WEBVTT

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Around five years ago,

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it struck me that I was losing the ability

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to engage with people
who aren't like-minded.

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The idea of discussing hot-button issues
with my fellow Americans

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was starting to give me more heartburn

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than the times that I engaged
with suspected extremists overseas.

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It was starting to leave me feeling
more embittered and frustrated.

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And so just like that,

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I shifted my entire focus

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from global national security threats

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to trying to understand
what was causing this push

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towards extreme polarization at home.

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As a former CIA officer and diplomat

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who spent years working
on counterextremism issues,

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I started to fear that this was becoming
a far greater threat to our democracy

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than any foreign adversary.

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And so I started digging in,

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and I started speaking out,

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which eventually led me
to being hired at Facebook

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and ultimately brought me here today

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to continue warning you
about how these platforms

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are manipulating
and radicalizing so many of us

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and to talk about
how to reclaim our public square.

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I was a foreign service officer in Kenya

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just a few years after
the September 11 attacks,

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and I led what some call
"hearts and minds" campaigns

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along the Somalia border.

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A big part of my job
was to build trust with communities

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deemed the most susceptible
to extremist messaging.

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I spent hours drinking tea
with outspoken anti-Western clerics

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and even dialogued
with some suspected terrorists,

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and while many of these engagements
began with mutual suspicion,

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I don't recall any of them
resulting in shouting or insults,

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and in some case we even worked together
on areas of mutual interest.

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The most powerful tools we had
were to simply listen, learn

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and build empathy.

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This is the essence
of hearts and minds work,

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because what I found again and again
is that what most people wanted

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was to feel heard,
validated and respected.

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And I believe that's what most of us want.

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So what I see happening online today
is especially heartbreaking

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and a much harder problem to tackle.

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We are being manipulated
by the current information ecosystem

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entrenching so many of us
so far into absolutism

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that compromise has become a dirty word.

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Because right now,

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social media companies like Facebook

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profit off of segmenting us
and feeding us personalized content

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that both validates
and exploits our biases.

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Their bottom line depends
on provoking a strong emotion

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to keep us engaged,

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often incentivizing the most
inflammatory and polarizing voices,

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to the point where finding common ground
no longer feels possible.

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And despite a growing chorus of people
crying out for the platforms to change,

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it's clear they will not
do enough on their own.

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So governments must define
the responsibility

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for the real-world harms being caused
by these business models

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and impose real costs
on the damaging effects

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they're having to our public health,
our public square and our democracy.

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But unfortunately, this won't happen
in time for the US presidential election,

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so I am continuing to raise this alarm,

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because even if one day
we do have strong rules in place,

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it will take all of us to fix this.

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When I started shifting my focus
from threats abroad

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to the breakdown
in civil discourse at home,

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I wondered if we could repurpose
some of these hearts and minds campaigns

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to help heal our divides.

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Our more than 200-year
experiment with democracy works

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in large part because we are able
to openly and passionately

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debate our ideas for the best solutions.

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But while I still deeply believe

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in the power of face-to-face
civil discourse,

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it just cannot compete

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with the polarizing effects
and scale of social media right now.

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The people who are sucked
down these rabbit holes

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of social media outrage

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often feel far harder to break
of their ideological mindsets

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than those vulnerable communities
I worked with ever were.

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So when Facebook called me in 2018

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and offered me this role

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heading its elections integrity operations
for political advertising,

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I felt I had to say yes.

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I had no illusions
that I would fix it all,

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but when offered the opportunity

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to help steer the ship
in a better direction,

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I had to at least try.

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I didn't work directly on polarization,

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but I did look at which issues
were the most divisive in our society

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and therefore the most exploitable
in elections interference efforts,

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which was Russia's tactic ahead of 2016.

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So I started by asking questions.

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I wanted to understand
the underlying systemic issues

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that were allowing all of this to happen,

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in order to figure out how to fix it.

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Now I still do believe
in the power of the internet

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to bring more voices to the table,

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but despite their stated goal
of building community,

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the largest social media companies
as currently constructed

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are antithetical to the concept
of reasoned discourse.

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There's no way to reward listening,

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to encourage civil debate

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and to protect people
who sincerely want to ask questions

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in a business where optimizing
engagement and user growth

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are the two most important
metrics for success.

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There's no incentive
to help people slow down,

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to build in enough friction
that people have to stop,

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recognize their emotional
reaction to something,

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and question their own
assumptions before engaging.

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The unfortunate reality is:

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lies are more engaging online than truth,

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and salaciousness beats out
wonky, fact-based reasoning

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in a world optimized
for frictionless virality.

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As long as algorithms' goals
are to keep us engaged,

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they will continue to feed us the poison
that plays to our worst instincts

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and human weaknesses.

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And yes, anger, mistrust,

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the culture of fear, hatred:

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none of this is new in America.

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But in recent years,
social media has harnessed all of that

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and, as I see it,
dramatically tipped the scales.

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And Facebook knows it.

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A recent "Wall Street Journal" article

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exposed an internal
Facebook presentation from 2018

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that specifically points
to the companies' own algorithms

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for growing extremist groups'
presence on their platform

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and for polarizing their users.

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But keeping us engaged
is how they make their money.

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The modern information environment
is crystallized around profiling us

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and then segmenting us
into more and more narrow categories

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to perfect this personalization process.

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We're then bombarded
with information confirming our views,

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reinforcing our biases,

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and making us feel
like we belong to something.

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These are the same tactics
we would see terrorist recruiters

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using on vulnerable youth,

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albeit in smaller, more localized ways
before social media,

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with the ultimate goal
of persuading their behavior.

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Unfortunately, I was never empowered
by Facebook to have an actual impact.

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In fact, on my second day,
my title and job description were changed

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and I was cut out
of decision-making meetings.

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My biggest efforts,

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trying to build plans

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to combat disinformation
and voter suppression in political ads,

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were rejected.

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And so I lasted just shy of six months.

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But here is my biggest takeaway
from my time there.

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There are thousands of people at Facebook

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who are passionately working on a product

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that they truly believe
makes the world a better place,

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but as long as the company continues
to merely tinker around the margins

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of content policy and moderation,

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as opposed to considering

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how the entire machine
is designed and monetized,

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they will never truly address
how the platform is contributing

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to hatred, division and radicalization.

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And that's the one conversation
I never heard happen during my time there,

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because that would require
fundamentally accepting

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that the thing you built
might not be the best thing for society

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and agreeing to alter
the entire product and profit model.

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So what can we do about this?

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I'm not saying that social media
bears the sole responsibility

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for the state that we're in today.

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Clearly, we have deep-seated
societal issues that we need to solve.

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But Facebook's response,
that it is just a mirror to society,

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is a convenient attempt
to deflect any responsibility

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from the way their platform
is amplifying harmful content

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and pushing some users
towards extreme views.

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And Facebook could, if they wanted to,

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fix some of this.

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They could stop amplifying
and recommending the conspiracy theorists,

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the hate groups,
the purveyors of disinformation

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and, yes, in some cases
even our president.

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They could stop using
the same personalization techniques

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to deliver political rhetoric
that they use to sell us sneakers.

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They could retrain their algorithms

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to focus on a metric
other than engagement,

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and they could build in guardrails
to stop certain content from going viral

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before being reviewed.

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And they could do all of this

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without becoming what they call
the arbiters of truth.

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But they've made it clear
that they will not go far enough

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to do the right thing
without being forced to,

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and, to be frank, why should they?

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The markets keep rewarding them,
and they're not breaking the law.

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Because as it stands,

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there are no US laws compelling Facebook,
or any social media company,

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to protect our public square,

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our democracy

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and even our elections.

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We have ceded the decision-making
on what rules to write and what to enforce

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to the CEOs of for-profit
internet companies.

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Is this what we want?

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A post-truth world
where toxicity and tribalism

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trump bridge-building
and consensus-seeking?

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I do remain optimistic that we still
have more in common with each other

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than the current media
and online environment portray,

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and I do believe that having
more perspective surface

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makes for a more robust
and inclusive democracy.

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But not the way it's happening right now.

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And it bears emphasizing,
I do not want to kill off these companies.

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I just want them held
to a certain level of accountability,

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just like the rest of society.

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It is time for our governments
to step up and do their jobs

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of protecting our citizenry.

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And while there isn't
one magical piece of legislation

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that will fix this all,

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I do believe that governments
can and must find the balance

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between protecting free speech

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and holding these platforms accountable
for their effects on society.

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And they could do so in part
by insisting on actual transparency

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around how these recommendation
engines are working,

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around how the curation, amplification
and targeting are happening.

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You see, I want these companies
held accountable

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not for if an individual
posts misinformation

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or extreme rhetoric,

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but for how their
recommendation engines spread it,

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how their algorithms
are steering people towards it,

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and how their tools are used
to target people with it.

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I tried to make change
from within Facebook and failed,

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and so I've been using my voice again
for the past few years

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to continue sounding this alarm

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and hopefully inspire more people
to demand this accountability.

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My message to you is simple:

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pressure your government representatives

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to step up and stop ceding
our public square to for-profit interests.

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Help educate your friends and family

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about how they're being
manipulated online.

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Push yourselves to engage
with people who aren't like-minded.

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Make this issue a priority.

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We need a whole-society
approach to fix this.

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And my message to the leaders
of my former employer Facebook is this:

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right now, people are using your tools
exactly as they were designed

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to sow hatred, division and distrust,

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and you're not just allowing it,
you are enabling it.

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And yes, there are lots of great stories

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of positive things happening
on your platform around the globe,

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but that doesn't make any of this OK.

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And it's only getting worse
as we're heading into our election,

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and even more concerning,

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face our biggest potential crisis yet,

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if the results aren't trusted,
and if violence breaks out.

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So when in 2021 you once again say,
"We know we have to do better,"

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I want you to remember this moment,

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because it's no longer
just a few outlier voices.

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Civil rights leaders, academics,

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journalists, advertisers,
your own employees,

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are shouting from the rooftops

00:13:05.254 --> 00:13:07.855 align:center
that your policies
and your business practices

00:13:07.879 --> 00:13:10.296 align:center
are harming people and democracy.

00:13:11.379 --> 00:13:13.730 align:center
You own your decisions,

00:13:13.754 --> 00:13:17.421 align:center
but you can no longer say
that you couldn't have seen it coming.

00:13:18.671 --> 00:13:19.921 align:center
Thank you.