Are We Having a Moral Panic About Instagram? — With NYT's Farhad Manjoo

Farhad Manjoo is an opinion columnist for the New York Times. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss whether the criticism of Instagram's impact on kids is overblown, the subject of a recent column. Stay tuned for the third segment, where we discuss Farhad's views of virtual reality, his Thanksgiving column, and his cats. Subscribe to Big Technology: https://bigtechnology.substack.com/ Farhad's story about Instagram: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/opinion/instagram-teenagers.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay?

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation.

• 1:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is a guest that needs no introduction, but we will introduce him nonetheless. Farhad Manjoo is here with us. He's an opinion columnist for New York Times, a longtime observer and reporter on tech, who's now broadened out a little bit. So I think it's a great week for us to discuss what's happening to our society, how much the internet has impacted that, and where people might be putting a little too much emphasis. Really kind of perfect for our pledge to do nuanced conversations. I think this will be one that you're going to enjoy a lot. Farhad, welcome to the show.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks for having me, Alex. It's good to be here.

• 1:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's great to have you here. How you been, man? It's been a while. You've been cranking stuff out for the time. It's really interesting stuff. And, you know, one of the things I like is, yeah, we're gonna talk about how like it doesn't, there are some of your columns, especially this recent one about the moral panic that folks are having about Instagram. It's a kind of brave thing to say. It seems like a lot of times-

• 2:22Speaker 01

  A lot of people told me that and I was, it was interesting. I didn't really like, no, notice, know that when I was writing it. Like I-

• 2:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Here is my cat jumping over me.

• 2:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, for those on audio only, Farhad has written a column about what's going on in his cat's minds. And we have one joining us in the recording studio, quote unquote, today. And we're gonna get to that in our third segment, but I'm sorry, go ahead, Farhad. Yeah.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Oh, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah, the moral panic.

• 2:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  The moral panic. We were talking about how people told you that it was brave to talk about. So, yeah, just to set the stage, you said that we're having, you know, potentially having this moral panic about Instagram after the whistleblower Francis Haugen came out with some reports that, internal Facebook reports, that say that Instagram's harming our teens.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  So, I didn't mean it as like a larger defense of Facebook or Facebook's business practices. I was, I was mostly just thinking about Instagram as a product. And when I think about Instagram as a product, one thing I worry about, like, so I have two kids and they're younger than teenagers, so they don't sort of have precisely the problems that,

• 3:32Speaker 01

  that, you know, was brought up in that, in the criticism of Facebook and teen girls. But the, it struck me that the criticism was very similar to kind of criticism of media generally, like media aimed at kids. Like, there's sort of criticism all the time about, about body image issues. I mean, magazines have done it forever. So it didn't seem like a new criticism, like, and it seemed like Facebook, like Instagram, was being unfairly kind of singled out for something that kind of exists in the culture. More than that, like, the research that was supposed to have sort of shown that Facebook is bad for girls, the Facebook, the Instagram research that-

• 4:20Speaker 01

  The whistleblower said was was kind of hidden. It just didn't seem very strong. It was all it was mostly like survey based research and it just seemed it seemed like the kind of research that I've seen before from tech companies, which is like UI research, which is not something that you use for, you know, making like kind of assessments about people's users' psychology or how they're feeling. It was, you know, self-reported surveys, not random. And it just seemed like it. I think that from what I know, Facebook just sort of didn't do anything with it after that, didn't, you know, follow up on it. And so it probably would have been better if they, you know, looked at these, some of

• 5:03Speaker 01

  these warring signs in the survey and done some actual research. But like the research we have that was supposedly sort of the smoking gun did not seem very strong to me. And we just have this long, long history in, in, in sort of popular culture of just being very worried about whatever kids are doing. Like it's happened since comic books, like comic books were supposed to like ruin an entire generation. It happened with TV. It happened with video games and, you know, there have been some like established research about some of those things that suggest that they have negative aspects, but not to the

• 5:46Speaker 01

  degree that people worried about them in the first place. And, you know, as someone who kind of spent my childhood watching a lot of TV and playing like a lot of Nintendo, like the, the sort of like automatic idea that like watching a lot of TV ruins you seem just completely kind of preposterous to me. And, and like these kinds of criticisms about technology in general, I think are always kind of lack that like nuance. Like it depends on like the studies I've seen about screen time, for example, are not that strong. Like they suggest that they may have some small negative effect on kids if you spend like eight hours a day watching TV or, or using some kind of screen, which is like

• 6:28Speaker 01

  a lot and not kind of representative of what I think ordinary people should worry about. And. And then the other thing that happened, I don't know, am I, am I going on too long here? The other thing that happened, I think, is I had a reassessment of like the danger of screen time during the pandemic, because like what happened during, during the pandemic was like everyone just was addicted to screens and even my kids and they don't use Instagram, but they use YouTube a lot and there are terrible things on YouTube that I don't want them to watch, but there are also like a ton of interesting and like, there's content on YouTube that is much more valuable than like the content I watched when I was a child.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  And I think that if you sort of kind of condemn an entire platform, you, it's kind of like saying like, like reading is bad for kids, like some things are, some, some kind of content in that medium could be bad for kids, but like the entire sort of medium being bad for kids seems a little bit, I don't know, a little bit extreme.

• 7:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it reminds me of what's happening in China where they've put a limit on the amount of time kids can play video games. And I've, you know, watched this closely as have you, and I've thought, you know, social media, when used the right way, can actually encourage creativity and out of the box thinking. And that's the stuff that's actually going to empower people to be successful, not just memorizing and spitting back. And so I do think there's a good use for it. The question that I think we're all struggling with, and that Facebook in particular is struggling with is how do you end up creating those uses that you know are positive while mitigating some of the downsides?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think that Facebook has one huge problem as a company, and I don't know how it solves it. And that problem is that it's all of its revenues based on engagement and engagement is something that can be good sometimes and bad sometimes, but you can really drive that in a, in a terrible way. As like the company pulling the strings, you can kind of make the content such that it provides little value, but it provide like to the user, little kind of long-term value, but a lot of kind of short-term value in that it keeps them coming back and it, and it keeps your ad revenues up. And, you know, I think like other tech companies, a lot of other tech companies have a lot more.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't know, pure incentives like, like Apple sells you stuff and it, and if, and if the stuff is bad and doesn't like add you, add value to your life, like you just will stop spending that huge amount of money. Um, I feel similarly with Amazon, like I, I have a lot of trouble with kind of their, some of their business practices, but as a service, it is like very, very useful and, um, and it's very sort of like clear transaction that I'm making. And Google is similar too, in that like you're, the search engine at least, or maps or something like that, you're like, um, trying to get like, uh, you know, utility from it and, um, and you're, you're being shown ads on it, but it's not like something

• 9:28Speaker 01

  where like this, like Google can like, um, change its results in such a way to, um, get you to search 10 times more. Like it, it doesn't have that same kind of risk. Um, I think the problem with Facebook is like every time, and you know, many of the, the, the Facebook files, um, articles suggested this, and this has been a long time, like criticism of Facebook, like every time that some kind of risk or problem is presented to them, they seem to sort of, um, err on the side of like more engagement, like, um, and that, and, and that's, um, I mean, I criticize them for that, but it's sort of like in the same way that I criticize oil companies, like that's like the thing they

• 10:10Speaker 01

  sell. And so it's hard to criticize, like we need sort of rules and regulations, but like, um, Facebook itself, I think is not, is not sort of capable of kind of policing itself. And so, you know, if I have one criticism about that Instagram thing, for example, it's just that like it was secret and it was buried and I, and I like that we know about it now, but I just didn't think by itself, it was like a, you know, a, um, a smoking gun.

• 10:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Uh, look, I, I do think that Facebook can make choices on its own. Like Mark Zuckerberg is the lone shareholder. It can end up sacrificing some business optimization for the greater good, but you know, I, I can't let them off the hook completely. Like

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, no, I, I think that like, just, but sort of a lot of what they're doing is, here's the problem I have. Like I think that a lot of this stuff should have stopped. In 2013, when people, in 2012, in 2013, like 2011, when Facebook was buying up all these companies, like, at that point, the government had a, um, had a way to stop Facebook from becoming the monopoly it is. And there were people who criticized the FTC for allowing those mergers to happen. There were, and, and they, you know, the Obama administration was extremely like tech friendly and like they had a lot of tech friendly policies and

• 11:30Speaker 01

  like Google and Facebook were able to grow extremely large.

• 11:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, it's no surprise because those platforms also helped their campaigns. So.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Right, right. True. I mean, like, there was a sense in, in, in government.

• 11:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  And they helped Trump's campaign and all of a sudden it was a turnaround.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Right. There was a sense in government, in like Silicon Valley, in, in sort of the culture, that like tech companies were good. And so there was not like a strong kind of regulatory bent. And, you know, we could have made these companies less dangerous to the world if we had, like, if Facebook was just Facebook and not Instagram and WhatsApp, like, it would be a lot easier to, to, to, um, kind of get a handle on. And, you know, it may, may not even be that much of a risk if, if people moved on to other platforms. But the fact that it owns all these, all these things and, um, and for a lot of these

• 12:29Speaker 01

  things, you, you as a user have little choice as to kind of engaging in it. I think it's a, I think it's a problem. But, um, that specific thing about, about Instagram, I felt like was, was a little bit over the top.

• 12:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And, and I want to touch on what we started with, uh, which is that people came and told you that you were brave. I mean, obviously, you know, I started the interview saying that. And just to unpack that a little bit for listeners, it does seem oftentimes that the, the press tends to, you know, go along together and there's no negative penalties for saying bad stuff about Facebook. And so to come out and say, hey, we need a little nuance on this stuff, uh, doesn't happen too often. And in fact, you know, on, on this show in particular, I mean, people know here that, you know, I'm not a, I'm no booster of Facebook, but I've also gotten, you know, angry emails about like, you know, trying to look at this from a broader perspective. So I imagine you got some of those as well once your column ran.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that a lot of, especially the readers of like the comments on The Times were mostly negative. There were kind of contrarians on Twitter who agreed with it, but I don't think it was like, you know, positively received by a lot of people. And, um, yeah, I mean, I sort of expected that, but like this idea of like bravery, like we do have in journalism and in tech journalism, something of like a herd mentality. And it's difficult to kind of get out of that. I have like, sort of no, one of the things about not writing about tech as much anymore is like, I have no kind of like, beat affiliations with any of these companies.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  And so like, I don't even really like, like I don't go to the press events, I don't like know the PR people there as much anymore. Like, I just have very little of a relationship with them, so I don't really like, feel strongly either way about them as like, sources or subjects that I'm like passionate about anymore. And it was like, it's like a thing where Facebook, I think is, like, just ripe for criticism. It is like, I think, probably net like a bad force in the world. But, but I think sometimes people get off, like the main, the main ways that it's a negative force.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  And I mean, I think that's like, mostly that you, as a user of Facebook, are just driven into sort of ideological bubbles and also, and also like it echoes, just like a lot of, like the polarization that we have in the country, it just sort of seems to amplify that. But I think, sorry, am I, like, the other thing I think is like-

• 15:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, this is why, this is why you're here, man. So, we do want to hear your thoughts, go ahead.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  I think the other thing that is a, is a big, I don't know, blind spot or difficulty for the press about Facebook is that-

• 15:30Speaker 01

  A lot of the reasons that, a lot of the things that are bad about Facebook are things that are bad about journalism, about like media generally. I mean, like, it's kind of ironic that The Wall Street Journal broke these stories when like, one of The Wall Street Journal's kind of corporate partners, Fox News, is like, the source of a lot of misinformation and, kind of like, the crazy stuff you see on Facebook came from Fox News, or like, the crazy stuff you see on Fox News came from Facebook. And they work in like, this very symbiotic way, where, where like, you know, if you got, if you, if you sort

• 16:12Speaker 01

  of got rid of one of them, like, the whole system would be better. But if you got rid of both of them, like, we would like, solve a lot of our problems. And, and I think that, like, you know, you see that in not just Fox News, like, you see, like, the, the effect that Facebook has had on the media is, is to make it more sensationalistic, make it more like headline-driven and clickbaity. And, that's like, that's like, a thing that media really, like, had to do to, to survive in the Facebook world. And you can blame that on Facebook, but like, you can also say, like, well, they didn't come up with a different business model and, and like, a lot of online sites, like, based their

• 16:54Speaker 01

  model on Facebook. And so that has like, changed journalism in a, in a poor way. And it's difficult for people in media to kind of make that criticism, because like, of, you know, of our own biases.

• 17:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, there's also a, a sort of under-siege mentality that the media has right now, where it feels like it's, you know, under attack. Not physical attack, but certainly, you know, we've had, we had a head of state here in the United States, who's, you know, tried to discredit it and basically ran against it. I mean, Steve Bannon called the media the enemy of the people. And, you know, look at what happens with CNN folks inside the pen. I'm not, you know, there, there's folks, and I think there's reasonable criticism that folks like Jim Acosta, like, you know, present themselves as like, you know, people who are under, you know, under real threat, you know, whereas like, he's kind of just a blowhard yelling stuff at the president from, you know, the front row. But, but there is this siege mentality

• 17:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  and, and, you know, unfortunately, it has prevented media from being as self-reflective as I think they need to be and as nuanced as they need to be, which is, again, like, you know, I, I like the idea of doing a newsletter and a podcast. And, you know, you're on a subscription paper, although people have a lot to say about the Times. But I like the idea of doing this stuff because it gives the format to be able to unpack these issues and, and, you know, try to unpack them at length and with the deserved nuance and gray area.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree.

• 18:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  So now I'm going to push back a little bit on your column. If you, well, anyway, I'm just going to do it. So, so, you know, talking about a moral panic with Instagram, like, the company did have data that showed that unlike the other social media platforms, people are comparing themselves on Instagram and against other people and feeling bad about themselves. And there was a Max Reed, who had been at New York Magazine and now is a fellow Substacker, you know, talked about how maybe we need a moral panic with Instagram. He didn't link your article, but I wonder if he was speaking to it. And he talked about

• 19:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  how like, the idea is that Facebook, you know, we've talked about like misinformation and Cambridge Analytica, and none of that moved the needle, largely because it was policy stuff. But this is about how Facebook makes us feel. And there, the reason why this story resonated is because Facebook makes a lot of people feel bad. And I'll just quote one of his line. If he said, yeah, if the point is to transform Facebook from something that works on us to something that works for us, and barring that, to shut it down, I don't know where that comes in. But he said, it's useful to remember what people hate about it. And again, it's about the way that makes people feel. And this, again, like, it was one of these things where people said, okay, well, it didn't come out of nowhere. You know, a lot, and it's not that surprising,

• 19:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  but the data was, you know, the fact that Facebook has known this, and the integrity folks were saying, that hasn't really done much to change it, seems to be a legitimate area for criticism. What's your response to that?

• 20:09Speaker 01

  So I think, so there's a couple of things. So one is that, like, does Facebook, like, this is what goes back to what I said earlier, which is Facebook has one primary incentive, and that's to increase engagement. And so, like, even if they do have data that says people feel bad about using it, we have to sort of, um, uh, kind of weigh that against, like, do people feel bad enough that they're not gonna keep using our platform? And like, if, if, I would love if companies generally, like, acted in the incentive of, like, what's the best long-term benefit for, like, the user, like, a non-monetary benefit. But I can't think of a single company that would do that. Like, oh, this is gonna, like, if we, if we

• 20:54Speaker 01

  change this, it's gonna make our users feel better in the long run, on metrics that, like, we don't make money from, on metrics that, like, we, um, are unsure about. Like, they, they measure, like, they measure, um, advertising and engagement and that kind of stuff in, like, a very precise way. And their sort of surveys about, about how people feel are, are much less precise. And like, if they had a, they often have told me that, like, they have, they feel like, um, long-term, like, meaningfulness is something that, like, drives engagement on Facebook. But that just seems totally bogus to me. Like,

• 21:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, I agree.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  If you, if you look at, like, what News Feed is, or if you look at what Instagram is, like, it's not about making you feel good in the long run. It's about, like, making you sort of pull the refresh tab all the time. And, um, and like,

• 21:50Speaker 01

  I I just don't know how you how you square that with like the First Amendment with like media companies like it's hard for me to like it's difficult for me to say that like another media company makes people feel bad and so therefore there should be some legal repercussion.

• 22:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Like, I mean, Fox News makes me feel terrible. Like, I don't really like want it to have like penalties, government penalties or regulations. I think that's the difficulty.

• 22:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ah, OK, because these stories always end up going to what's the government going to do about it. I was gonna say, OK, well, ye- yes, their business model is all about engagement, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't like be up in arms about the fact that they know that making people feel bad and they stick with it. But, you know, I guess, you know, you had you spoke about the way the Senate was grant, you know, uh, um, making a big deal about this and and we should start to feel, I think your point is, we should start to feel a little bit weary of what happens when lawmakers want to run with that.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so so like if you if you think back to sort of previous moral panic, like comic books, for example, like, like, uh, or rap music or rock or rock music, like there were a lot of calls for not selling it to to kids or having, you know, various kinds of labels on it or just like banning it outright. And, um, maybe you could do that with Facebook, like the whistleblower suggested that we raise the age from thirteen to like eighteen or something.

• 23:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, like that's from using these products.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Right, I mean, it seems like very difficult to enforce and, um, and I don't know what like real long term effect it'll have. Like, one thing I think about is like Instagram is going to be in the world or something like Instagram is going to be in the world. And like if I if my kids don't use it, they're both going to be sort of cut off from like their friends who use it and will sort of not understand, perhaps in like a very naive way, like how to use the Internet. And like, you know, truthfully, like, the biggest problem we have in this country is not how kids use the Internet, it's like how old people use the Internet. And like, one reason that they're less good at it is because like it's

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Just sort of been thrown at them and they haven't kind of learned the like media environment and like how to determine truth from not or like what irony is on the internet and things like that. And I, I feel like you need those kinds of things to be able to kind of navigate and navigate the digital world. And like if you prohibit it for young people, it seems like it, it would be difficult to enforce and also would make, it would be dubious that it would have like long-term good. Um, I, I see a lot of these conversations going toward like Facebook is bad and therefore we need to do something about it. And like the do something about it part is scary.

• 24:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it gets sketchy. It does.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Right. Cause like, I have a lot of problems with Mark Zuckerberg determining like what's on Facebook, but I have like infinitely more problems with like the Republican Senate or, or Donald Trump, or like the FTC or anyone else sort of saying what's valid, what's valid and what's not valid, or how Facebook should, um, run its algorithm. And like, all those things seem sort of unconstitutional to me, but also just like, uh, just like a very bad like precedent to have the government decide those kinds of things.

• 25:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So let's get to the core of the issue. Uh, do you think that, do you think that Instagram is like comic books in that, you know, the media and lawmakers are saying, you know, how could this be, you know, how could we have this, uh, in the hands of the younger generation where like the actual harmful effects aren't that big? Or do you think that it might be in another category? Where do you line up on that question?

• 25:53Speaker 01

  I think it's like those, um, it's like teen celebrity magazines. It's like, um, or like, uh, so it's like. Media that of the kind we've had for a long time, which gives people as unrealistic, kind of over glamorous view of the world. In like teen celebrity magazines, it was like teen celebrities, but here it's like your friends at school. And like, this is something that adults struggle with, like, everyone sort of feels bad when they look at Instagram, because like, all your friends look like they're having perfect lives.

• 26:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  I deleted it.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Yeah, I I barely look at it. But like, I do have family who use it, and so I look at their pictures sometimes. But it's not something that like I look at often. I I use I use all of Facebook's products I I barely ever use.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  I don't really use WhatsApp and Messenger. I mean, I use WhatsApp because like I have relatives in South Africa and and WhatsApp is big there, but that's like the only time I use it. And I got I got an Oculus recently, and so I use that.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  But like

• 27:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  I can't wait for that column.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  So I feel like when like when my daughter is thirteen and is like legally allowed to use Instagram, I would probably feel apprehensive about her using Instagram, but I feel apprehensive about her doing a lot of things like driving or

• 27:28Speaker 01

  you know, watching HBO all all those kinds of things. And I don't think of Facebook as like, I don't think of Instagram. But maybe this is wrong. Like, at this point, I don't think of it as being like uniquely worse than those other things.

• 27:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  So you're gonna let her use it? Are you gonna let your kids use Instagram?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  I don't like I I have told them that they're gonna get like smartphones when they're like in their thirties. So like, I don't know.

• 27:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  I mean, they're like they have, we have a lot of rules about about when they can use like digital devices, but it also applies to like TV and other media, like mostly because I feel like they're like wasting their time on it, but it's not like about a particular kind of media. Like, I feel like those kinds of distinctions are difficult to make.

• 28:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Well, when we come back, we're going to test some of the stuff we've been talking about against some of your other writing, Farhad, and see where we met out. We'll do Farhad versus Farhad and see who wins.

• 28:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Well, you'll come out on top either way. All right. So we'll be back right after this on the Big Technology Podcast. Hang in there. We'll be back in just a minute. This episode is brought to you by AppPoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data. And most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what AppPoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf.

• 29:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's how more than 28,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence. So innovation scales without scaling risk. AppPoint, the unifying trust layer for AI. Head to apppoint.com to see how enterprises deploy AI with confidence. Learn more at avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast. That's avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast.

• 29:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on the Big Technology Podcast with New York Times opinion writer, Farhad Manjoo. Farhad, how you doing, man? Thanks for sticking around after the break.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me here again.

• 30:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, okay. You're welcome again. We do love to do the second intro. It's just a fun part of the podcast.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  People might have forgotten.

• 30:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's important. For those, especially the people that just tune in. I feel like podcasts usually get good once you get some of the table setting out of the way in the first half. And then you really get to start to get heated in the second. So here we are.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Okay, let's get heated.

• 30:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  You've written about how we, as a human species, are unable to cooperate with each other anymore. And you've indicated that you believe the internet might be at fault.

• 30:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  So tell me a little bit more about your your view of the destructive nature of the internet on.

• 30:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you also just mentioned that you think that Facebook is a negative in the first half. So let's let's hear about like your perspective of, you know, the destructive nature of the human of of the internet on the human species and sort of like how you square that with the discussion we just had about Instagram and Facebook.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Um, I think the I think the biggest sort of effect that Facebook has had.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Is to make the world like is to sort of amplify the tribalism in the world.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  And, you know, we had media that was doing that before, like you can think of like talk radio cable news did that to a certain extent. And Facebook is sort of an expansion of that. And, you know, it does it very efficiently, like, like if you are, um, you know, if you're like a Donald Trump. Fan and like you live in a particular place where everyone else.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Believes similar to you similarly to you and you have relatives that believe similarly to you. Your Facebook feed is going to reflect that. But so is your like media decisions like you or like that your choice of cable news station will also reflect that. And I feel like Facebook has just kind of added that layer. And made it worse in two ways. So one is it's like much more efficient. It does it like quicker and you use it more and like people use. I think people use Facebook more than people watch TV. It's possible that it's around the same, but I think that it's more. But the other thing is done is like made it international. And I think that is like, like the effect that Facebook has had on country on countries where that are like less sophisticated in terms of

• 32:38Speaker 01

  like mass media that have less journalism. So like Facebook is sort of like the a much more dominant form of media because it doesn't like compete in those places with kind of traditional like fact based accurate journalism. In those ways, like it is made. Kind of like the key to kind of human cooperation is like trust and like giving people like the benefit of the doubt and like sort of having like good faith relationships. And I think that Facebook makes all of that stuff worse like it like it reduces it. It gives you like this very like deep in group bias like you're you think that the people

• 33:19Speaker 01

  on Facebook that you see are like are like, you know, you trust them a lot, but I think it like sows distrust in for you toward like the like outer people not in your group. And in that way, like our species is one of like cooperation, like everything we've done up until, you know, like even including like, like the terrible things in our world, like World War Two, you know, we've had, we've had like the way that we overcome those things is by like, humans working together in like larger and larger groups and and and we like work on our problems, but like, that seems much more difficult to do like,

• 34:00Speaker 01

  you know, we have, we have in this country like no ability to turn like with either political party to like pass major legislation in this country and we were able to like for a few months after like extremely like world destroying pandemic, but like now it seems like we can't anymore like so there was like four months like earlier this year where we could pass legislation and that seems like crazy to me like we can't we can't like solve in this country like our our sort of baseline problems, but it's like seems to be happening in lots of other places around the world like politics has gotten so tribal and like extreme in, you know, everywhere you can think of in like most parts of Europe, in South America,

• 34:40Speaker 01

  like in Brazil, in parts of Asia, in like unless you are living, live in places where like the internet has been, you know, completely censored, it's difficult to say that it has had like a positive effect on like, you know, sort of knowledge and like trust and cooperation. It just seems like it has made a lot of problems worse.

• 35:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm gonna be careful when I say this, but it seems like the internet is both, you know, a, well, I just did a story this week about how Facebook's pitch, its whole strategy of communications is gonna be that it levels the playing field, right? And it levels the playing field for like, underrepresented groups, no doubt, and social movements. But the internet in, in general, just seems to be, and, you know, Facebook, but, but broad, more broadly, you know, the full internet, also seems to be this accelerant for terrible ideas, where they might have been just sort of, you know, something that a few people talk about in a bar, or like, you know, stocked away in some tiny corner of society.

• 35:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  But I'm thinking about, obviously, like, this massive anti-vaccination movement when it comes to COVID, and I have people close to me who are anti-vax, and I understand the arguments, but it's still, like, the positives and the evidence we have today, you know, seems to far outweigh any, any logic to not get it. Yet, we still have this massive movement against vaccines, and you've written about this. Actually, you wrote that it wasn't Facebook, and I'll just say one more. I mean, think about the fact that we had this internet-born insurrection that tried to, you know, disrupt the counting of the votes on January 6th, and continues today. And you have legislators that are like, and, and state governments that are putting into

• 36:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  place people who are, who will very happily try to overturn the election results in the next election. And, you know, they, they posted into these in-groups, these travel groups, I think that you, you referenced, and no one tells them that they're totally out of their mind, and so it builds momentum. Terrible ideas seem to really take off in a big way online, and that's extremely concerning.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree, and, and it seems like, I mean, the other part to add to it is like, Facebook's particular way of monetizing, like, seems to have, seems to favor the terrible ideas. Like, you know, because like, outrage and, and, you know, untruths kind of just sell better, and they work better on their plat, on their platform. It's not like, oh, like, you rarely see, like, the, the story about, like,

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Everyone needs to stop using water because there's a drought or something like some, some kind of like positive thing that creates like that. Like we've had, we have seen positive social movements, less on Facebook though than like on Twitter. Because like, one thing that Twitter does that Facebook doesn't do is like, leads to this sort of, like you can have small groups that like then amplify into like traditional media, which is like, Facebook is sort of on the other side of that, where like traditional media reports something and then it goes on Facebook. So like Twitter, you know, Black Lives Matter was on Twitter, Me Too was more on Twitter

• 38:01Speaker 01

  than on Facebook. And those kinds of social movements, even, even like the Arab Spring, which had, you know, less of a long-term effect than I think people thought at the time. But that was like a more Twitter-focused phenomenon. And I feel like-

• 38:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  The criticism of that will be that, like what you're saying is, so you know, social movements that I like, you know, should spread, but social movements I don't should be-

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'm just saying like, social movements that I find positive. You can cite some of them. But like, in general, like, I feel like it has led to just like a shallowness in, in how we think about the world, because it, it just sort of short-circuits a lot of discussion. Yeah. The trouble is, like, it's very difficult to think of ways to solve this problem, because it has gotten, Facebook has gotten so big, and it's sort of like, so, it seems so difficult to

• 39:07Speaker 01

  police that, like, I find a lot of the proposals for fixing Facebook to be like as dangerous as Facebook is currently. So it's hard to know what to do about these problems.

• 39:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, the incentives, right? Like, I spoke about this on the podcast last week. But the incentives really are for folks who are outside of power. To go full hog on social media. And and that leads to acceleration. So you have like, for instance, like the scientific consensus. Like, they're not going to use social media with the same amount of fervor as, you know, anti-vax folks or people who are like, you know, talk about an issue close to your heart, trying to dispute the validity of climate change. Right? Like, if, you know, when, once you have this consensus and it's the established value, you don't, you're not going to spend your day like on social media trying to convince people of it because it's the consensus, but people who are outside of consensus.

• 40:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, there is an incentive to break through and you can clout and followers. And it is this sort of like, the media is not telling you this stuff. And it does lead to, I, I, I was thinking about it today. I almost thought about starting the podcast with this, but the state of affairs right now is fairly depressing. It seems like the extremes on the right and the left are dominating the day. The center is nowhere to be found. You know, again, like I mentioned with the, the fact that like the election manipulation domestically in the United States is just, you know, reaching levels that you never really thought possible here. And then again, like the, the COVID situation is, is extremely disheartening where you're, we, we're just not in the US at least.

• 40:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  It just seems like we're going to be far away from ending this pandemic. Uh, as long as we have such vaccine resistance. And, you know, I think you might've mentioned it, the internet, once this stuff goes out of the bag, uh, it's really tough to stuff it back in on, on, when you're talking about a society that lives its information and consumes this information and, and, you know, disseminates it online.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think that the anti-vax movement is, is really interesting in that respect. It started, you know, in many ways, sort of before the internet or before the internet was like the force that it is. And in some ways it was like more of a lefty phenomenon than a, than a right wing phenomenon.

• 41:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah. It's like Marin County is, is.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Marin County, uh, when I, when I, um, I worked at Salon for a long time, which was a lefty online magazine and, um,

• 41:40Speaker 01

  I spent a lot of time there after the 2004 election disputing both this question of whether George W. Bush had stolen the election and the anti-vax conspiracies. And it was both because a lot of lefty readers were saying that those things were true, and we were trying to shut down our audience's bad, misbeliefs.

• 42:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Imagine actually trying to dispute that.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. You don't see a lot of that anymore. But I remember it being a very lefty phenomenon, and the way that it has morphed is entirely due to Facebook and Fox News, and Trump and others. But in terms of media, it's just these two forces that have made those beliefs, has given a platform to those beliefs that has spread far beyond what we thought their original extreme audience was. It's a different

• 42:51Speaker 01

  audience, and it found that audience through these platforms. And at some point, so I wrote a column recently, I think you just referenced it, about the anti-vax misinformation on Facebook.

• 43:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right. I think what I tried to say there is like- I used to say that the anti-vaccine movement is much bigger than Facebook.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Right. I think Facebook played a big role in it, but it's hard to sort of quantitatively say what was worse, Tucker Carlson talking about it, having these crazy guests on about vaccines all the time. And the Tucker Carlson segments just go on YouTube, and people watch them on YouTube, and then people post the YouTube segments on Facebook. And who do you blame there? Do you blame YouTube, or Facebook, or Fox News, or all of them?

• 43:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  All the above.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Right. A lot of these systems, they work together. And so Facebook has some share of the blame there, and Facebook has- Done something about it like posted on the like whatever if you think they're there. If you think they haven't done enough like I, I don't know exactly what they have done. They posted like, all they seem to do is like post more and more labels about how things are not true and YouTube does that too. Like, and like, I think they deserve criticism for perhaps that's not enough. Like they should change their algorithms or whatever. Like Fox News Hasn't done any of that. Like, hasn't, hasn't sort of addressed the criticism in any way. And Fox News doesn't have to because like people think of it as traditional media and

• 44:29Speaker 01

  like you can't like tell traditional media what to do. But like, it's weird how we have this different view for Facebook and YouTube.

• 44:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Totally. And don't you need a vaccine card or something to enter the Fox News building? Like, all those hosts are vaccinated.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's totally hypocritical. Right.

• 44:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. All right. I want to do a lightning round with you. So why don't we take a break?

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Wow, okay.

• 44:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then, and then we'll just come back and, and talk about your cats and Apple and some other stuff. How's that sound?

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Okay, sounds good.

• 45:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, we'll be back here with Farhad Manjoo right after this.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 45:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here for one final segment on the Big Technology Podcast with Farhad Manjoo. We've been talking a lot about Facebook and internet and the internet and our society. What is internet? Do you remember that video clip?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  I do, yes.

• 45:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Good morning, America. What is internet? Is it an email?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  What is internet?

• 45:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Oh, Lord. Well, we found out. Anyway.

• 46:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  I thought I thought we would do a lightning round just to end this off. We don't have to go too fast, but it's sort of my way of saying there's a grab.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Slow lightning.

• 46:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  A slow lightning. Yeah. It's a good band name. But yeah, it's a grab bag of stuff I want to talk to you about. So first of all, you we've talked about your cats. You wrote a New York Times column about how you wonder what's in your cats' heads. Which I think everyone who's been around a cat wonders at one point or the other. How did you get the New York Times to let you write a column like that?

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Well, one.

• 46:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  First of all, it's a great column, but I just can't even imagine being in the pitch meeting and being like, all right. I got it. What are in my?

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, um, one thing about being an opinion columnist at the New York Times is like, you can essentially do whatever you want. I mean, people will say no. People will say no to like, the worst ideas, I think, but like, we have a lot of freedom to do it and like, I think I, I think I sort of made a convincing case that I could write an article about it. Um, it's it's been like, so I wrote this article about, yeah, what the cats are thinking, but like, it has like sparked a lot of, um, I don't know. I know you wanted this to be a lightning round, but I haven't.

• 47:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, no, no, no, this is, we have 15 minutes, so lightning was a misnomer.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  I, um, I think there's like a lot of applicability about, to technology here, because one thing that I think been thinking about a lot recently is is VR. Um, and VR, um, really like, when you're in virtual reality, it really makes you question like, what consciousness is, because you're getting all of your inputs from like digital systems and you know that it's not real, but it feels real. And, um, and like, it makes me wonder, like crazy things about like, whether we're in a simulation, whether, um, and and like, those kinds of questions are like questions I also ask about my cats.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Like what the cats are thinking, like what the cats are thinking makes me like wonder like, um, about my own sort of sense of self and like whether that is affected by, uh, like how that will be affected by like VR. Um, and so they're like interconnected in some strange way.

• 48:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think we're in simulation?

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, I think that it's, I think that we don't know.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  I think that I think that reality is like indistinguishable from a simulation. So we don't know.

• 48:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm open to the idea also. I initially thought it was ridiculous. Then uh, this is what happens when you live in the Bay Area for more than a couple of years.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Um, there's this philosopher, um, there's this philosopher, David Chalmers, who's like, uh, writing, who wrote this, um, book that's coming out about this question about VR and

• 48:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, interesting.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Like, uh, consciousness. And it's the most interesting thing I've read and watched. So I'm gonna write about it.

• 48:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, cool. Uh, how often do you hang out in VR?

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Um.

• 49:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what do you do there?

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Not a whole lot. So, so a lot of things like, like, it's, it doesn't have like great content. And like the, like, the best content seems to be games. And so I've played some games. Um, and I've tried a little bit, the like Facebook, um, like various meeting rooms and stuff, but they don't seem like that great. Um, like, but I, but I think it has like enormous potential. Um, uh, you know, like the, the way that we've seen in the pandemic is like, we have, we just moved our lives over to screens completely. And, and it seems reasonable to me that if screens were sort of bigger and like, um, immersive, they would, like, people would use them.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Um, and, you know, it's like, early in the days of VR, it seemed like there were lots of, I don't know, practical concerns, like it made you, um, nauseous. And also the, the, the technology was huge. But I, I feel like it's, it's gonna become as small as like smartphones are or whatever, even smaller, like contact lenses or something. And at that, and like, if it's, it's gonna get to a point where it's practical enough that I feel like people, people use it. Or, or things like AR glasses or some, some way of like getting the digital world into our real world is going.

• 50:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Does a future where so much computing is layered on top of reality make you optimistic, nervous? Uh, what, how do you feel about it?

• 50:31Speaker 01

  It makes me very nervous. Like it, it, it like, I feel like all of the problems we have now with misinformation with like,

• 50:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Um, like the, the inability to distinguish like what's real from what's not will all get worse. Um, in VR, like it's like to the, to the extent, and especially if Facebook runs it.

• 50:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  I was about to say, the good news is that the company that's gonna usher it in has never had a problem with misinformation.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Great, no. Um, I mean, the good, the good news is like, I don't think Facebook is going to become like the big player there. Like, it seems like at some point, Apple or someone else will, will create a device.

• 51:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't know about Apple. I mean, anyway, we could talk about Apple, but they haven't, they have, they just haven't done a good job of developing out anything outside of headphones under, under Tim Cook. I mean, they have their own chip. They give them credit for that, but groundbreaking products.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Um, I, I've been feeling bullish about Apple. I think that like their, um, their M1 chips are amazing. The, um, the way that they've been sort of, like, I think the iPad is great. Like, the iPad is sort of my main computer now.

• 51:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um, really?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  And, yeah, I use it all the time. I use it to write. I use it like for most of my, most of, most of what I do.

• 51:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you tapping on the screen? Like, do you write your New York?

• 51:52Speaker 01

  No, I use the iPad Pro with the keyboard, like $400 keyboard or something. It's crazy expensive, but it's so great in that, like, because it has a cellular connection. You can use it wherever. It's like crazy great battery life and, um, and like it has phone apps on it. So you can like, it just seems like because I use my phone so much, switching to the iPad is like a lot less of like a mental um, break than going to like a Mac.

• 52:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. You, you don't like the Apple tax, though, the 30% that they charge?

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I, I, I really hope Epic wins that or the FTC does something. I think that's like a real, um, opportunity for regulation that I think is sort of.

• 52:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why, why? Yeah, I guess, um, the argument, not to get into a whole deep discussion about this because we're lightning here, but, uh, why do you think that regulators have a authority to come in and say, Apple can't charge that 30%? It is its store. That's what people tell me. I mean, I'm with you, but.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, I, I mean, I think that you can make a sort of very.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Like it's if it's not if it's not and I think it might not be technically a monopoly in the United States, but like they have like something like at least 50% of smartphone share in the United States and they have a lot higher share of like if you if you think of like app users or just sort of like high value users and they are the only they on that platform, they are the monopoly app provider and um there should be a rule that says like you could you should be able to get apps on your device from other places.

• 53:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  It just seems like um it worries me when like computing is like so locked down by a single company.

• 53:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Even if the company makes good products, like it seems like these extremely useful devices should have like a wider range of utility.

• 53:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Um, okay. Moving on in our lightning round, there's one thing that that folks wanted me to I asked on Twitter, what should I ask Farhad about and folks wanted to hear about your Thanksgiving situation where.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Thanksgiving was uh was so we so.

• 54:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  You well, let's give the context. Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Yes. So I wrote this article about so so last year Thanksgiving time, I wrote about sort of how large my kind of extended bubble was and how and then I said sort of that with like various precautions that we were going to visit my parents for Thanksgiving anyway. And it caused like the greatest like negative response I've ever had to.

• 54:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Did you become like the main character on Twitter for the day or something like that?

• 54:46Speaker 01

  I did, yeah. And um and it really like soured me on social media for months. Like I think I didn't go on Twitter like like it was like very.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Like psychologically painful. Um, I think I was right still.

• 54:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  I, I feel like.

• 55:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, went through like.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  I feel like the, I feel like the criticism was.

• 55:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think, did you decide that you didn't want to go? Uh, you shouldn't go for Thanksgiving, but you said you were going to go anyway or something at the end.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Uh, I said, I, I, I said something like that, like I understand the dangers, but like we were going to do it anyway in a safe way. And they like listed the, the, the things we were gonna do, like we're gonna, yeah, we were gonna, we drove, we didn't fly and we were going to, and, and we did all this. Like we had dinner with my family, um, outside and we didn't stay there.

• 55:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Barely safe.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, and so like, like, I thought that we were completely safe and we turned out to be safe. Like no one.

• 55:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  No one got sick.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Got COVID. Um, and, but like, I think that what I did wrong was sort of, um, I don't know, wrong, but like one thing I didn't anticipate. Like I just didn't read the room correctly. Like, like people were like, I should have written it in a way that was more cautious and explanatory about my, what I was doing. Because I feel like people were especially, um, jumpy at that time about anyone who was not sort of following like the main rules. Like, and I got like a lot of private, uh, messages from people saying like, they were also going to their family for Thanksgiving.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  But like saying it publicly, I think at that point was like just far, too far for people. Um, yeah, I, I mean, I like, I, I don't think that I did anything sort of technically wrong in like a journalistic sense, but like in terms of like a tone sense or like a understanding, like what the audience, what the audience's, um, uh, uh, sort of response and pushback was and sort of like anticipating and responding to that, which I try to do in my articles. Like, I feel like I didn't do that correctly.

• 56:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, tell me more about the psychological pain.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  It's just really terrible to feel like the internet is against you. Like, like it's hard to tell yourself like, oh, it's just people on Twitter. Because first of all, like, I know people on Twitter. Like Twitter's huge and like, I know a lot of people and like, a lot of my sort of like, public persona is there. So like Twitter and like what people think of me on Twitter is like valuable to me. And also, um, one thing that happens is like, at some point, it gets disconnected from any facts. And it's just like, like, there were lots of like, follow on articles where it's like, elitist New York Times writer, like, it's sort of like, becomes just like ad hominem attacks and like, people who didn't read the article are just retweeting it and stuff.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  It's not, it's at all, like, not at all like a pleasant feeling to be the main character on Twitter.

• 57:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Um, and, um,

• 57:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Even to be a, a, a minor character on Twitter sucks.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, being a minor character on Twitter is also not good. Right?

• 57:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Um, I, I feel like, um, you know, of all the social media, like, I, I use Twitter more than anything else, I think. I, I use TikTok and Reddit often too, but like, Twitter is sort of like the main place that I am. Um, and, um, I feel like there's a lot of good things about it, but like, it also has this very, very, uh, like toxic effect on the world and probably also is like a net negative in the world, like Facebook.

• 58:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  I agree. I wrote about this, uh, I, I think, I, I, for me, the jury's out on Facebook, but I do think Twitter is a net negative. And I wrote this column about how, um, Twitter should be cognizant of this main character behavior that's incentivizing by putting people's names in the trending bar, which is just

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. That's true.

• 58:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  It is, they talk about conversational health, but every single day, you know, the reason why this main character analogy is caught in it. So for people who don't know, there's a tweet that says, every day, there's a main character on Twitter and your goal is to not be it. And the reason why this exists is because Twitter will put their names in the, in the spotlight and say, essentially, go dunk. And that is, it's just like, you know, if they If they can do that and they have no claim to this notion that they're going to try to be good to society because it just turns people into savages.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I think, I think the trending bar is bad and quote tweets are bad. Like, the way that people use quote tweets are to direct anger from their audience to like another audience, another person's audience, and then

• 59:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  It becomes contagious.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  There's very few sort of good ways to use that power.

• 59:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, I agree. Okay, so the last question.

• 59:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  You, you've had an interesting, like, I feel like you've publicly started trying to, like, reckon with, like, your Twitter use and you've gone through, like, various different personas on Twitter. What's your relationship with it now?

• 59:55Speaker 01

  I probably use it less now than I did sort of a year ago, definitely like two years ago. Like during the

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  during the 2016 election, I think was my sort of hate usage. And I think it was like unhealthy in, in various ways. Like, you know, you know, looking back, like, my kids were much younger then, but I basically don't remember their lives because I was just, like, looking at my phone the whole time.

• 1:00:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  And so that was bad. And I think it has a way of

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  like, it has a definite risk to me as a writer in that, like, it has a way of affecting my thoughts and, like, sort of bringing me into, like, group think that bothers me. So I, I look at it. So I write a column once a week and I post the column and I look at the responses to the column. And so, like, the column runs Wednesday, so I look at it Wednesday and Thursday and, like, by Friday, I try to, like, from Friday to, like, Tuesday, I try to not look at it.

• 1:00:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Or look at it just, like, once to see, like, if I'm not missing anything big.

• 1:01:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  I was very happy for you when we were trying to schedule this podcast and it was like a couple of days between your responses. And I was like, good, I like this.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Like, you DM me on Twitter and, like, that day, I think, I just didn't look at Twitter.

• 1:01:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 1:01:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah. And here we are. So, we're a week later, but it's great to have you. And one thing I'll say is, I do like when you, you know, ask, I don't know, they're kind of goofy questions or, like, interesting observational questions about the world and everyone replies Farhad, but I think they're super fun and the responses you get. So I hope that continues.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I mean, I think that like those kinds of things are like old Twitter and I loved like old Twitter, like before it became all about politics. It was like awesome. And it's that that kind of Twitter is just lost now.

• 1:01:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, sadly, it is. Okay, where can people find your work? Yeah, where's the thing?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  The New York Times opinion page. Twitter.

• 1:01:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Manjoo. Yeah.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Farhad, thank you for your time. You've been very gracious answering answering all these questions. It's been great hearing your perspective. And the column is a must read for me. So I appreciate you being here and coming on to chat with us.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Thanks so much. It's been fun. We've talked about about a lot of things. It was great.

• 1:02:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Indeed. Super fun. Thanks again. Thank you, Nate Guatney, for doing the mastering of the audio and the edits. Thank you, Red Circle, for hosting and selling the ads. And thanks to you all, the listeners. Without you, there'd be no show. We appreciate you coming back here every week. If it's your first time, feel free to hit subscribe. If you've been back a bunch, you're using an Apple device and you want to hit the rating thing, that would be helpful. No pressure, but I would appreciate if you did it. And and that's all the announcements. So thanks again for listening and we'll see you next Wednesday here on the Big Technology Podcast. Until then, take care.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  In this life, you can't win.

• 1:03:33Speaker 04

  When the world gets you down.

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  No!

• 1:03:35Speaker 04

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 1:03:39Speaker 04

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Shwing! Even our news is uplifting.

• 1:03:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 1:03:46Speaker 04

  Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The Ex-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  We're not worthy!

• 1:03:54Speaker 04

  The best things on TV really are free.

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  You just have to know where to look.

• 1:03:58Speaker 04

  Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.