I wouldn’t usually listen to an interview with Mark Zuckerberg but three things changed my mind:
- This particular interview was recommended by someone who’s opinion I value.
- Lex Fridman is an excellent interviewer and I generally enjoy the conversations he has with guests.
- I’ve recently come to question the narratives presented by mainstream media.
The first two points above are clear but I wanted to expand on the third. A few days ago I had a conversation with Tom Jesson, who made the point that most ‘news’ is entertainment. This got me thinking around the incentives that motivate news organisations and journalists, and I’ve been wondering who it serves for people to hate Meta / Facebook / Mark Zuckerberg? Who benefits when reporters cherry pick data outliers to support a narrative that fuels anger and division? I think the narrative that Facebook intentionally manipulates their algorithms to provoke and distort our opinions is overly simplistic and ignores the reality that a well-governed, stable, safe, predictable social media environment will make more money for Facebook.
So I decided to let Mark speak for himself rather than have a reporter tell me what to think. And he changed my mind. I thought that Mark’s responses to hard questions in the conversation were sincere, thoughtful, and sensitive to the complexity of human behaviour and psychological well-being that his company and products have come to mediate. In particular, I thought that he was able to articulate a nuanced position on some of the most difficult problems we face as a society, most of which most people on the planet would be unable to address. Tribalism, bullying, self-harm, misinformation, political unrest, identity, and censorship (to mention some of what was discussed) have been around forever and no-one else knows how to deal with these things either.
The fact that we’ve made it Mark Zuckerberg’s problem seems…unreasonable. Have we abdicated our collective responsibilities for addressing the social issues that affect all of us, handing them off to a social media company? Is it just easier to blame Facebook for the ugly problems we won’t confront ourselves (even though these concerns predate the internet)? Don’t get me wrong; with a billion+ users Facebook does have a responsibility but it’s not entirely clear what that responsibility is. Your ‘hate speech’ is my ‘freedom of speech’. My ‘fake news’ is your ‘science’. Negotiating these issues is an important problem but not one that I think should be delegated to a social media company.
I’m glad I listened to this podcast. It reminded me that:
- I need to develop my own opinions about topics that influence my choices.
- Forming legitimate opinions takes time and effort, and I’ve gotten into the bad habit of outsourcing that responsibility to others.
- I should pay attention to multiple perspectives, including those I may be disinclined to acknowledge.
- There are no simple solutions to hard problems.
Going into the podcast I probably would’ve put Mark into the True Neutral category of the D&D alignment matrix. Now I think he’s closer to Chaotic Good. Who knows which of my other opinions will change when I stop allowing other people to decide what they are?
