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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your calls on how the Facebook outage affected you yesterday and I'll throw in this, what do you do when you encounter misinformation? Or what appear to you to be other harmful practices on Facebook, Instagram, or other social media sites? Do you scroll on by? Do you engage? Do you report it? What do you do about the misinformation when you run into it? Sid in Ransomville, you're on WNYC. Hi Sid, thanks for calling in.

Sid: Hi, Brian, thanks for having me. I deactivated my Instagram account yesterday. When it went down, it's the last straw for me. I knew for a long time that it was bad for my mental health, I'd already deleted Facebook. I would click the Instagram app button with my thumb without even realizing it all the time. I was just doing so much comparing between myself and other people when I would look at it. Yesterday when it went down, I just thought "Well, that's it for me."

Brian Lehrer: Why was yesterday the last straw with all the other things that have been talked about even for years?

Sid: Great question. I don't know. I went for a walk with a friend yesterday, and we got into a conversation about social media. I'd wanted to delete it for a long time, and I kept thinking, "Well, what will I miss? I'll lose touch with people." I think yesterday I just realized that I don't need it, and the harm outweighs the good.

Brian Lehrer: Sid, thanks so much for calling in. Call us again. Elizabeth in Inwood, you're on WNYC. Hi, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I missed the fact that there was an outage yesterday because I was spending time with people in real life, but what I did in the evening was I went to a pay a shiva call to somebody that I knew in a completely unrelated context, but I learned that this woman died and was , a, my friend's mother, because of something that said friend had posted on Facebook and I had never connected the two. Social media does that sort of thing a lot. I also managed even with the shutdown, to raise over $500 on a birthday fundraiser because my birthday is Friday.

Brian Lehrer: It's a good week to have a birthday. Happy birthday.

Elizabeth: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: You just said a really shocking thing if I heard you right, which is that somebody died, your friend's mother died because of something that happened on Facebook. Did you make that assumption?

Elizabeth: No, no, no. No, it's not that my friend's mother died because of something that happened on Facebook. A friend of mine that I know casually through not relevant how, had posted something on Facebook that she was very sad that her mother just died and that some other bad news that she had received. I saw this post because she named her mother, I didn't know her mother, except as it turns out, I did in a completely unrelated professional context.

I m'ed my friend and said, "Wait a second, did your mother have a medical practice on the Upper West Side?" She replied back, "Yes." I said, "Well, this is quite a coincidence, but I was a patient of your mother's," and I then proceeded to extol her mother's professional virtues. She said, "We're sitting shiva later this evening, we'd love for you to come."

Brian Lehrer: That was a good thing, you learned about the death of someone you cared about via Facebook.

Elizabeth: Yes. There were a lot of those sorts of interconnected upsides to social media in addition to a lot of the many terrible things, it's not an either/or, it's a both.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth, thank you so much. Lisa in Forest Hills, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lisa.

Lisa: Hi, Brian. First of all, happy birthday. [unintelligible 00:04:30]

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Lisa: Second of all, your screener, the one I just called has an amazing attitude. [chuckles] I called you a lot and she's really awesome. I have a small business. I've been looking for a reason to get off of Facebook and Instagram because of all the negative reasons that you mentioned at the top of this piece. Yesterday, I think really did push me to go ahead and do that. The problem is that otherwise, I would meet people in person and because of COVID it's difficult to meet people in person. I may try to switch to something like YouTube, but I did feel as that other caller said that this thing that happened yesterday did push me, I think over the edge.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Did it show you just how dependent your business is on Facebook in a new way?

Lisa: Yes, and I don't like that. It feels like you have all your eggs in one basket, and I don't like that. I don't like that it's Facebook. [chuckles] It feels like you're selling your soul.

Brian Lehrer: By the way that excellent screener was producer Mary Croke, so I'll give her a piece of birthday cake. Lisa, thank you very much. Alison in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alison.

Alison: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hi, Alison. You're on the air.

Alison: Oh, sorry. I'm working, so I totally didn't hear, I just heard my name. Anyway, I love your show so much, Brian. I'm such a longtime listener. Lisa, do you know Toby from Forest Hills? Anyway. I think that most of the people that you've spoken to right now are intelligent people using the platform of Facebook. I don't want to say anything disparaging about your first caller, I think it's great. Sounds like a younger woman, that she realized what it was doing to her emotionally.

I think that it's not necessarily the Facebook, the owner, although I'll get to that in a second if you would allow me. It's how we are teaching our kids, ourselves. We need to be responsible for our actions. We need to raise kids who are aware and intelligent. I have a 20 and a 24-year-old daughters, and my younger one who's listening right now, she is super involved. Do I think that she gets affected negatively? Probably. I try not to get all up in her face about it because then I'll be screamed at. I've done my best, but anyway. I'm on Facebook, and I check information, and I don't answer anything because I don't want to be manipulated.

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Brian Lehrer: You're putting it all on personal responsibility. I think a lot of the critics are saying, there is a social responsibility aspect of this that falls on Facebook because there is so much misinformation that not everybody can be like the way you're describing yourself, where you're checking everything and you're being really careful about it so it's so much. You've seen what's happened in the last few years, so much misinformation has been spread that so many people believe and seem to have affected the politics and the social fabric of this country.

What the whistleblower alleges is that the documents that she released, shows that Facebook knew about these effects and decided not to do anything about it, just so they could continue to get more user engagement which makes them more money.

Alison: Absolutely. Again, if you allow me I was going to say I still feel most of it is on our own responsibilities. We all need to wake up and understand that we are responsible for our own actions, and this includes big monopolies and companies that try to manipulate us. We need to teach people, our society that you need to check things and you really have to try not to be manipulated by these companies.

Brian Lehrer: Alison, let me ask one more follow-up. That is, what do you do when you encounter things on Facebook that you recognize as misinformation? Do you just scroll on by and say, "No, that's false. I'm just passing this one by." Do you engage in some way and push back or try to refute? Do you report it? Facebook does have ways to report what you may think falls into that category. Just curious what you as an individual do.

Alison: Yes. You know what, I'm not on it that much, but I usually scroll by because I don't want to be targeted for all their BS stuff afterward. I started in with the women's reproductive rights, the march and everything, which by the way, I was upset you guys didn't cover but anyway, we could talk about that another time. Now all of a sudden I'm getting like a bazillion and one petitions to sign. Did I sign any of them? Yes, I find one but now I'm ignoring them because I don't want to be targeted by that crap. By the way, just one more point about AOC. Can I just make an AOC? She's just so with it. She had her story on Instagram yesterday, and by the way, I totally didn't even know that there was an outage yesterday, I didn't know until I listened to the news later on. She was mentioning how the monopolies need to be broken up. That I agree with and that the Facebook shouldn't be-

Brian Lehrer: -that much of a monopoly. Alison, thank you so much. Thank you for all those points. Among the points is interesting and there's the disincentive for doing anything about the information when you find it, if you engage with it, Alison fears she would get targeted, there would be all these follow-ups that she would have to deal with maybe from trolls, whatever. There's a structural disincentive to report the disinformation when you see it. Maddie and Hudson, New York, you're on WNYC. Hi Maddie.

Maddie: Hi Brian. I'm an artist. I get all of my freelance work through Instagram, basically. I know a ton of other artists who are completely relying on the platform, and it feels like there's no other way around it. I feel trapped by it, I feel stuck. If it was just for personal use, I would've deleted it years ago but I feel stuck to it. I know there's a ton of other artists who feel this way, freelance people who feel this way.

I just wanted it to be like a call to galvanize as many people as possible, to just let's all delete it right now. I'm really looking forward to, hopefully, the multiple platforms that are going to replace Instagram, and be a place for artists and other freelance workers to find work through different avenues. This is my call, this is my call to artists in the world.

Brian Lehrer: Maddie in Hudson says artists delete Facebook. Maddie, how do you think we got to this point where so many people get their freelance clients on this one platform when there are so many platforms out there?

Maddie: I don't know. I guess it just became at some point everyone had a Facebook and then it just like all my friends that I knew, like everyone just flipped on to Instagram and somehow it became a useful platform for artists because it had everyone's eyes on it all day, all the time. I don't know, I don't know. I really wish there was another avenue but this it's become the place where everything happens. All the information gets put out, people get their news on Instagram. It's a trap.

Brian Lehrer: There's the conflict. If somebody, in this case, Mark Zuckerberg and friends invent something that is just so useful to so many people, that it becomes the dominant thing in its field, then it's hard to push back against it because it's still got all these positive aspects and uses for people out there. There's nothing that is at least perceived as competing with it. Then it becomes harder to make these structural changes that also need to be made or in your case to just delete. There you go.

Elliot: Exactly, I know.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Please call us again, Elliot in Manhattan, it says you used to work at Facebook. Hi Elliot, you're on WNYC.

Elliot: Hey, Brian, you are a giant, which is a global icon and national treasure. Pleasure to be on your call.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. You're too nice. Go ahead.

Elliot: I'm a Facebook employee. I let go, left on my own feelings, had a negative experience there, but I was responsible for training employees when they first joined Facebook. I feel like the messaging that I keep hearing from the media is so different from when I was in the company and the message and the company and the feeling of the company is that they're really trying to impact change.

I think I could so easily be negatively influenced by my experience, but I think it's really important to realize that Facebook really did change the world. When you're creating something that massive you don't always understand the impact of what it is. I think there has to be a little bit of wiggle room for them to just explore this space that has never existed before.

Brian Lehrer: Where are we now, in your view, on that exploration 15 years or so into the history of Facebook and with all these things that people are finding so disruptive?

Elliot: Great question. I think we're in the middle of it. When I listened to the Senate hearings, when I hear people outside of the company, talk about what's going on inside the company. I just feel like they're missing the point, they're asking the wrong questions. I didn't spend a lot of time working directly with Mark, but he's very, very focused. He's not an evil person. I know I'm just a person saying that, but he's a person with a really strong vision and that vision isn't distorted the way I keep hearing media and the way I keep hearing a lot of the messaging about what Facebook has become.

I really do believe that the company and all the people inside of it are really trying to figure out the best way to connect people. I think a lot of times when you're, again, it's massive, there's nothing like this. There's never been anything like it. I think there's a societal expectation that it would be perfect. We have to create a little space for the imperfection and give a little bit of trust that the company is not actively trying to be evil, but actually actively trying to do something constructive.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you. In that context, did you, when you were there experience with Mark Zuckerberg or anyone else, this tension in the way the whistleblower describes it and I'm just summarizing here. I don't have her exact words on this, but a tension between trying to limit the spread of information, that's disinformation, that's politically and socially destructive to the country as most people might see it, but also really helps Facebook with its numbers with the amount of engagement that it gets from its users, which is the point of the company from a bottom line standpoint?

Elliot: Sure. When I was there, it was 2013 and the focus was really on growth. There was no Trump. A lot of the things that we're seeing today just were not in the reality or the ethos of the company. Unfortunately, I'm not the best person to answer that question. I do know that the folks who were working there were really excited to be working there. The ideas inside of the company were really trying to enhance and really protect the people who are part of the community.

I think they're probably really frustrated and trying to work on these solutions or these issues, excuse me, in a much more constructive way than people in the media give them credit for. I understand it's a much more fun storytelling even my friends called me yesterday and were texting me yesterday and said, "I'm so glad Facebook's down, I'm so glad." It's like we're rooting for them to fail.

I lost my aunt, I lost my dad this year and I was just, I was so aware that both of those, what Facebook provided for them, especially my aunt who lived in Spain and just was really disconnected from the family. It gave her this avenue for her to really connect with us. I do understand the dilemma. I'm not saying that there's not a problem, but I do think that we are in the middle of something. I think we need to give a little bit of space that there's some really smart people working on this problem.

Brian Lehrer: Last question for you as somebody with a perspective you've been articulating and you used to work for the company, what do you think they need to do to adjust to these realities as they have some space and continue to figure out the balance between growth and you said they were growth oriented when you were there, that's the main thing they were focusing on. That's one of the tensions between growth and social responsibility. What do you think they need to do right now to be in the right place for 2021?

Elliot: Boy, Brian, I wish I was more equipped to answer that question, but I think there's an impression in the world that Facebook is a technology company focused on making a lot of money and just building technology. I actually think that there's a very valid truth that Facebook is a people company with technology problems. I think if they find the right people and there's some latitude given, we might be surprised at what comes out of this space instead of shutting it down because things feel like they're inflamed, maybe create some space and see what comes out of those really, really smart people. Building a platform that's changed all of our lives.

Brian Lehrer: Elliot, thank you so much for your call. Elliot gets the last word for today on this call in about Facebook's outage yesterday and the whistleblower revelations over the weekend. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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