00:08:03.060And it's also that, remember, the longer that we stay on any of these apps, the more that they can boost content, which they're paid to do.
00:08:11.800Remember, boosted content means somebody paid them to target and boost, and they get paid based on the boosting.
00:08:19.720So they target us, ads, boosted content, they're swaying our political opinions, it's everything.
00:08:27.560So our purchases, our thoughts, our opinions, our votes, all of this is manipulated by those that are paying.
00:08:38.140And it's very simple. If you think about it, this is what capitalism looks like when it gets a little distorted. And what that means is we are the customer no longer. We're actually the product sold to the customer. The customer is the advertiser, the marketer, the political operative, the adversarial nefarious bots and trolls being paid for by an adversarial country, et cetera.
00:09:06.860so this is the state and our kids you know oh my god for our kids because remember you're gonna be
00:09:14.700a kid you're gonna be a 10 year old and you can tell a site you're 22 they should join but it's
00:09:22.200all voluntary they don't have you're not you're not uploading your passport or an id if you say
00:09:27.500you're 22 okay that's what they're going to see you as 22 so it's you know it's all a mess
00:09:34.420i want to take a quick break here and when we get back i want to dig into
00:09:40.040what can we do right now to save kids from the harms of social media
00:09:46.140okay we are back now let's talk about the kids all right so kids this is the most important thing
00:10:00.020And, you know, if you haven't picked up for everybody listening, you know, pick up Jonathan Hades, The Anxious Generation.
00:10:07.260It really spells it out for what's happening.
00:10:11.760First of all, you know, and, you know, if you're a parent or, you know, you know, kids anywhere, kids have a fundamental way of being in the world, which is that it doesn't matter what you say to them.
00:20:13.520The American Privacy Rights Act, APRA, is also in committee, supported by Republicans and Democrats.
00:20:21.400I'll be writing a piece, it'll come out in the next couple of weeks, about what President Trump can provide as his legacy, his tech legacy.
00:20:31.640And I'll be talking about these, you know, bipartisan bills that he can get behind.
00:20:37.120And also, you know, what's interesting, Joe, right now, and many of you talked about it, is the Australian government is about to, it looks like this will pass, they're about to introduce a bill, the prime minister is, to ban social media for all kids under the age of 16.
00:20:54.280Now, it's my understanding, I think that Spain may already have that, but Australia's can do this.
00:20:59.200And then they're also, as part of the bill, they're going to have a user verification.
00:21:05.260It's called user ID verification so that, you know, kids are going to have to register in a very skinny way so that, you know, every kid can be verified for who they are, for how old they are.
00:21:17.820Now, the answer of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has been working on this also because we're going to move to an era of online user ID verification because this is the only way, ultimately, to make sure that our kids are not on social media when they shouldn't be.
00:21:34.760and that they're not targeted or manipulated.
00:21:38.160The bots and trolls aren't also targeting all of us
00:21:41.740and, frankly, creating a mess for civil discourse,
00:24:20.680Also, we have to have a way so that imagine the opportunity to free the web of bots and trolls, also using AI in a very positive way, because AI can also help with the verification systems once they're in place.
00:24:36.580And it's going to take a few years, cat and mouse, to get these right.
00:24:40.820Now, I'm waiting to see what the Australian government proposes as their user ID verification system.
00:24:46.520mm-hmm i want to take one more quick break and when we get back i want to talk about
00:24:53.720how you often share the stage at these big conferences with the people at these social
00:24:59.960media companies who who are tasked with with trying to protect our children but i don't think
00:25:05.260that they're actually doing that and how do you converse with those people
00:25:09.200you often share the stage at these big conferences with the people at these social
00:25:21.960media companies who are tasked with trying to protect our children but i don't think that
00:25:26.260they're actually doing that and how do you converse with those people all right so you know
00:25:31.960it's fascinating right so i was just on a stage at web summit from portugal with i believe the
00:25:39.500the head of the facebook oversight board and uh uh her first name is pamela um and you know she
00:25:48.660is tasked theoretically independent facebook's oversight board they created a couple of years ago
00:25:54.600as an independent oversight board monitoring you know what facebook is doing and providing you
00:26:01.240know advice and suggestions now here's what i found uh is that these people in general are
00:26:10.520corporate they are very uh brilliant at speaking so and so you hear all of this and you're like
00:26:20.280oh wow that sounds really good they are so articulate but the bottom line is i don't see
00:26:27.400any impact whatsoever so um it's you're you're right and look this they almost did perfectly
00:26:35.000into the facebook model which is like recently when facebook announced voluntary you know teen
00:26:42.060registration voluntary things for teenagers on instagram i'm sorry kids kids kids aren't going
00:26:47.900to volunteer to do anything of course not right useless yeah that's the smoke screen that's the
00:26:53.160at a smokescreen because they don't want any regulation.
00:27:10.480Because it's all about, this is where the web went off the rails.
00:27:15.620Remember earlier, everybody, we talked about surveillance capitalism.
00:27:18.820Now, these companies make all their money and so much money.
00:27:23.940Their profits are stupendous, incredible, by targeting us, by manipulating us, by serving ads, by serving content consistently all the time.
00:27:34.820And, you know, once content became a big deal, so that boosted content is paid for, so they don't want to lose the opportunity.
00:27:42.740it's all about shareholders owners investors unfortunately ethics are out the window which
00:27:51.400is why with the companies i've built everybody which is why i get such important recognition
00:27:56.140on the stages because by the way joe on those stages i'd call them out i call them out you know
00:28:03.260uh it's like you know the facebook uh pamela was saying oh you know they're really careful now
00:28:08.740about, you know, political boosted political content. And I said, hold on a second. The
00:28:14.240election just ended and it's documented that, you know, Meta, Facebook took in hundreds of millions
00:28:19.900of dollars in, you know, political ad money and just targeted their whole member base with all
00:28:25.800that. So, you know, how can you say these things? So, but this is, this is the problem that we've
00:28:32.100got to fix. My companies have always had privacy bill of rights. The data is protected. There's
00:28:37.180no data packet created. Actually, me, we had never had ads or targeted boosted content,
00:28:43.540timeline news feeds. And when we look at the formula for the future, by the way, there's real
00:28:49.180hope, everybody, because the government, I think, is going to break out meta. Just like the government,
00:28:56.140the U.S. government just found Google guilty of antitrust and wait to see what happens. We're
00:29:01.360going to get new search engines. We're going to get, you know, the world's going to change. And
00:29:05.140And with social media, we're going to get data portability, which means that you're
00:29:45.840For parents of teenagers right now, what should they be doing when it comes to their teens' social media use if Pandora's box has already been opened?
00:29:57.000I do think that I talk to a lot of parents who have kids the same age as mine, and we are going into this with eyes wide or open a lot of times. We have not allowed social media yet. A lot of us plan to not allow social media, but there are a lot of parents out there who didn't know the dangers. Their kids are on social media now. What can they do to just make this less dangerous?
00:30:23.220you know everybody and i recognize the challenges here um you know because our kids are pulled in
00:30:32.240by their peers at a certain age particularly around the teenage years where all of a sudden
00:30:37.140you know they don't think their parents you know that we're as smart as we are you know because
00:30:41.900so they've got that huge peer influence and this is where staying close to your kids and role
00:30:48.820modeling is critical because this is the key where do as I say, not as I do becomes critically
00:30:54.680important. And also now you've got a couple of things on the education side because now they're
00:31:00.560being fed all this content and they're not really trained in critical thinking. So this is where you
00:31:06.740can really step in and talk with your kids about what you're seeing, what they're seeing
00:31:11.980on social media and start to teach them. It's got to come as best we can from us because the
00:31:18.600Schools aren't really good at this yet.
00:31:20.420Their critical thinking is coming, but we've lost it.
00:31:23.440You want to teach them what really is bullying and what isn't bullying, how to critically
00:31:27.880think about things that they're seeing, how to make good choices.
00:31:33.840And unfortunately, there are a lot of examples that you can show.
00:31:38.280Recently, there was sadly a 14-year-old kid who committed suicide after making friends