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