Zuck doesn't have your back

I’ve been thinking about something I heard Mark Zuckerberg say on a recent podcast with Ben Thompson.

The conversation covered a lot, mostly Meta AI related stuff. About two-thirds in, Ben asked Zuck about Meta’s evolving content strategy:

BT: There is a question, why do you keep doing this? And you kind of look back, I remember back in 2017, you’re like, “We’re going to actually take down video a bit in our apps because we want people to feel good about this and to connect with people”, and then today we’re like, “Oh, there’s video everywhere and it’s getting bigger and bigger”.

MZ: Yeah. There were a lot of mistakes that I feel like I made during that period, in terms of deferring to some so-called experts about what was valuable for people. And look, obviously, there’s research that’s helpful, but one of my takeaways from that period is that by and large people are smart, they know what is valuable in their lives. When you have some expert who’s saying that something is bad and people are telling you that it is good, 9 times out of 10, the people who are experiencing the thing are probably actually right.

I take this as a pretty blatant admission of guilt, although not one he recognizes any wrongdoing in.

There’s a ton of evidence suggesting these platforms are too powerful for people to just “know what’s best”. Take YouTube’s algorithm and radicalization traits. Meta’s algorithms are no different, they are designed to keep people engaged to serve more ads. I’m assuming we all have at least one friend that has been radicalized and led astray by algorithms. Maybe this is the 1/10 he’s referring to, but he’s saying this is fine. That the people want this and know what’s best.

When he says this, he’s revealing that he isn’t thinking of the externalities.

Its engagement, its ad dollars. And that the people know what’s best, and they want his ads. I can’t interpret this any other way.

This flies in the face of the work the Centre for Humane Technology has done over the last decade, trying to define and create frameworks for technologists to recognize their part in affecting mental health and society at large with the experiences they build. And here is Zuck, a man whose direction guides what over a third of the world sees when they wake up in the morning, saying he doesn’t care about this.

If anyone is looking for evidence that Meta’s products have their best interest in mind, or will have your back… I think this is it. They don’t. They’re going to be designed to trigger dopamine response, and that’s that. AI or otherwise.

Sad. Not surprised, just sad.