> 00:41:06,596 is a completely different scale. So yeah, that's that's I hope I could. It's a 387 00:41:06,596 --> 00:41:11,713 little bit of a philosophical question, so I hope my answer is okay *laughs*. 388 00:41:11,713 --> 00:41:17,961 Herald: I mean, that's OK. You know... Lena: I want to add, I think it's true. 389 00:41:17,961 --> 00:41:24,483 What we have, we are only seeing a glimpse of, of course, of some of the internal 390 00:41:24,483 --> 00:41:29,632 discussions. But it gives us an impression. And I think the impression I 391 00:41:29,632 --> 00:41:34,680 would see, I would say, is right that there are a lot of frustration among the 392 00:41:34,680 --> 00:41:39,128 complaints because what Facebook says on the outside, we are good. We are 393 00:41:39,128 --> 00:41:45,781 connecting people. Whatever their slogan is, it is not. It seems to be not 394 00:41:45,781 --> 00:41:53,920 confirmed by by many employees. They say they think just as Frances Haugen of power 395 00:41:53,920 --> 00:42:01,860 and things that the company putting profit over safety. And there may be that there 396 00:42:01,860 --> 00:42:06,200 are probably a lot of employees that are super happy to work at Facebook and they 397 00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:10,255 don't see it. And I think that they have amazing perks that they get at the office. 398 00:42:10,255 --> 00:42:15,006 You know, they have little kitchen. They have. I mean, it seems to be a wonderful 399 00:42:15,006 --> 00:42:19,934 place to work if you care about this issue. It seems that many, many people who 400 00:42:19,934 --> 00:42:24,813 really, really care about these issues, such as hate speech, such as the 401 00:42:24,813 --> 00:42:30,411 democratic processes such as a foreign influence on elections, and they seem to 402 00:42:30,411 --> 00:42:35,586 be very frustrated. So as I said, I expect more whistleblowers. I expect more leaks 403 00:42:35,586 --> 00:42:36,616 to come. Herald: Hmm. 404 00:42:36,616 --> 00:42:41,149 Lena: And also, it's a structural thing just to end this and it's a structural 405 00:42:41,149 --> 00:42:46,240 thing there. When you compare it, for example, to Twitter, it seems to be that 406 00:42:46,240 --> 00:42:52,161 Twitter is doing many things much better than than than Facebook. But as I said, 407 00:42:52,161 --> 00:42:58,004 you can't really compare. But there is a discussion within the Facebook players 408 00:42:58,004 --> 00:43:03,720 about a firewall between those parts of the company that are enforcing policies, 409 00:43:03,720 --> 00:43:09,839 internal policies and those parts of the company who are responsible for that, for 410 00:43:09,839 --> 00:43:16,328 the numbers and who are selling ads, for example. And apparently, it's Twitter. 411 00:43:16,328 --> 00:43:22,400 There's a there's a firewall. And at Facebook, there's no firewall. So the same 412 00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:29,073 people who are selling adds are also making exceptions for political actors on, on or 413 00:43:29,073 --> 00:43:35,496 on certain behaviors. And that's this is a structural thing that frustrated many 414 00:43:35,496 --> 00:43:38,528 people. Herald: No Chinese wall. I see. I am 415 00:43:38,528 --> 00:43:44,680 getting signals that we have only three minutes left. A very short question away, 416 00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:50,375 short answer from our technical audience. You talked about the internal platform 417 00:43:50,375 --> 00:43:55,467 workplace, Facebook's internal knowledge base. It would, of course, be interesting 418 00:43:55,467 --> 00:44:01,760 to see how user level access controls, encription, white's management work on 419 00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:06,578 this platform is anything in the leaks about that? No. 420 00:44:06,578 --> 00:44:12,540 Lena: No. Only research reports only the vast amount of research reports. 421 00:44:12,540 --> 00:44:17,876 Herald: Mm hmm. But this vast amounts seem to be accessible. OK? Somebody is waving, 422 00:44:17,876 --> 00:44:23,367 Waving us Goodbye. I see. Thank you so much. Interesting insight. Interesting 423 00:44:23,367 --> 00:44:29,000 updates, folks. Follow this issue. It's not over. Things will be coming. Thank 424 00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:34,440 you, Lena. Thank you, Svea. I wish you good health through the winter and thank 425 00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:38,240 you again *Svea laughs* for your marital effort to you. 426 00:44:38,240 --> 00:44:43,440 Svea, Lena: Thank you. I think you see by everything is licensed 427 00:44:43,440 --> 00:44:46,711 under CC by 4.0. And it is all for the community 2.0 and for everybody. 428 00:44:46,711 --> 00:44:54,384 Subtitles created by c3subtitles.de in the year 2022. Join, and help us!