WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.505 rc3 2021 preroll now here @c-base 00:00:04.505 --> 00:00:10.800 Herald: The Facebook files last year, Harvard graduated and Facebook employe, 00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:17.840 FH enhanded huge internal Facebook documents to, among others, 00:00:17.840 --> 00:00:25.200 newspapers, journals and in fact, the US Senate said it was there to testify about 00:00:25.200 --> 00:00:35.440 Facebook's conduct. This has gained quite some, quite some attention, but at 00:00:35.440 --> 00:00:40.000 least in Germany not as ambitious as it should have. And I'm 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:50.320 welcoming today. Lena? And Svea? HalIo! Will be giving us the better insight into 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 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:02.880 our Q&A after that. So please do continue with your questions on the various 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:10.320 channels. They will hopefully miraculously a few of this week to be transferred over 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 00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:22.640 much. Svea: OK. Thank you so much. It's great to 00:01:22.640 --> 00:01:30.000 be here. Sorry, first of all, for my voice because I'm having the Congress flu 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:36.480 without Congress laughing. No, just just the bad cold, but no COVID. So 00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:42.560 everything is fine. Yeah. Thank you so much for welcoming us today. Before we 00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:50.480 dive into the Facebook files and give you a an exclusive view and inside, let us 00:01:50.480 --> 00:01:54.080 shortly introduce us. So yeah, I do. Lena, you go first. 00:01:54.880 --> 00:01:59.840 Lena: I am Lena. I'm an investigative reporter with the WDR Zeitung in Berlin 00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:04.400 and they mostly work on terror investigations, but also anything complex. 00:02:04.400 --> 00:02:07.840 So I, of course, jumped on the Facebook files as well. 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:13.920 Svea: Yes. And my name is Svea. I also am an investigative reporter working 00:02:13.920 --> 00:02:20.560 freelance for NDR television, mostly on tech issues. And then Lena and I, we 00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:28.160 worked very closely together for several weeks or months now on the Facebook files. 00:02:28.160 --> 00:02:35.920 We were in the team. We had the contact to FH first and Europe and also 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 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 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 00:02:54.880 --> 00:03:00.880 in all the newspapers, some more details about, FH and also what's in 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 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 00:03:14.640 --> 00:03:24.000 vanish behind behind it. So yeah, have a great time and Lena will start first. OK, 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. 00:03:32.640 --> 00:03:39.840 Lena: I consider the presentation, Svea: OK, sorry. Then let's just get to 00:03:39.840 --> 00:03:48.160 make sure that yes, is it? Yes. Sorry. OK, now this should work. Who is FH? 00:03:48.160 --> 00:03:52.400 OK. Lena, you go first. Lena: So who is FH? Most of 00:03:52.400 --> 00:03:56.640 you have seen already, but in the beginning wasn't so clear in September, 00:03:56.640 --> 00:04:01.280 when, in September 2021, the Wall Street Journal started publishing a series of 00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:07.120 articles and podcasts under the name of the Facebook Files. The leaker was still 00:04:07.120 --> 00:04:11.280 anonymous. The reports were riveting because these journalists from the Wall 00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:16.160 Street Journal had were using hundreds and thousands of internal documents from 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:22.800 Facebook Internal Employee Network, and only after a few weeks it was announced 00:04:22.800 --> 00:04:28.240 that the leaker will cooperate with Congress and the SEC, the Securities and 00:04:28.240 --> 00:04:34.400 Exchange Commission, and reveal their identity and. By then, we were already 00:04:34.400 --> 00:04:40.800 talking to Frances in video call, and she appeared on the screen as a very normal 00:04:40.800 --> 00:04:48.320 woman, our age with headphones and on her couch. And until October, the beginning of 00:04:48.320 --> 00:04:54.240 October, we knew her under a codename. So until she really revealed her identity, 00:04:54.240 --> 00:05:02.320 she was also using a code name with us as journalists. And. Yeah, we learned that 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, 00:05:08.160 --> 00:05:13.040 but her mother later became a priest. And Frances went on to study electrical 00:05:13.040 --> 00:05:17.040 computer engineering at a small college named Olin College in Massachusetts, 00:05:17.760 --> 00:05:22.960 and she later became a data engineer and product manager for Google, mainly working 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 00:05:34.480 --> 00:05:40.800 got offered a job at Facebook. And first she was very hesitant. She told us because 00:05:40.800 --> 00:05:45.360 of Facebook, the reputation for being an engine of medicalization and because of 00:05:45.360 --> 00:05:49.920 the personal experience. Frances, how happened to her friends? And this is a 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 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 00:06:05.802 --> 00:06:10.176 stock of mobile to give a platform exclusively outage and point system. It 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 00:06:13.922 --> 00:06:17.440 is still going to feel so much larger than you might otherwise. Video ends 00:06:17.440 --> 00:06:26.080 Lena: So as soon as we heard when she arrived at Facebook, the disenchantment or 00:06:26.080 --> 00:06:34.363 the the problems she saw started immediately because immediately she saw 00:06:34.363 --> 00:06:39.492 that. What she had thought of Facebook as an engine of radicalization was even 00:06:39.492 --> 00:06:45.888 bigger. And with her personal experience, just to explain that in a few years back, 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 00:06:51.879 --> 00:07:00.382 very close friend, and she lost him to the rabbit hole. His journey started. Yeah, 00:07:00.382 --> 00:07:07.464 on normal social media sites and that 4chan and let him through the of 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 00:07:14.127 --> 00:07:20.014 unreachable for facts. At some point, she wasn't able to have a conversation with 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 00:07:24.680 --> 00:07:30.090 integrity method, the team at Facebook that was formed to protect the US 00:07:30.090 --> 00:07:40.495 elections and working on civic integrity. She really thought that you could make a 00:07:40.495 --> 00:07:52.147 change. But she realized, that the companies, she said, didn't want 00:07:52.147 --> 00:07:58.994 to change, although she really admired her coworkers. He said they were really smart 00:07:58.994 --> 00:08:03.745 and creative people. But she said the leadership didn't want to listen. And so 00:08:03.745 --> 00:08:13.422 in the end, after about two years, she became a whistleblower. And when you talk 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. 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 00:08:24.917 --> 00:08:28.567 public and to put a face on the whistleblowing. She says her both 00:08:28.567 --> 00:08:32.440 parents are professors, and it feels very natural to her to sit and explain things 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 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 00:08:43.757 --> 00:08:48.636 good memory, and that she's financially independent because she invested in crypto 00:08:48.636 --> 00:09:02.432 in the early days. So, yeah, she seems to be. Yeah, yeah. Whistleblower, almost. And 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 00:09:07.366 --> 00:09:19.280 whistleblower. So these two clips from our interview again, she told us that 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 00:09:26.640 --> 00:09:31.680 information that I believe put many, maybe a million or 10 million lives on the line. 00:09:32.400 --> 00:09:37.600 I sat there and you were staring down at a situation where you believe maybe 10 00:09:37.600 --> 00:09:42.240 million people could die over the next 20 years. And I knew that I had the 00:09:42.240 --> 00:09:46.640 information that could potentially face in a fraction of those life. She has to do 00:09:46.640 --> 00:09:52.960 something." And now she says: "It's not about bad people or bad content at Facebook, 00:09:52.960 --> 00:09:58.480 it's about a system. And like either the organization incentives or the 00:09:58.480 --> 00:10:06.160 incentives at Facebook, they are they. They are wrong. They are skewed." And then 00:10:06.160 --> 00:10:11.920 also, she says that she failed to change the system from within, and she realized: 00:10:11.920 --> 00:10:14.880 "This problem was so much larger than even I thought it was. I kept trying and 00:10:14.880 --> 00:10:18.320 trying. At some point, I read the realization that there was enough 00:10:18.320 --> 00:10:23.440 systematic problems that I would have at some point to figure out how to bring the 00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:30.080 information to the public." So she tried actually to make her complaints heard in 00:10:30.080 --> 00:10:35.315 the company, but that she had the the she was under the impression, that the 00:10:35.315 --> 00:10:41.685 leadership didn't want to listen. Svea: Yes. And I think with this things 00:10:41.685 --> 00:10:49.952 you have now learned about FH I think if you know all this things you 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 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 00:11:02.846 --> 00:11:09.044 motivation, then you will now see and understand better, why some things are in 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 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 00:11:24.389 --> 00:11:34.040 just just quickly here. In December 2020, she worked into the Civic Integrity Team, 00:11:34.040 --> 00:11:39.722 but this team got dissolved and there was a Wall Street Journal reporter and he saw 00:11:39.722 --> 00:11:46.130 a chance and asked all these, all the people who worked there, and he tried to 00:11:46.130 --> 00:11:50.770 get interviews with them. And he also got the chance to meet FH and 00:11:50.770 --> 00:11:56.648 probably the and the podcast from Wall Street Journal he tells the story that 00:11:56.648 --> 00:12:04.600 they were talking to each other. And yeah, probably this also. Yeah. Get confidence 00:12:04.600 --> 00:12:09.187 that there's somebody she probably could talk to, and we assume that then she 00:12:09.187 --> 00:12:15.109 started collecting the files, but this stays blurry. So maybe she started 00:12:15.109 --> 00:12:20.117 earlier. But this is something not which is not really known and which is not 00:12:20.117 --> 00:12:24.300 really answered clearly. So she's always when we asked her, she was always speaking 00:12:24.300 --> 00:12:30.085 from summer. So summer, summer, maybe this is the summer 21, then the Wall Street 00:12:30.085 --> 00:12:34.865 Journal story just got out. And I think what's also interesting here to see is, 00:12:34.865 --> 00:12:40.335 that you have this time period from December to September. So more than half a 00:12:40.335 --> 00:12:47.165 year from the first contact, from the reporter to the leakage. So I think this 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. 00:12:53.408 --> 00:13:00.211 Congress via whistleblower AID. We will talk about this later, too. And then 00:13:00.211 --> 00:13:08.846 things get rush and then things get IQ each or then the everything gets very 00:13:08.846 --> 00:13:14.014 fast. So there you have the filing, then you have the revealing of the identity. 00:13:14.014 --> 00:13:20.037 And on the 5th of October, she is speaking to Congress and then all the publications 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 00:13:26.845 --> 00:13:32.628 interesting to see now. Oh yeah. And then we also implemented when we come and 00:13:32.628 --> 00:13:37.755 place, what was in the beginning of October. This is where we broke the first 00:13:37.755 --> 00:13:43.920 story. And then formed the EU consortium. So we thought, maybe what's most what's 00:13:43.920 --> 00:13:48.330 probably most interesting for you here, guys, is not the question what's in the 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 00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:59.616 this is the more interesting question. And so to get the answer to that, it's 00:13:59.616 --> 00:14:05.629 really important to understand the nature of the files where the files come from and 00:14:05.629 --> 00:14:10.249 about what kind of files we are talking when we're speaking about the Facebook 00:14:10.249 --> 00:14:20.859 files. And as Lena already mentioned, FH was a data scientist within 00:14:20.859 --> 00:14:25.427 Facebook. She worked with the Civic Integrity Team and later she worked with 00:14:25.427 --> 00:14:30.994 counter-espionage. So she was regular Facebook employee. She had she hadn't have 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 00:14:36.754 --> 00:14:44.813 person. So of course, she had limited access to documents. But yeah, luckily for 00:14:44.813 --> 00:14:51.334 her, Facebook maintains a quite transparent approach regarding its own 00:14:51.334 --> 00:14:55.910 research and a lot of other relevant information, probably a lot more 00:14:55.910 --> 00:15:01.206 transparent than other companies. So you, you have and Facebook, you have some kind 00:15:01.206 --> 00:15:07.934 of internal Facebook, which is called a workplace and and workplace. You find a 00:15:07.934 --> 00:15:15.267 vast, vast amount of internal research reports and people are discussing this 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 00:15:22.437 --> 00:15:27.945 lot of technical terms and you have a lot of teams speaking to each other, the 00:15:27.945 --> 00:15:35.155 researches made for Facebook employees. Of course, it's full of abbreviations or 00:15:35.155 --> 00:15:42.240 yeah, terms you can't or hardly understand as an outsider, so we will get 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 00:15:49.178 --> 00:15:55.161 we dived into it? So you have these totally unstructured PDF documents with 00:15:55.161 --> 00:16:01.888 more than an estimated 10000 pages? They all photographed. And there you have this 00:16:01.888 --> 00:16:08.270 research and also these discussions and you see here where I did the pink arrows. 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 00:16:13.480 --> 00:16:18.596 of groups and you have comments, you have smileys and then you have these black 00:16:18.596 --> 00:16:23.991 redactions, which were made later on because all these fires were made for 00:16:23.991 --> 00:16:30.660 Congress. And so all the names were redacted. And this this is pretty 00:16:30.660 --> 00:16:37.870 important to know when you think about what the files don't tell. So what's 00:16:37.870 --> 00:16:45.086 missing? As I told you, that FH, she was part of the executive 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 00:16:52.374 --> 00:16:58.572 these are not reports directly to Mark Zuckerberg as these are research reports 00:16:58.572 --> 00:17:06.605 for the internal network. So they don't say much about leadership or about 00:17:06.605 --> 00:17:12.729 decisions from leadership or what was discussed by leadership. Sometimes you 00:17:12.729 --> 00:17:18.302 have these postings in the internal Facebook where leadership is discussing 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 00:17:23.734 --> 00:17:29.360 thoughts. But this is basically something what the files are not telling. 00:17:29.360 --> 00:17:36.706 Then the Facebook files don't provide any context. And this is something I've ... 00:17:36.706 --> 00:17:42.889 what also FH thinks, what's yeah, really is the reason why she gave all 00:17:42.889 --> 00:17:49.270 these files to journalists, because she hoped that we could provide context, 00:17:49.270 --> 00:17:56.720 because there are no information on who did the report. So usually the authors 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 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 00:18:08.319 --> 00:18:14.360 they are or what happened before the study, or after all? And I think this is 00:18:14.360 --> 00:18:19.994 very important and we especially saw this. I don't know if you remember the reporting 00:18:19.994 --> 00:18:25.956 on the Instagram study and when you read the Instagram study very closely, you see 00:18:25.956 --> 00:18:32.328 that there that they are talking about a dozen people who they have conducted 00:18:32.328 --> 00:18:39.700 interviews, qualitative interviews with. And this is a research which is highly 00:18:39.700 --> 00:18:46.640 qualitative and not quantitative, so it's not representative. And so this is very 00:18:46.640 --> 00:18:53.529 important if you look at the files that you look at the numbers, how many people 00:18:53.529 --> 00:19:01.173 with how many people are study is conducted or with how many accounts or how 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 00:19:07.574 --> 00:19:12.369 there are specific areas which are very well represented, like hate speech. I 00:19:12.369 --> 00:19:19.376 think this is an issue, FH worked a lot on it and the civic integrity teams 00:19:19.376 --> 00:19:24.042 at other areas are missing or not represented. So, for 00:19:24.042 --> 00:19:29.333 example, I'm very interested in fake accounts. So this was the first thing I 00:19:29.333 --> 00:19:34.791 did when I was sweating through the files and what is what research is down fake 00:19:34.791 --> 00:19:41.209 accounts. There is some research, of course, but yeah, I was I was saying, I 00:19:41.209 --> 00:19:47.416 was missing content and I thought, Oh, there need to be more or about scam. I 00:19:47.416 --> 00:19:52.097 don't know if you know, love scams, though. I did not find anything about this 00:19:52.097 --> 00:19:56.775 or click farms, then engagement numbers. They are some engagement numbers, but not 00:19:56.775 --> 00:20:03.871 that much. So I I can only speculate about why there are some areas very well 00:20:03.871 --> 00:20:09.834 represented in the files, and some aren't. But I think probably this are different 00:20:09.834 --> 00:20:17.819 reasons. So on the one hand, FH, she had a specific time, limited time to 00:20:17.819 --> 00:20:26.192 get these files and also probably she had limited areas where she could go and read 00:20:26.192 --> 00:20:32.442 these documents. And also, of course, these are internal research. This is 00:20:32.442 --> 00:20:37.395 entirely research. These are internal studies. So there are only studies that 00:20:37.395 --> 00:20:41.948 facebook employes start. This was some kind we definitely should 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 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 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 00:21:01.648 --> 00:21:07.534 think some of you probably have read or heard about the Wall Street Journal 00:21:07.534 --> 00:21:13.014 revelations, so we do not want to dive into this because this is broadly known 00:21:13.014 --> 00:21:17.880 about, that celebrities were treated differently, that human trafficking goes 00:21:17.880 --> 00:21:24.914 on on Facebook. I don't know who watched Jan Bömermann. He began talking about this 00:21:24.914 --> 00:21:30.847 on that Instagram was toxic for teens or Mexican drug cartels using Facebook, or 00:21:30.847 --> 00:21:36.007 that Facebook changed the news algorithm and polarization got worse. So this are 00:21:36.007 --> 00:21:42.774 the this is where the first revelations. So let's talk about growth. So this was 00:21:42.774 --> 00:21:47.579 something I was looking into it's, because I'm pretty interested in the whole fake 00:21:47.579 --> 00:21:53.398 accounts area. So I looked into growth and I found it pretty interesting because 00:21:53.398 --> 00:21:59.636 Facebook is always speaking about growth and that they are growing and making more 00:21:59.636 --> 00:22:05.723 and more profits. And of course, this is true. But if you look through the files 00:22:05.723 --> 00:22:11.476 and you can see that young users, especially users under the age of 25, that 00:22:11.476 --> 00:22:17.128 these are the numbers are decreasing. And that's what you can see here pretty 00:22:17.128 --> 00:22:22.720 closely. You have the red line and then you have the blue line. These are 00:22:22.720 --> 00:22:31.910 symbolizing the younger users under 25. And even in COVID times where you have on 00:22:31.910 --> 00:22:39.543 the right corners, you see this spike and all the other age groups, especially, I 00:22:39.543 --> 00:22:44.769 think people above 50 got highly interested in Facebook during COVID. Now 00:22:44.769 --> 00:22:50.240 it's just shocking. So you have every age group is highly is using Facebook more 00:22:51.040 --> 00:22:58.560 during COVID, but not so that people under 25. And this is pretty interesting because 00:22:58.560 --> 00:23:05.200 of the filing for the FCC, the Börsenaufsicht and there because what is 00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:10.240 with the advertisers and is Facebook really telling the truth when they always 00:23:10.240 --> 00:23:16.720 talking about growth and profits. Then I think hate speech pretty important. And 00:23:16.720 --> 00:23:22.720 there are a lot of case studies about especially poorer countries or high risk 00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:27.760 countries and that they are the polarization goes on and that Facebook is 00:23:27.760 --> 00:23:36.320 not taking enough measures, especially for sub languages on the far right for Arabic 00:23:36.320 --> 00:23:43.200 countries or Asian countries or African countries. Even worse, where you have 00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:47.520 often a lot of dialects and a lot of languages, and that there are not many 00:23:47.520 --> 00:23:53.840 people doing, for example, content moderation. And one of the probably most 00:23:53.840 --> 00:23:59.600 difficult documents, but I think one of the most interesting ones, this one. So 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 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 00:24:12.160 --> 00:24:16.240 liked it very much because there were so many numbers and it was quite an official 00:24:16.240 --> 00:24:23.200 document and not only a study of one researcher did, and in his opex report, 00:24:23.200 --> 00:24:27.760 you can see the missed proportion and spending money to fight misinformation 00:24:27.760 --> 00:24:34.160 between English speaking countries like the U.S. and ArW, this the rest of world. 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 00:24:40.800 --> 00:24:46.720 misinformation and then you have these rows and then on the row, the right 00:24:46.720 --> 00:24:53.280 corner, you can see that money or man hours. Is this transferred into man hours 00:24:53.920 --> 00:25:03.200 that 84 percent man hours? Here is the first Quartal quarter of 2020 that 84 00:25:03.200 --> 00:25:11.440 percent was spent for misinformation, and rest of world is 16 percent, which if you 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 00:25:17.360 --> 00:25:23.360 focus, where Facebook focus lies. And this of this also was one document FH 00:25:23.360 --> 00:25:28.080 pointed us through and said, You have to check the numbers and then you can 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 00:25:34.800 --> 00:25:43.600 Facebook than human lives. I hope this very yeah, this document makes this clear. 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 00:25:50.160 --> 00:25:56.080 everything and the people using Facebook. This is really important to us. OK, and 00:25:56.080 --> 00:26:03.120 now for the last part, I give, yeah, Lena will tell you something more about the 00:26:03.120 --> 00:26:09.040 fight within. Lena: Yeah, thank you very much. So what is really interesting to us 00:26:09.040 --> 00:26:14.560 is to see the discussion in the work culture and the discussions among among 00:26:14.560 --> 00:26:19.760 teams and among employees. And you could see that in the chat, that was going on, 00:26:19.760 --> 00:26:27.360 especially under some of the studies. And it was kind of confirming our impression 00:26:27.360 --> 00:26:32.960 that Facebook, that there was a lot of debate, internal debate and that there was 00:26:32.960 --> 00:26:38.320 a lot of frustration among employees because as we have counted, there were at 00:26:38.320 --> 00:26:45.440 least 11 major leaks since 2016. Most of them remained anonymous. But there were 00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:52.400 also some that happened that went public. For example, Sophie Zangh went public 00:26:52.400 --> 00:27:01.520 in April 2000 and 2021, and there was just a few months before FH came 00:27:01.520 --> 00:27:09.680 out and became public and made that made it public that she had leaked documents. 00:27:09.680 --> 00:27:14.800 Zangh has not leaked any documents that she had talked to reporters. And and and 00:27:14.800 --> 00:27:23.600 she hurt her when she entered her employment with Facebook. And she said she 00:27:23.600 --> 00:27:28.160 posted a batch post this kind of part of the internal exchanges, and we found many 00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:34.950 of these batch posts. And she posted, I found multiple blatant attempts by foreign 00:27:34.950 --> 00:27:39.280 national governments to abuse our platform and that failed to mislead their own 00:27:39.280 --> 00:27:45.280 citizenry and cost international news on multiple occasions. And she was just as 00:27:45.280 --> 00:27:53.360 FH, she was concerned with Facebook lack of content moderation and 00:27:53.360 --> 00:27:59.760 lack of enforcement of community standards outside of the U.S.. And so this just to 00:27:59.760 --> 00:28:08.320 show you that in term of debate was very, very public internally. So I mean, we 00:28:08.320 --> 00:28:18.880 found another batch code. It was called leaving Q&A. This was from May 2000 at 00:28:19.920 --> 00:28:31.280 from May 2021, and there this person was concerned about hate speech and this 00:28:31.280 --> 00:28:35.520 person said she couldn't take it anymore just to be an on Facebook employee because 00:28:35.520 --> 00:28:39.840 she says with so many internal forces propping up the production of hateful and violent 00:28:39.840 --> 00:28:45.840 content. The task of stopping hate and violence on Facebook starts to feel even 00:28:45.840 --> 00:28:50.560 more sisyphean than it already is and shaming internal forces, meaning the 00:28:50.560 --> 00:28:58.240 leadership and this is something that I, this person says, so many internal 00:28:58.240 --> 00:29:03.440 forces and the leadership. This is something that FH was also 00:29:03.440 --> 00:29:10.000 really concerned about that. On the one hand, there are people working on 00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:15.440 combating hate speech and changing the algorithms to make it more a better and 00:29:16.480 --> 00:29:21.680 safer environment. And then, on the other hand, that there are some forces in that 00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:30.000 in the company that apparently work against these efforts. And this fight that 00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:35.520 we could see, could you go back, and this fight that we could see was 00:29:35.520 --> 00:29:50.080 especially viral after January six, after the storm of the Capitol and their 00:29:50.080 --> 00:29:55.680 employees were very much discussing and they were very they were furious. And one 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 00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:05.200 be surprised. It's now out of control. So employers are giving Facebook 00:30:05.760 --> 00:30:12.400 responsibility for the development. And another person said, employers employees 00:30:13.280 --> 00:30:17.280 should say employees are tired of thoughts and prayers from leadership. We want 00:30:17.280 --> 00:30:22.480 action. And another person said so many research backed ideas get shut down. We 00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:26.800 need to do a better job at making decisions from a research perspective, and 00:30:26.800 --> 00:30:32.560 this is something that's also very close to FH. She said in our 00:30:32.560 --> 00:30:40.376 interview, she says there are solutions that are there are wonderful employers and 00:30:40.376 --> 00:30:45.679 wonderful teams, who are working to come up with solutions. But they are they are 00:30:45.679 --> 00:30:52.897 blocked by leadership out of a for profit interests. And this here's a screenshot of 00:30:52.897 --> 00:30:59.305 another person saying I'm struggling to match my values to my employment here. I 00:30:59.305 --> 00:31:04.737 came here hoping to effect change and improve society, but I've seen it atrophy 00:31:04.737 --> 00:31:10.033 and abdication of responsibility. I'm tired of platitudes. I want action items. 00:31:10.033 --> 00:31:16.755 We are not a neutral entity, so employee seems to be extremely critical of 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 00:31:32.230 --> 00:31:37.760 more leaks from Facebook. We expect to see more whistleblowers coming out of this 00:31:37.760 --> 00:31:42.307 work culture because people seem to be extremely frustrated. And this is also 00:31:42.307 --> 00:31:46.696 just to wrap it up. This is Facebook reaction to the Facebook files and the 00:31:46.696 --> 00:31:53.169 revelation that came out after October 4th after after FH went public at Mark 00:31:53.169 --> 00:31:59.820 Zuckerberg said this week. And in a message to his employees, he said: "We care 00:31:59.820 --> 00:32:05.047 deeply about issues like safety, well- being and mental health and the coverage 00:32:05.047 --> 00:32:13.160 that misrepresents our work and our motive." And Facebook Communications VP 00:32:13.160 --> 00:32:22.045 John Pernetti said. Even that it was an orchestrated campaign against Facebook and 00:32:22.045 --> 00:32:27.594 in response to our reporting, he said: "We welcome scrutiny and feedback that these 00:32:27.594 --> 00:32:32.021 documents are being used to paint a narrative that we hide or that that that 00:32:32.021 --> 00:32:36.655 was terrible, that we hide or cherry picked data when in fact we do the 00:32:36.655 --> 00:32:43.199 opposite." So they are they they are kind of blankly refusing FH 00:32:43.199 --> 00:32:52.800 accusations. But earn a T. What what's happened to FH during this 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. 00:33:01.760 --> 00:33:08.080 But when when she started and when when the when the revelations started in The 00:33:08.080 --> 00:33:17.920 Wall Street Journal, apparently we don't know. And I am sorry, I'm hearing the 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 00:33:24.160 --> 00:33:29.920 leaking documents, she got in contact with the whistleblower aid, which was founded 00:33:29.920 --> 00:33:39.200 by a former whistleblower, John Tye, and which is a nonprofit organization claiming 00:33:39.200 --> 00:33:42.560 that no one should have to risk their career or their freedom to follow their 00:33:42.560 --> 00:33:48.320 conscience. And some of you may know the executive director Libby knew a former CEO 00:33:48.320 --> 00:33:56.080 of Open Technology Fund, so they helped Frances to making a protected protected 00:33:56.720 --> 00:34:06.960 disclosure. And she also had lawyers who represent her. They are from Bryson 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 00:34:13.840 --> 00:34:19.760 spokesman, the deputy spokesman of Obama and the Bryson Gillette, and that is also 00:34:19.760 --> 00:34:23.360 involved with the Lincoln Project. So they are clearly from the democratic spectrum. 00:34:24.960 --> 00:34:29.040 And this was also why Facebook could easily make the claim that it was an 00:34:29.040 --> 00:34:35.360 orchestrated campaign by the Democrats, an orchestrated political campaign. We think 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 00:34:41.520 --> 00:34:47.840 and let us Luminate, which is founded by Pierre Omidyar the founder of eBay, 00:34:48.560 --> 00:34:53.600 and also Ben Scott been involved there. He's a senior policy adviser for innovation at 00:34:53.600 --> 00:34:59.280 the U.S. Department of State and Hillary Clinton and was there, and they are 00:34:59.840 --> 00:35:05.840 cooperating closely on funding. For example, recent tech operating also in the 00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:11.200 U.S. and Europe. The nonprofit lobbies a lobbying organization that wants to 00:35:11.200 --> 00:35:16.183 regulate the market for Big Tech. So these organizations, they come from the 00:35:16.183 --> 00:35:20.636 democratic spectrum. There's no question, but we see that a rethink and our 00:35:20.636 --> 00:35:28.301 impression was that they were mentioned matching FH interest. So they 00:35:28.301 --> 00:35:35.327 have kind of the same goal. So they came they came together in the process. 00:35:35.327 --> 00:35:46.880 Svea: Yeah, really important to see now, OK, what's next? So we have reported on 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, 00:35:55.200 --> 00:36:00.560 what is happening? Is Facebook changing something or is there any regulation 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 00:36:06.560 --> 00:36:12.400 little bit a glimpse what happened after the 7th of October? So then, yeah, FH 00:36:12.400 --> 00:36:18.400 went on some kind of tour through Europe? Though she was a London, she was 00:36:18.400 --> 00:36:24.560 at this bar Lisbon, and in November she went to Berlin, to Brussels and to Paris. 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 00:36:30.160 --> 00:36:36.720 the U.S. through Europe? I think every three days another city, it was a tour 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, 00:36:42.960 --> 00:36:48.080 yeah, they she clearly has some kind of agenda. She definitely wants to change. 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 00:36:54.240 --> 00:36:59.200 the castle or somewhere else. She definitely wanted something. Yeah, she she 00:36:59.200 --> 00:37:07.760 wanted action. So she had big hopes in Europe because as probably some of you 00:37:07.760 --> 00:37:14.240 know, here that Digital Services Act is debated. It was debated in the parliament 00:37:14.240 --> 00:37:20.640 and now it's up to the commission. So hopefully next year, the Digital Services 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 00:37:29.360 --> 00:37:35.360 regulations and control regarding especially content moderation, fiiles and 00:37:35.360 --> 00:37:42.640 also transparency, so that you can see what is going on on these platforms and in 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 00:37:50.800 --> 00:37:56.320 that the SEC will have a billion or billion dollar fine on Facebook and also 00:37:56.320 --> 00:38:04.000 probably pushes for more regulation. And the discussion centers around that news, 00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:10.320 getting more control of that data that that there's more transparency and 00:38:10.320 --> 00:38:16.800 probably that also there's more taxation, probably on digital ads just yet to make 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 00:38:23.440 --> 00:38:31.600 yeah, to to do something about the business model. OK. So yeah, we hope you 00:38:31.600 --> 00:38:36.480 enjoyed our presentation and we yeah, I want to thank you for listening and also 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 00:38:41.600 --> 00:38:43.600 minutes for some Q&A. 00:38:43.600 --> 00:38:48.800 Herald: Yes, thank you. Yes, we have indeed another 10 minutes before we have 00:38:48.800 --> 00:38:53.840 to prepare for the next talk. Thank you very much for this. These 45 minutes of 00:38:53.840 --> 00:39:03.680 content Svea laughs very well, you are. You are giving the impression 00:39:03.680 --> 00:39:08.800 your presentation gives the impression that Facebook is basically watching from 00:39:08.800 --> 00:39:16.000 within. It's a question when mutiny within the Facebook workforce will break out and 00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:22.240 that 85 percent of all the content comes from payments for the ugly content and not 00:39:23.360 --> 00:39:30.800 for the good one. How true is this? How how evil is Facebook compared to other 00:39:31.680 --> 00:39:36.560 debated evil doers like Telegram or others? What do you think? 00:39:40.960 --> 00:39:49.848 Svea: I think that, you know, the Facebook files and you have like the feeling that 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 00:39:56.292 --> 00:40:01.578 diving underwater and then you go with the light bulb, you know, with one light and 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 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 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 00:40:17.742 --> 00:40:23.400 comments, for example, after the storm of the Capitol, where many employees were 00:40:23.400 --> 00:40:28.798 speaking. So I think it's not that the whole company is rotten from within, but 00:40:28.798 --> 00:40:33.760 of course, there are parts which are rotten. And this, I think, is shown in the 00:40:33.760 --> 00:40:39.446 files. I think it's really hard to compare Facebook to Telegram or Google or 00:40:39.446 --> 00:40:46.200 something because I think a Facebook or Meta, as they now called, it's quite a 00:40:46.200 --> 00:40:53.297 very unique player on the market. They are. Yeah, they bought Instagram. They 00:40:53.297 --> 00:41:00.030 bought WhatsApp. You can't compare Facebook or Meta to Telegram because this 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 00:41:06.596 --> 00:41:11.713 little bit of a philosophical question, so I hope my answer is okay laughs. 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. 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 00:41:24.483 --> 00:41:29.632 discussions. But it gives us an impression. And I think the impression I 00:41:29.632 --> 00:41:34.680 would see, I would say, is right that there are a lot of frustration among the 00:41:34.680 --> 00:41:39.128 complaints because what Facebook says on the outside, we are good. We are 00:41:39.128 --> 00:41:45.781 connecting people. Whatever their slogan is, it is not. It seems to be not 00:41:45.781 --> 00:41:53.920 confirmed by by many employees. They say they think just as Frances Haugen of power 00:41:53.920 --> 00:42:01.860 and things that the company putting profit over safety. And there may be that there 00:42:01.860 --> 00:42:06.200 are probably a lot of employees that are super happy to work at Facebook and they 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. 00:42:10.255 --> 00:42:15.006 You know, they have little kitchen. They have. I mean, it seems to be a wonderful 00:42:15.006 --> 00:42:19.934 place to work if you care about this issue. It seems that many, many people who 00:42:19.934 --> 00:42:24.813 really, really care about these issues, such as hate speech, such as the 00:42:24.813 --> 00:42:30.411 democratic processes such as a foreign influence on elections, and they seem to 00:42:30.411 --> 00:42:35.586 be very frustrated. So as I said, I expect more whistleblowers. I expect more leaks 00:42:35.586 --> 00:42:36.616 to come. Herald: Hmm. 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 00:42:41.149 --> 00:42:46.240 thing there. When you compare it, for example, to Twitter, it seems to be that 00:42:46.240 --> 00:42:52.161 Twitter is doing many things much better than than than Facebook. But as I said, 00:42:52.161 --> 00:42:58.004 you can't really compare. But there is a discussion within the Facebook players 00:42:58.004 --> 00:43:03.720 about a firewall between those parts of the company that are enforcing policies, 00:43:03.720 --> 00:43:09.839 internal policies and those parts of the company who are responsible for that, for 00:43:09.839 --> 00:43:16.328 the numbers and who are selling ads, for example. And apparently, it's Twitter. 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 00:43:22.400 --> 00:43:29.073 people who are selling adds are also making exceptions for political actors on, on or 00:43:29.073 --> 00:43:35.496 on certain behaviors. And that's this is a structural thing that frustrated many 00:43:35.496 --> 00:43:38.528 people. Herald: No Chinese wall. I see. I am 00:43:38.528 --> 00:43:44.680 getting signals that we have only three minutes left. A very short question away, 00:43:44.680 --> 00:43:50.375 short answer from our technical audience. You talked about the internal platform 00:43:50.375 --> 00:43:55.467 workplace, Facebook's internal knowledge base. It would, of course, be interesting 00:43:55.467 --> 00:44:01.760 to see how user level access controls, encription, white's management work on 00:44:01.760 --> 00:44:06.578 this platform is anything in the leaks about that? No. 00:44:06.578 --> 00:44:12.540 Lena: No. Only research reports only the vast amount of research reports. 00:44:12.540 --> 00:44:17.876 Herald: Mm hmm. But this vast amounts seem to be accessible. OK? Somebody is waving, 00:44:17.876 --> 00:44:23.367 Waving us Goodbye. I see. Thank you so much. Interesting insight. Interesting 00:44:23.367 --> 00:44:29.000 updates, folks. Follow this issue. It's not over. Things will be coming. Thank 00:44:29.000 --> 00:44:34.440 you, Lena. Thank you, Svea. I wish you good health through the winter and thank 00:44:34.440 --> 00:44:38.240 you again Svea laughs for your marital effort to you. 00:44:38.240 --> 00:44:43.440 Svea, Lena: Thank you. I think you see by everything is licensed 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. 00:44:46.711 --> 00:44:54.384 Subtitles created by c3subtitles.de in the year 2022. Join, and help us!