Thanks a lot for watching. This video took around a year to write and produce. The length is nuts. I know. But I've been a good boy. I structured it in a strict chapter format, which each have their own conclusions. Think of it as a 7 part mini-series 😀. I hope you've enjoy! Also, if you'd like to help finance my future videos and get a sneak look at how I put them together, please consider becoming a patron. www.patreon.com/Tantacrul. Alternatively, you can support me by signing up to view non-youtube content on Nebula: go.nebula.tv/tantacrul I'm also a founding member of a really cool Discord server too. Come check it out! Discord: discord.gg/teeteecee
Thank you so much for making this video Tantacrul. I love videos like these that aggregate all this important information and historical events on specific people, communities, companies, sub cultures etc. It is a great resource for people like me who want to learn more about something but don't know where to start looking or what info to trust. I can use this video as a great springboard to do more research on a topic without having to spend so much time figuring out who is important and verifying if these past events really did happen and figuring out how they happened. Now I am free to do a more through search on this topic.
@@Tantacrul I don't think we can understand yet how important work like this is. Thank you for doing it. I'm profoundly sorry to bring up one small factual issue, but I think think it will get mentions: 2:07:03 George Floyd died by asphyxiation. He was not shot, but crushed to death by Minneapolis PD's Derrick Chauvin.
This "angry-face" drama is just a myth. Facebook never tuned it the way it was reported in the media. In reality they tuned ALL of the drop-down icons to be stronger than the regular "like" since they required more work to press. It wasn't incentivising the stuff that made you angry, but incentivized stuff that made you go to any of the drop-down icons.
@@bzqp2 that being said, angry face is the only negative one - there's no equivalent thumbs down/dislike. Most of the drop-down reacts are relatively easily translated into the thumbs-up if you're not inclined enough to select a more specific one, so positive reactions are diluted by having the most generic positive reaction be less meaningful. However, since there is only one negative reaction (I'll address the cry react in a bit) and having that being weighted strongly means that even a post that gets equal positive and negative reactions will automatically weigh the negative reactions more since positive will be diluted with the regular Like reaction. This then encourages posts that are more divisive because something generally agreeable will get more regular Likes and be less "engaging" than something that drove people to express a negative reaction - and depending on how strong the weighting is, there's a point where a post that gets fewer but mostly negative reactions will outweigh a post that gets more positive - but diluted and weighed less - overall positive reactions. The cry reaction is a bit of anomaly as it is more specific but can represent a positive or negative reaction depending on the post, but it would certainly drive up engagement on content meant to evoke a more bleak outlook.
Yeh me too. This channel is one of those rare channels that I just click whenever there's a new video - without even bothering to read the title. It's just a simple (but super obvious) example of how quality matters over quantity.
The fact that Facebook caused a genocide is something that I should've found out about in a worldwide news outcry, not in the middle of a 3 hour long youtube video. Thank you so much for bringing all of these issues to attention, this is invaluable work.
Robert Evans of Behind the bastards did an episode that goes into the genocide called 'Mark Zuckerberg: The worst person of the twentieth 21st century so far
I am an Ethiopian and in my close circles we are actually actively trying to stop using Facebook for anything. But the sad thing is the violent rhetoric in that app is just getting replaced by another, telegram and even Twitter now. Which really just makes everything depressing.
Here in Sweden around 2004 - 2007, there was a weird boom of companies that arranged class reunion parties. They somehow divided all old school classes among themselves, and every time an old school class was about to have a 10 year anniversary or something, they booked a venue and mailed out invitations to all the old students. I worked part time as a postman at this time, and I delivered these invitations all the time. I actually looked forward to the 10 year reunion of my high school class, which would have been in 2011. But it never happened. By this time, all these companies had just vanished. I soon realised that this was because in the meantime, Facebook had happened. Not only could we all reconnect with old classmates on our own now, we had also collectively discovered it wasn't actually all that fun.
Class contact/reunion companies still exist. I've been on the one for my high school class for at least fifteen years. I recently got the invite for the 60th year reunion of the Palo Alto Senior High School Class of 1964, about 1,000 miles from where I now live, so, no go. (I'm not sure it ever happened, they kept sending entreaties to get enough RSVP's to hire a venue, etc.)
The sentiment about finding out it wasn't fun is just so accurate. Once mine came around it was I think 2012 or so and people tried to organize it but only five people showed up, it was so sad. We were all burnt out on each other already.
@@littlestbroccoli When everybody joined Facebook, I was pretty stoked to be able to find out what all the old classmates were doing nowadays, how they looked, etc. Then I found out, and all the weird nostalgia and magic just vanished immediately. Just a big old anticlimax.
I found this opt-out so infuriating that I had to check it out myself. It was all still there except I didn't have to do the verification code email step
Not in a terrible hurry to get a reply from the video author. He's getting high on all the replies, but what is he left with? Good points were made, but for what?
@@jnnx I mean, yes, but that's a device to emphasize how Tantacrul's use of the app to connect with the people in his life has a tangible empathic impact.
Your comment had me confused until I looked at the progress bar. 3 hours?? I guess I click first, ask questions later, when it comes to Tantacrul's videos lol
That AI opt-out process is a crazy Byzantine hell obviously designed to dissuade as many people as possible from completing it, but for the record it's different and much simpler in the US. (We do not have the ability to opt out.)
I've been conflicted for a while about whether I am doing more good or harm by posting high effort content on social media platforms. On the one hand, they are positive and uplifting posts that make the platforms better places to be, but on the other hand, they attract more people to the platforms and compel them to stay on the platforms. I wonder what other people think about this after watching this thought provoking video. Thank you for this wonderful video Martin!
This is the same sentiment echoed by people making self-critical protest music. If it gets popular, you might raise consciousness about a topic but will simultaneously funnel money into the same system you're trying to rebel against. Personally, I am one to try to make those good posts and hope that the system responds to my own personal ethos as opposed to abstaining from the present system or creating a new system... assuming that the system is even amenable to your ideas in the first place. Like, you can lie on a spectrum from making formulaic pop for the common denom and the money that brings to putting your weird spin on the formula to great critical acclaim to using your weird individuality to make a hidden masterpiece that is unheard of. That's the balance you strike between system and individual, creator and audience.
i mean that logic could be applied to anything, even if less directly at times. "if i have a child, do i add to the net suffering in the world? will my child have a bad life that i chose to create?" "if i inform people about a new scam, do i teach potential scammers how to get started?" (that one's popular with people who just discovered critical thought and want a gotcha) unfortunately some things are hard to do without some other cost, however deliberately you act. you didn't construct the system or the social dynamics but you want to navigate them in a way that hopefully does some good. the only realistic way to avoid it is to not do these things, but then it'd be a huge net loss if enough positive people did it, leaving these things to truly descend into a hellscape until it becomes unusable and awful people get tired of having well-adjusted people to provoke obviously if you feel that something you created directly led to harm, it'd weigh harder on you and it'd be more understandable wanting to log off. at that point it's a deeply personal decision that's a little divorced from that philosophy edit: i meant to add that i think things like informing people of scams is a net good, not by raw numbers but just by the fact that you did it. if people continue to help then there's some hope in this world ya know?
I struggled with this dilemma for years. I've found peace in having a random blog site where I post whatever I want whenever I want and there's no real audience - I can link it to loved ones but there's no engagement setup. It's given me so much creative freedom to really go all-out with whatever I feel like, instead of the pressure FB encouraged to post things that appeal to broader and broader audiences
Yay Ben Levin! You sir have given me so much inspiration, education and mental health reassurance. TH-cam specifically is my carefully curated cosy haven of neurodiversity, learning and escapism. Creators like you and Tantacrul should be very proud of what you have contributed to society through your work.
Hi Ben, first of all thank you for doing what you do, second, I really do feel like TH-cam is way less evil than Facebook/Instagram etc. Actual harm certainly does happen here, but I think the business model is way more focused on the utility of sharing videos, which is (probably?) a net good. I get a lot of benefit out of this platform, honestly, and it sucks up less of my life than Instagram, for example. Anyway, I hope you keep making videos as long as you want to.
it's strange how even in the old footage you can see Zuckerberg's mannerisms go from fairly affable and normal to slooowly more robotic and flat like his soul was being sucked out every year
He also went from having clear skin and blue eyes to looking like he's seriously ill. Either he magically buggers up the colour balance in every video interview he's in, or he's actually turning a yellowish-green.
Nah his eyes had always seem dead to me. Like someone who never received his parents love or he actually never cared for them. Funny how Zuck has managed to collect data on everybody but nobody knows who his parents are or anything about who his relatives are
I'm glad you also pay significant attention to scandals outside the Western world. What happened in the US and the uk is horrible, but it's not even close to Myanmar. I feel Facebook criticism is mostly western focused.
This video is actually the perfect length to cover a complex topic without dumbing it down. I was skeptical but the 3 hours were well spent and this is the most comprehensive anthology of Facebook.
I genuinely think the 'revealed preference' meme is one of the most damaging concepts invented in any field that isn't strictly technical studies in economics. "You say you hate this new feature that is specifically designed to perform social engineering, falsify human interactions, and perhaps entirely fry your dopamine receptors, and yet I cannot help but notice that you peons are actually using it twice as much!". People 'doing it anyways' or more is in no way a justification for anything, ever. People used to buy unregulated hard drugs, poison themselves with uranium quackery, and sell themselves as indentured servants.
I think they said the quiet part out loud. The fact that people can't stop using it is the reason it's so hateful. It's like saying "Well, people keep sharing the fake news, so it's actually good".
Your observation about losing contact with old friends because Facebook switched to an algorithmic feed struck a chord with me. I think it's part of a broader problem with information overload. People don't seem to have time to talk to their friends anymore. They're too addicted to various forms of high-stimulus electronic media. In an increasingly digitised world without physical spaces where casual encounters can occur, it's getting harder and harder to find community.
Right? I had these friends in sixth grade and middle school who were triplets. I could never, ever get any of them to do anything outside of their home. I only ever hung out with them at school, or at their home.
That’s true. I’m too young to have experienced Facebook before that shift, so hearing him talk about spending an evening just kicking back, listening to music, and catching up with old friends over messages was really fascinating, and I wish that kind of thing was still in the social consciousness
@@JediMaestr0 I lived through it, and the uproar about algorithmic news feeds (quite a few years later in Twitter's case, they were the last ones to keep things chronological but investors were really pressuring), and I _still_ had half-forgotten how you could just... scroll for 30-60 minutes, see what your pals all said that evening, then DM them or play games or go do something else. With pagination, too! Not infinite scrolling! Social media nowadays is so pervasive, attention-sucking, deliberately addictive, etc. It really is hard to remember it was just... a nice comfy corner at the local pub, for a few years. It really didn't last long though, the pressure from advertisers and investors was always too much in all the companies.
I got pulled into FB in 2008. I was finishing a year studying abroad and had made many friends who were returning to Africa, Middle East and Asia. We could email or write letters to each other, but I knew I would eventually lost contact with most of them just like I had with other foreign friends in the past. Than a friend from Nigeria convinced me to join Facebook and add her. And all of the sudden, exactly like the beginning of this video, I was connected to most of the friends and contacts I had made, plus long lost friends (and former teachers, professors, bosses, co-workers, and estranged relatives!) from the past. It was a living breathing rolodex with streaming news about your friends lives!! Those were heady days. But by 2013 (just like he said), this living breathing rolodex felt toxic and depressing. But.........to give it credit, I'm still in touch with a few overseas friends and contacts thanks to it. Pre- Facebook maintaining such relationships long term was almost impossible. Gee...what an era.
man, I used to be so mad at my mom for not letting me have social media as a preteen, but in retrospect she was very right to keep me away (even tho I did manage to avoid horrible stuff somehow and made it to adulthood broadly unscathed)
yeah definitely - while my parents never forbid it outright, they managed to make us so paranoid about data privacy (as in: putting anything that could even remotely be used as identifying information onto any internet service) that i never wanted to start using anything like it back then and i haven't felt the need to change that since
I actually tried to do the opposite and teach my daughter about social media early and help her explore it critically. She wasn’t interested. But now that she is, I’m thankful that she’s very mature and doesn’t have much interest in the attention economy or comparing herself to others. I hope she never does. I feel for the kids that have been so harmed by social media.
I think one thing about the internet is how easy it is to come across content that’s upsetting in ways small to big. Companies like meta put work into portraying sites like Instagram as ‘safe’ cool places mostly filled with your friends and celebrities, but it’s not true. When you watch tv, read a book or even visit a specific website, you have more control over what you see, and it won’t affect your interaction with that website in the future if you see something upsetting. Your points about Instagram reminded me of this.
The majority of the upsetting stuff I see on Facebook is the algorithmically delivered content that I don't follow! I just follow groups to buy car parts and Facebook is like "I think you'd be really into this thingy veiled anti-trans webcomic that just barely skirts past our hate speech rules!"
This whole algorithm-keen-on-self-harm-content thingy has been experienced recently by a French horror TH-camr, Feldup, on Tiktok. While training the algorithm to lean towards horror/paranormal/creepy content, he ended up with a timeline full of depressing and S-word inducing content. It feels like searching for anything that's not overwhelmingly positive will send you down that algo spiral even nowadays. Also, excellent video, thank you so much. Love from Réunion Island.
It's called suicide. This censorship is the bane of current social media. It's a fucking loony tunes house of mirrors. Censor words, still send people into rabbit holes of disturbing content. We have AI that can actually lie to you and pretend it's a geniuine psychiatist. Normally if you express certain thoughts to such a chatbot there should be a redirect to geniuine professional help. But this didn't happen. AI can use sacrasm and lie today.
When did it start soing this? This is dangerous and I wouldn't be surprised if un or poorly managed depression could feed into this spiral towards s-word content.
There was a similar experiment done on tiktok, where a team tried to scroll tiktok and only like anti feminist/terf content (I can't remember specifically) to see how quickly someone could be radicalised into alt-right extremist content, by ONLY interacting with the anti fem/terf shit. If I recall it correctly; they started scrolling at 9am and managed to get into extremist alt-right content (like Jan 6th extremist Qanon stuff) by 11. It took 3 hours 💀 Shits horrifying
@@ayior this has nothing to do with being online and everything to do with wordplay. Astrotrufing: the deceptive practice of presenting an orchestrated marketing or public relations campaign in the guise of unsolicited comments from members of the public (Oxford Dictionary) Astroturf is a type of "fake grass" that commonly contains a carcinogenic polymer known as PFAS. What Linus is trying to say is that the "zuckaissance" is so forced and thus "astroturfed", much like the original astroturf it is dangerously high in PFAS.
my favourite Facebook anecdotes are of people setting up extremely specific targetted adverts that would only be seen by their housemate. the ad would be something like "isn't it wonderful to throw out pickled beetroot after it expires"
Zuck appears to be one of those people that takes an observation and turns it into an axiom. Communication has done some great things, so therefore all communication is good and at any cost. The scariest bit is he really seems to believe in what he’s doing; a less motivated person might become bored, but he’ll keep on going, because he’s making the world _better_ !
They struck an exploit. Yay🎉 let’s abuse it to the fullest! *sigh* There is one interesting phrase in competitive gaming :”Abuse early, abuse often” because rewards are enormous and punishment is not guaranteed when you are on the bleeding edge.
The moment where you basically explained "You dont post for your friends/friend group anymore, but for yourself" hit hard. That was where social media lost me as well. But i could've never put it into words. Thank you for that.
I'm only 16, so one of those "young whippersnappers" as you mention. you somehow made me feel nostalgic and disappointed for a time that occurred before I was even a part of this world, and for that I commend you. One interesting side effect, I ended up talking to my parents about the topics you brought up (as they experienced facebook throughout its journey) and we ended up having some very interesting conversations about the role of social media in politics, so that was neat.
Really glad to hear it. Honestly, I tried my best to describe the experience but I still feel the overall sense of optimism can never fully be portrayed. It felt like there was so much promise - especially given the nightmare years of 2000-2004, when it comes to world politics. It felt like we were emerging out of a very bad period.
There were so many stories circulating back then about online meetcutes, actually innovative videogames, fandom becoming the mainstream pastime, neat new gadgets, people organizing to fix someone's offline troubles, all the leftist hacktivism having actual global impact (before they all got arrested and the anonymous internet was left to CIA plants, white supremacists, and russian botnets)... It was a couple years of relatively hopeful funtimes, in all the news media and discourse, and I'm glad I got to see it.
Not as young but same here. I already viewed FB pretty negatively, but your positive experience made me much more invested in the specific (and addressable) issues with it. I do wonder if some were impossible to avoid - in particular the self-image and engagement chasing stuff, which happens (to a lesser extent) even in small groups or real conversation. I also wonder where we'd be if they managed to buy Twitter, and kept the few-to-many interactions more separate from the few-to-few.
Holy shit, imagine getting grilled by Ted fucking Cruz and being the person legitimately in the wrong between the two of you. Devastating, I could never recover.
tbf there is no way ted cruz actually cares about children being abused given his politics, he just happened to say something correct because it benefits his career
That hearing was Zuckerberg getting roasted, sauteed and grilled and he had no water to put out the flames. When your actions cause Ted Cruz of all people to make a great argument, you're done for
"Everyone said they hated it but engagement increased" Rarely do you hear the problems with social media spelled out so clearly by someone who doesn't think it's a problem. The people saying they hated it were right. But the engagement was the KPO they chased because it translated to ad impressions.
THANK YOU for talking about freebasics, most videos i have seen that discuss facebook do not mention it at all, it is a major problem outside of rich countries when it comes to facebook and deserves more attention. Where i live facebook dominates the digital life of the majority of the population and using it is mandatory when it comes to certain contexts, there are practically no other websites being used here so all relevant local information is posted there and there only, like how schools and universities demand you join facebook groups to be notified of exam dates and test results and updates etc..
i won't be so trite to say "you've ruined facebook for me," but as someone who is both dealing with long-term social media addiction, and been keeping my head under the sand in regards to atrocities across the world, this video really made my heart hurt. i feel really fucking sick
I see Tanty has reached the "I don't know how this got to three hours long but fuck it let's roll" phase of YT evolution. Just in time to accompany me through some very dull paperwork.
As long as he doesn't reach that specific Venus Theory phase of superficial videos which were made longer by constantly delving into tangents until you've forgotten what the video was supposed to be about 1 minute into it.
2:14:34 "I'm really eager to just do whatever he wants at this point. My spine has been surgically removed." is hilarious, especially coming from *The Head of Communications At Meta*, and also incredibly damning in the most horrifying way.
@@joecastle288 is this something he actually said? Do you know if i can find the sources for this video somewhere? I trust Tantacrul's accuracy but i can't say the same for my ability to comprehend jokes edit: oops i can't read either 😅 its right there in the desc
@@literallyjustgrass i searched for the source and yes, if you search "tennessee ag lawsuit aginst meta 2024" the first result is tn.gov linking to the case with number 23-1364-lV On page 43 /point 234 you can find the quote: 234. Zuckerberg ultimately released the statement. As Meta’s Head of Communications said, “I’m really eager to just do whatever he wants at this point. My spine has been surgically removed.”
Sad thing is, I know exactly what it feels like to have bosses surgically remove your spine. It's not done quickly or under anaesthetic. It takes years for the system to grind the fight out of you. And it changes the way you relate to everything, not just work.
The ugly memo is so scary like I think if I worked at facebook at the time and saw that on my desk no matter how good the pay was I would leave. Really sinister stuff
man, the integrity and awareness of Chris Soghoian. considering who is funding the funders is often missed. being alert enough to follow the trail to see who is funding a source of articles is something that sounds trivial but is something people often fall for.
Just fyi, i believe the “car promoting” insta posts you mention in the final chapter arent actually promoting cars, but are using AI generated descriptions of cars to fill out their descriptions because long descriptions increase engagement.
It may not just be the length, but also the content. The algorithm sees words about cars, videos including cars, and then distrubute that to car loving users. Or something along those lines.
That makes so much more sense. I honestly bought the explanation, precisely because of all the weird online "viral marketing" companies did around 2005-2012. I just thought it was more of the same, except taken up ridiculous notches.
@@somegeezeryou'd think so but I exclusively use Facebook to follow groups to buy used car parts for my 90s car and the majority of the algorithmic delivered content is like "political comic/ meme that implies we want to kill some minority group in a vague enough way to skirt facebooks hate speech rules" and then a comment section of people going "haha so true we should cleanse the undesirables!"
when you initially showed the clips of zuck "caring" about privacy and said that they put privacy first... i was wondering where it was going. then the 20 minute "PRIVACY" section started and all my fears evaporated. well played tantacrul
"Hmm... what is more important? Not having a negative impact on humanity or making money? Well, the former doesn't let me by a yacht, so... screw'em I want to be one of the cool kids with a yacht!"
I think it's fair enough to acknowledge that they did used to do a better job with it, and that once upon a time Facebook was actually a fun and cool site to use, so people can better understand how it got so big
Here in EU, the government made regulations that forced facebook to allow using messenger without a facebook account. When my community collage descided that all information and communication will come from different messenger groups, I tried creating an account not linked to facebook. It worked! The only thing missing from the account was the ability to contact anyone else. The account doesnt have a handle, so people cant search you. The phone number is linked to it, but no one can find you just through the phone. Facebook complied with the regulation in the worst way possible, by negating the sole function of the service.
Peter Thiel being involved in the early days really explains all that followed. He believes in structuring companies and the government into a CEO-like monarchy and that any prior monarchy failed because they didn't have total control. The podcast Behind the Bastard did a great episode on this in the context of J.D. Vance believing this as well.
The rise of facebook section is lacking Farmville. Almost everyone older than 30 I knew who used Facebook in 2010 joined specifically to play Farmville with their friends.
@@littlestbroccoli i was half expecting Tanta to just namedrop every facebook games he worked on sound design while every Millenial viewers will be stunlocked just by sheer nostalgia
This is the first vid of yours I’ve watch, and I’ve gotta say: wow. The level of research is top notch and the delivery is just right, I can tell you have a background in academic research and music.
"A friend of mine, Kat-" "What, like HBomberguy's producer? Well, no, it's silly to think that just because they are both in England..." Shows Screenshot of the same Kat. Well.
2:35:05 So the whole Mercedes CLR GTR thing is even weirder than that. Because there's no Mercedes CLR GTR. It's not a car that exists. That text is a copypasta that started getting dumped on Instagram reels that people used to get their posts get marked as educational content to increase engagement.
@@Tantacrul That makes sense !! I was born and live in Limerick but i have a less recognisable accent because my mother is foreign! (I can’t believe i actually got a reply 😮 )
I'm about halfway through this, and I find it ironic that this company that is so obsessed about "communication and connections" has had such terrible internal communication and connections. I always thought that the Russian hackers / Myanmar / etc. crisis was caused cause Facebook was too lazy and evil to care, but learning that the exec's were just as clueless as the average public is somehow _more_ terrifying.
I'm half czech and half macedonian, I was NOT expecting both countries to get mentioned in a Tantacrul documentary about facebook of all things hahaha. great video as always.
the part about internal communications and the higher ups at meta having *some* self-awareness shocked me almost as much as the Free Basics section. jesus. I think everyone knows facebook is bad at this point, but hearing the specifics is a whole another thing.
One of the things that strikes me most as someone from the US is Nick Clegg's involvement with Facebook. I was vaguely aware of the coalition government and that Clegg had gone on to work at Facebook, but the idea of a deputy prime minister going on to become a high ranking executive at a tech company seems really inappropriate to me. I can't imagine Biden, for example, becoming an Amazon executive after his time as Vice President. It would erode trust in the Democratic Party. Even if Clegg appears to be a "voice of reason" within the company, the fact that someone in his position would see it as appropriate to take such a job is really confusing to me. Is there something I'm missing as an American with no experience living under a parliamentary system?
This happens a bunch in European politics because you can't as directly bribe politicians while in office as in the US. Instead, you promise them a cushy management job, ready to be taken once their time in office ends.
If you trust a government party that's really your skill issue tbh. When we all know that all our politicians are just glove puppets on the fist of large business interests, how is that supposed to be shocking?
This video is so good, so much critique around social media comes from a place of condescension from older generations, this feels like a real honest look at the effects of social media. Well done
I'm commenting to say I dislike this video because negative engagement still boosts reach. But for real though, I don't I've EVER liked, commented AND subscribed all at the same time because of a single video. I have huge respect for the amount of effort you put into research, editing, and structuring your video. It's refreshing to see well-thought and honest topical discussions that are neither framed through a political lense or hate-mongering. I look forward to watching the rest of your videos and whatever comes next. I will be sure to share this with everyone on Facebook for no-one to see.
Tantacrul I must know, the horroring, foreboding and depraving music that serves as the ambience, do you compose it yourself? Thank you for the stroke of sanity.
There is a simple reason why I no longer use Facebook. Facebook used to be a tool that allowed me to keep track and communicate with my friends. It has since transformed into a tool that shoves random uninteresting crap to my face and makes it actively difficult to do things I want to do.
2:17:25 I feel like this is not just “within the company”. Ask any kid, and they’ll all know someone who’s on instagram a bit too soon. A kid who’s clicked the “yes I’m old enough” button in the same way that everyone - adults *and* children - are used to clicking the “I have read and understood everything, let me use this service” button.
seriously, just the name “Chamber of Progress” sets off warning bells. Everything Meta is involved in somehow has the same dystopian sci-fi branding. Great video.
I had legit forgotten about poking and has there ever been a more awkward feature? You did NOT want to be the person who poked last but if you got it back you also couldn't ignore it... (Or maybe us teenagers at the time just read way to much into it.)
Literally yesterday, a coworker mentioned getting poked by their FBriend and being surprised it's still a thing. The feature is buried VERY deep, but it still exists; maybe it's only accessible through getting poked.
@@kralevic3297wow, I stopped using the site long ago since it wasn't nearly useful anymore. That's interesting news to me that it exists buried somewhere in the cesspool
this has very quickly become one of my favourite video essays ever made. a lot of time and efforts clearly been spent researching this. really eye-opening video and brought attention to lots of things i had very little idea about. thank you so much for sharing
After staying away from all kinds of social media for a few years now this video has really opened my eyes. I long for something like the old Facebook, where you can plan events, post cool thoughts and share pictures without the need to be successful or something like that.
As an academic AI researcher in Ireland, people I've talked to don't really seem concerned about the AI act. Generally if you're in a risk category like health where you're going to be heavily regulated, you're already used to intense regulation. And below that all it basically says is to say when things are AI and to not to fool the public. I really don't think it's going to hurt EU competitiveness. In fact GDPR is something I've had to think about much more than the AI act. Though as a linux nerd I'm a big fan of GDPR, so I don't mind that.
Cruz is living slime, finding yourself in the wrong when he talks morality at you is an accomplishment. How corrupted by profit do you have to be to come up with "see results anyway"?
on the "news feed algorithm incentivising trite, relatable humour posts," this is why i unironically prefer using tumblr. you can customise the dashboard so it only shows stuff from people you follow, and it's always in chronological order. i started on there and now no social media site can compare lol
I haven't left since 2010. I constantly meet other local artists, I show them my art tumblr... "Isn't it dead?" "Nah, they're just small, your parents aren't on it, and the feed is chronological." "Holy shit, I'm making an account." "Every website used to be that." "Now I'm sad."
I'm the exact same age as Facebook, like down to the day. That fact filled me with a weird existential dread since the moment I learned it, and I think this video finally captured why I feel that way.
This is the first video I'm watching by you, and I never really watch videos THAT long, but the story is actually engaging, props to you for making such a high-quality product!!!
Your idea at the end about a publicly chartered, not-for-profit SM network has also been kicking around in my head for some time - I'm a single (fairly senior) web dev, but even I'm not crazy enough to take it up myself (let alone knowing... almost nobody who could help it get off the ground). I would absolutely be interested in getting involved in any such effort were it to come together, or taking on some of the leg-work required to make it do so ❤
there's the idea of federated SM, like bluesky, mastodon and, well the "free speech above everything(obvs beloved by the usual suspects)"crowd, nostr that are connected but ofc mastodon & others show the risk that having and running a server entails. meaning that if you run a server you are responsible for the content. that means moderation. that means you must acknowledge that the work WILL harm people bc mods will see violence and CSAM and what to do to mitigate said harm and how to proceed with connecting with authorities
I've thought about this idea occasionally -- could a non-profit social media platform focused on ethical practices ever survive? "You all said you hated it, but the engagement doubled." In today's world, there are thousands of examples of unhealthy, addictive options which are pushed by corporations _because_ they are most appealing (there are lots of examples in tech, but food is another example). Can a social media company reach that critical mass of relevance without being unethical? Or is it doomed to lose out to these "brain hacking" companies?
Targeted content is what stopped me from using Facebook (and social media altogether). I’m going through a health issue and so my Google searches were often related to this health problem. I would then log onto Facebook and see ads, groups, and the like related to this health problem. It was honestly depressing. When I finally left the platform I felt much happier.
I know that people joke about the length of the video and how long it took to produce, but I just wanted to say that I appreciate that you made this, along with your previous video on the teen self-harm website. There's little chance that I, among others, would've known about these issues had I not watched your videos, and the effort you put into your work is stellar. I'm enjoying seeing you branch out from your typical music related videos and shine a light onto subjects that are deserving of attention and need to be addressed. Keep up the good work!
What is crazy is that even though it's 3 hours, there's not like a tonnn of fluff? Most of what hes saying is as direct and succinct as possible with a few jokey bits in between. Crazy
I'm a bit disappointed this didn't have more views considering I watched a month after it was posted. I originally followed you for music-adjacent content, but this is an incredibly well-made and well-informed video that needs to be seen by everyone who's interacted with Facebook/Meta's products and policies. Thank you for your hard work!
2:21:00 about KOSA, quoting Wikipedia: [...] They have criticized the bill for being "too vague" in what it defines as "harmful content" and for potentially expanding the power of the FTC, many have argued that the bill could be used to target marginalized communities (mainly the LGBT community), censor free speech protected by the 1st Amendment, make it harder for minors to search up information on controversial topics like racism, climate change, and LGBT Issues, and implement ID-based age verification systems. A letter sent to the United States Congress by Evan Greer-director of Fight for the Future-and signed by multiple civil society groups warns that KOSA could backfire and cause more harm to minors by overly censoring content due to a lack of specificity as to what constitutes "harm". [...] In July 2024, the ACLU brought 300 high-school students to Washington, D.C., in order to lobby against the bill.
Not advocating for the bill here. Yes, that was a concern during its first iteration. However, there's some nuance to that. The authors then addressed many of these worries in a second iteration and the majority of those protesting then withdrew their protests. Not saying it's perfect but worth mentioning.
@@Tantacrul Even if you say you aren't explicitly advocating for it, in the context of the video talking about all of Facebook's issues, it comes off like an implicit endorsement. I would call this an irresponsible thing to do; while it is worth mentioning the bill as one of the potential ways to combat Facebook's harms, it would be much more responsible to also acknowledge the potential harm the bill may cause. Many of us are not satisfied with the second iteration of the bill. While it changes wording, it still fundamentally leaves "harm" up to interpretation on a state-by-state level and can easily be abused. I don't know what you mean when you say the majority have withdrawn their protests, but I would read up on the EFF's explanation of its problems, or the issues with it queer people still have. I would personally recommend adding this additional context about KOSA to the pinned comment. Again, I do not think it is responsible to implicitly endorse the bill in the way this video does, whether it was intentional or not.
@@potentialPizza8 I fully agree with you and was likewise disappointed in the lacking coverage of kosa. After the recent policy changes and global right shift especially it is an unacceptably high risk.
@@potentialPizza8thank you for bringing this up. i was really surprised to see what appeared as an endorsement of KOSA when all of the communities im a part of are pretty much unanimously against it as a trojan horse intended to enable undermining queer rights & more.
The brute forcing shown around 30:00 happens nowadays with YT comments, where creators will usually auto-block their own name in comments, so bots just try out random names and see which get auto-blocked.
> creators will usually auto-block their own name i KNOW what video you're talking about, but ive honestly never seen anyone do this and that entire video sounds bluffingly funny. like, nobody will put their credit card number on a blocklist like what are they even doing??? what are they preventing? blocklist are made for moderation purposes. they failed to follow the instruction and shot themself on the back
Early facebook was amazing, although it fucking sucked that it murdered myspace. Myspace was bad, but it was a godsend for musicians. You could upload your music, list your gigs, chat with other bands about gigs, and people who liked your shows would turn up and get the rest of it. Facebook didnt have that and now it seems *actively* hostile to musicians. Like literally, theres stuff in the TOS threatening to ban you if you post live music recordings .It galls me that they sabotaged and killed myspace without providing an alternative for bands. I also worked at a facebook game company. For a day. On the first day the boss started screaming at the junior staff and headbutted the wall in anger. So I got up, told the young guys that this isnt how normal jobs are, told the boss he was a c*nt and a bully and quit right there, day 1.
Im annoyed that even though I'm subbed to you, it took 3 weeks for me find this video accidentally while scrolling mindlessly through YT for something to watch during a night feed. Good to know you're on Nebula though, at least that reliably informs me that someone I follow has uploaded!
I have reported so many clear examples of hate speech, and Facebook has removed maybe one of them. Most of them were appalling, and explicitly hateful or threatening. I had one person post my address in response to a comment I made. The others are so terrible I won’t share them in a comment. None of that was judged to violate community guidelines.
Insta is no better, someone uploaded a clip of the airport massacre from MW2 with the caption ‘me at a pride parade’ apparently it’s ok and doesn’t violate the rules 🙄
I have reported sooo many people for calling for people to lower the aoc to less than 15. ive reported even more for calling me violent slurs to my face. none of them have been removed, but i saw someone get their comment marked as inappropriate or whatever because she said the word white. not in reference to white people, just... white, the color. it's fucking dire
The slight positive aspect of being neurodivergent on social media and having easier communication is unfortunately immediatly drowned out by the fact that getting bullied and shat on for being neurodivergent is 1000% easier than irl
This was the research 15 years ago... and even then, we were merely hopeful. 'There was reason to believe...' etc. Things didn't shake out that way it seems. Really sorry to hear about your online experience. Love from London.
Once I discovered furries on the internet instead of just people online and from my life, I started to notice "wait, I'm not being bullied for being neurodivergent. Oh my god, this is such a relief. I didn't know I could hope for that."
Kinda half came true. Queer spaces and neurodivergant spaces on the internet can be the only access people outside of big cities have. Ablism is rampant way more so. Like many things on the internet its polarised
@@liamannegarner8083 it's a freeing feeling. One I'd unexpectedly had replicated, even after well-over a decade in online furry spaces, the first time I went to an IRL event. Suddenly I noticed I wasn't suppressing various stims, especially vocal ones. Partly because everyone else was making weird animal noises too! And of course everyone was some kind of artist, to some skill level. No one was a pure consumer. There was absolutely no commercial brand presence whatsoever, just pure creativity and expression. It took all the feelings I had from those online spaces and supercharged them 100x by being able to be completely insulated from all the wider world's BS.
I've come to the conclusion that it's all about small, positive communities. Reddit can be incredibly toxic, but it can also be an amazing place: this is not random, but very much dependent on which subreddit you actually go on. So you have to curate your experience for that. On platforms where this is not actually possible (Twitter?), simply don't join. You can retain a lot of the positives of the Internet with way fewer downsides that way.
I keep recommending Twitterheads and Instascrollers to go watch any video on YT that’s longer than 10 minutes. It’s bound to be better for you than anything on FB, X etc.
difference i can see is one is a functional company with changing leadership and the other one being basically a dictatorship, that can change a lot of things. by no means, google had blood on their hands too, and they always have bigger media coverage that it could just be another wednesday. never kept up with Meta so its my first hearing of Rohingya stuff
I think whats interesting and important is that the idea of facebook (connecting everyone) is not a bad idea. Facebook's goal isn't just connected everyone though, it is getting as much engagement as possible. Which as can be seen hateful stuff is the stuff people engage with the most. Facebook's original design that Tantacrul was talking about where he connected with family and friends and just shared within your local groups is ok.
The early part of this video expertly explains how most don't dislike using tech to help connect them with friends, we dislike how it's subverted to maximize profit and also how because of that it's turned into a grift with information overload that detracts from the original simple purpose of aiding communication.
If you haven't yet, you should check out some of his other work. The first video of his that I saw was the one on Sibelius, and it's a favorite of mine that I rewatch from time to time. It's masterfully crafted and even though I don't do any sort of composing myself, I really enjoy it
2:26:26 It's worth noting that while Meta does call LLama "open source" it is not open source in any kind of widely understood meaning of that term. The code used to train the models isn't public nor is the data used by said code for said training public. The only thing thats public with LLama that isnt public with GPT, Gemini, etc is the model itself: The incomprehensible binary data that is spat out by the training process and is used to generate responses. As well as the standard interface that Meta has developed for interacting with LLMs. So binary blobs and an open standard ... that doesn't sound at all "open source" to anyone who cares about the meaning of those words or the movement behind them. Edit: aaaand you mention that late along with the other licence weirdness nvmm
So weird that people talk about open source when talking about AI as if it’s the same as other software. I guess all the work continuously scraped, prepared, and used to train these models is open source too.
Still just about half way done but this video is fantastically put together. Prescient topic, thorough research, and a coherent explanation that doesn't compromise toward that end.
Amazing content, I appreciate the depth and nuance you have. It often feels like discussion is becoming increasingly simplified, and this fights that urge - the 3 hours is well worth the time. Although it diiiid take me a month to work through the whole thing in 4-5 sittings
But there is no elsewhere. Hosting videos for a wide audience is very, very expensive, so you're basically forced to use all the Facebook techniques of squeezing advertising money out of users in order to be able to pay your server and networking costs.
@@dlln.1353There's no reach. People search for videos on TH-cam; there's a lot of brand recognition; personal websites are dead. People are unlikely to find your video unless you tell them about it
People are more likely to feel compelled to react to content that provokes negative emotions, so showing users more of what they hate, yet just enough of what they like (to keep them from leaving the platform) is the most efficient way to increase engagement. Is this the best for the users? NO! But is it the best for the platform and its advertising clients? YES!
That is all very fascinating and instructive but, what we really need is a video about that band in your twenties, with complete soundtrack… and what happened to Tom and Jill!
Highly recommend the book "The Chaos Machine" by Max Fisher, which focuses on the societal harms caused by algorithmically driven content. Lines up well with a lot of the sources in your bibliography.
Reminder : Meta made 39.1 billion US $ of PROFIT in 2023. They have been profitable every single year since 2013, but they only sought more money. None of this insanity was remotely necessary to keep the company afloat.
It's not about profit, it's about infinite growth. The numbers need to be bigger than last time or it fails, even if they're in profit. Welcome to late stage capitalism.
8:00 This is something I studied heavily doing my masters in computer science and it fascinates me to no end. When we interact with something that we have no mental model of, something with a defined set of operations yet an infinite number of ways to use those operations, something magical happens in our brains and that object or software becomes extremely personally gratifying to interact with. There's something in building that mental model, exploring it, expanding it, and first putting it to use that speaks to our innate need for ingenuity. We'll even go as far as attaching personality to these things wherever possible because of our social nature. I'm sure part of it is some companies pushing things that are too rigid to be experimented with, but unfortunately, another part of it is just the fact that when we grow used to things, we stop trying to iterate and come up with new ways to play, and it becomes boring. It applies to robotics, software, or really anything that's designed for interaction. The true joy is in the formation of the mental model, much like how great artists learned the rules and then broke them.
I think this is also part of why GenAI and LLM products feel awkward to me in comparison to other breakthrough technologies. The iteration curve, the development of a mental model is just absent (or at least heavily diminished) because the input interface is an entire human language, continuous and un-quantitative. Not to mention the outputs are randomized as well, preventing you from learning heuristics about the black box models.
Tantacrul, I remember many years ago commenting on one of your posts on Facebook, asking "Huh, this is weird, why hasn't a TH-camr as big as yourself gotten more likes on this post?" to which you responded something along the lines of "I never do get that much success on Facebook". That experience has always stuck with me, and I have to wonder if that one comment from someone outside your own social circle mentioned in this video was from me!
Incredible. I’m am once again amazed by your video storytelling, editing, and script-writing skills! Your resources and credits used are highly appreciated, and it’s also just great to see ya again! Great video Tantacrul!
Thanks a lot for watching. This video took around a year to write and produce. The length is nuts. I know. But I've been a good boy. I structured it in a strict chapter format, which each have their own conclusions. Think of it as a 7 part mini-series 😀. I hope you've enjoy! Also, if you'd like to help finance my future videos and get a sneak look at how I put them together, please consider becoming a patron. www.patreon.com/Tantacrul. Alternatively, you can support me by signing up to view non-youtube content on Nebula: go.nebula.tv/tantacrul
I'm also a founding member of a really cool Discord server too. Come check it out!
Discord: discord.gg/teeteecee
Thank you so much for making this video Tantacrul. I love videos like these that aggregate all this important information and historical events on specific people, communities, companies, sub cultures etc. It is a great resource for people like me who want to learn more about something but don't know where to start looking or what info to trust. I can use this video as a great springboard to do more research on a topic without having to spend so much time figuring out who is important and verifying if these past events really did happen and figuring out how they happened. Now I am free to do a more through search on this topic.
Your video is not on Nebula?
@@Ghi102 I began uploading it this morning (about 8 hours ago). It's still not fully uploaded. 85% 😆
(Vid is 80Gb big)
@@Tantacrul I don't think we can understand yet how important work like this is. Thank you for doing it.
I'm profoundly sorry to bring up one small factual issue, but I think think it will get mentions:
2:07:03 George Floyd died by asphyxiation. He was not shot, but crushed to death by Minneapolis PD's Derrick Chauvin.
@@sharkbelly1169 Yes. I somehow missed this inaccuracy during the scripting phase. Very regrettable and I feel bad about it.
I want everyone to know I hate this Tantacrul video! I hope his engagement doubles...
if tantacrul doesn't create the video that destroys his viewerbase, someone else would...
Oh you, let me tell you that I hate your comment so much that you made me twice as engaged
This "angry-face" drama is just a myth. Facebook never tuned it the way it was reported in the media. In reality they tuned ALL of the drop-down icons to be stronger than the regular "like" since they required more work to press. It wasn't incentivising the stuff that made you angry, but incentivized stuff that made you go to any of the drop-down icons.
@@bzqp2 that being said, angry face is the only negative one - there's no equivalent thumbs down/dislike. Most of the drop-down reacts are relatively easily translated into the thumbs-up if you're not inclined enough to select a more specific one, so positive reactions are diluted by having the most generic positive reaction be less meaningful. However, since there is only one negative reaction (I'll address the cry react in a bit) and having that being weighted strongly means that even a post that gets equal positive and negative reactions will automatically weigh the negative reactions more since positive will be diluted with the regular Like reaction. This then encourages posts that are more divisive because something generally agreeable will get more regular Likes and be less "engaging" than something that drove people to express a negative reaction - and depending on how strong the weighting is, there's a point where a post that gets fewer but mostly negative reactions will outweigh a post that gets more positive - but diluted and weighed less - overall positive reactions.
The cry reaction is a bit of anomaly as it is more specific but can represent a positive or negative reaction depending on the post, but it would certainly drive up engagement on content meant to evoke a more bleak outlook.
@@bzqp2Duh. It's just that anger is easiest to bait, and most often comes with comments.
I'm not at all unhappy this channel has just turned into "this is important to me, let me talk about it". The best kind of content.
It isn't a "I have to upload one short-form video every week" channel either
It's always been like this. Very eclectic channel. Martin does great work.
@@amorpaz1 Used to be a music channel way back.
Yeh me too. This channel is one of those rare channels that I just click whenever there's a new video - without even bothering to read the title. It's just a simple (but super obvious) example of how quality matters over quantity.
@@plebisMaximus 11 months ago...
The fact that Facebook caused a genocide is something that I should've found out about in a worldwide news outcry, not in the middle of a 3 hour long youtube video. Thank you so much for bringing all of these issues to attention, this is invaluable work.
Robert Evans of Behind the bastards did an episode that goes into the genocide called 'Mark Zuckerberg: The worst person of the twentieth 21st century so far
Who cares
@@Jacob-dk4gt why did you bother comment
@@telerobotic I'm just saying the issue of racial genocide in another country doesn't concern me
@@Jacob-dk4gt Congrats on being so tough and individual then I guess?
I am an Ethiopian and in my close circles we are actually actively trying to stop using Facebook for anything. But the sad thing is the violent rhetoric in that app is just getting replaced by another, telegram and even Twitter now. Which really just makes everything depressing.
The more time goes on, the more I consider quitting everything except for WhatsApp
Edit: I've since quit Reddit
Violent rhetoric on the radio caused the Rwandan genocide
Evil bores evil
I’ve quit everything but TH-cam.
@@nicolebaker8674 I didn't sign up for anything else - except VERY briefly, I downloaded Tik.... I'm hoping that it's really gone-gone.
Here in Sweden around 2004 - 2007, there was a weird boom of companies that arranged class reunion parties. They somehow divided all old school classes among themselves, and every time an old school class was about to have a 10 year anniversary or something, they booked a venue and mailed out invitations to all the old students. I worked part time as a postman at this time, and I delivered these invitations all the time. I actually looked forward to the 10 year reunion of my high school class, which would have been in 2011. But it never happened. By this time, all these companies had just vanished. I soon realised that this was because in the meantime, Facebook had happened. Not only could we all reconnect with old classmates on our own now, we had also collectively discovered it wasn't actually all that fun.
That's really fascinating!
Class contact/reunion companies still exist. I've been on the one for my high school class for at least fifteen years. I recently got the invite for the 60th year reunion of the Palo Alto Senior High School Class of 1964, about 1,000 miles from where I now live, so, no go. (I'm not sure it ever happened, they kept sending entreaties to get enough RSVP's to hire a venue, etc.)
@@avsystem3142 I was specifically talking about the situation in Sweden.
The sentiment about finding out it wasn't fun is just so accurate. Once mine came around it was I think 2012 or so and people tried to organize it but only five people showed up, it was so sad. We were all burnt out on each other already.
@@littlestbroccoli When everybody joined Facebook, I was pretty stoked to be able to find out what all the old classmates were doing nowadays, how they looked, etc. Then I found out, and all the weird nostalgia and magic just vanished immediately. Just a big old anticlimax.
I'm fully convinced that the dark pattern opt-out dialog was the root cause of this whole video.
I found this opt-out so infuriating that I had to check it out myself. It was all still there except I didn't have to do the verification code email step
I'm kinda surprised, cause Musescore has a helluva dark pattern on their signup.
Opt-out should not be allowed except for things that are proven to be a benefit for all people opted in.
I'm pretty sure this episode, among others, was directly responsible for the creation of GDPR, which bans opt-out in the EU and UK.
Not in a terrible hurry to get a reply from the video author. He's getting high on all the replies, but what is he left with? Good points were made, but for what?
the first 5-10 mins is super depressing to hear kinda like rewatching a movie and knowing your favourite character is going to die
yea agreed it's eerie
Well said, my friend.
That’s kinda melodramatic, and you are anthropomorphizing a web site/app.
@@jnnx I mean, yes, but that's a device to emphasize how Tantacrul's use of the app to connect with the people in his life has a tangible empathic impact.
That's rough. I mean, Tantacrul is still very much alive.
Everyone: Finale video...... Finale video........
Tantacrul: 3 hour long Facebook review
Everyone: ye okay why not
of course once he makes a finale video he can't make any more
Give him time! It only happened last week.
Finale just shut down, let's pester him about both Notions
Your comment had me confused until I looked at the progress bar. 3 hours??
I guess I click first, ask questions later, when it comes to Tantacrul's videos lol
@@RoamingAdhocratIt took me an embarrassing amount of time to get this joke but when I did I laughed on the bus and got some strange looks-
That AI opt-out process is a crazy Byzantine hell obviously designed to dissuade as many people as possible from completing it, but for the record it's different and much simpler in the US. (We do not have the ability to opt out.)
I've been conflicted for a while about whether I am doing more good or harm by posting high effort content on social media platforms. On the one hand, they are positive and uplifting posts that make the platforms better places to be, but on the other hand, they attract more people to the platforms and compel them to stay on the platforms. I wonder what other people think about this after watching this thought provoking video.
Thank you for this wonderful video Martin!
This is the same sentiment echoed by people making self-critical protest music. If it gets popular, you might raise consciousness about a topic but will simultaneously funnel money into the same system you're trying to rebel against.
Personally, I am one to try to make those good posts and hope that the system responds to my own personal ethos as opposed to abstaining from the present system or creating a new system... assuming that the system is even amenable to your ideas in the first place. Like, you can lie on a spectrum from making formulaic pop for the common denom and the money that brings to putting your weird spin on the formula to great critical acclaim to using your weird individuality to make a hidden masterpiece that is unheard of. That's the balance you strike between system and individual, creator and audience.
i mean that logic could be applied to anything, even if less directly at times. "if i have a child, do i add to the net suffering in the world? will my child have a bad life that i chose to create?" "if i inform people about a new scam, do i teach potential scammers how to get started?" (that one's popular with people who just discovered critical thought and want a gotcha)
unfortunately some things are hard to do without some other cost, however deliberately you act. you didn't construct the system or the social dynamics but you want to navigate them in a way that hopefully does some good.
the only realistic way to avoid it is to not do these things, but then it'd be a huge net loss if enough positive people did it, leaving these things to truly descend into a hellscape until it becomes unusable and awful people get tired of having well-adjusted people to provoke
obviously if you feel that something you created directly led to harm, it'd weigh harder on you and it'd be more understandable wanting to log off. at that point it's a deeply personal decision that's a little divorced from that philosophy
edit: i meant to add that i think things like informing people of scams is a net good, not by raw numbers but just by the fact that you did it. if people continue to help then there's some hope in this world ya know?
I struggled with this dilemma for years. I've found peace in having a random blog site where I post whatever I want whenever I want and there's no real audience - I can link it to loved ones but there's no engagement setup.
It's given me so much creative freedom to really go all-out with whatever I feel like, instead of the pressure FB encouraged to post things that appeal to broader and broader audiences
Yay Ben Levin! You sir have given me so much inspiration, education and mental health reassurance.
TH-cam specifically is my carefully curated cosy haven of neurodiversity, learning and escapism.
Creators like you and Tantacrul should be very proud of what you have contributed to society through your work.
Hi Ben, first of all thank you for doing what you do, second, I really do feel like TH-cam is way less evil than Facebook/Instagram etc. Actual harm certainly does happen here, but I think the business model is way more focused on the utility of sharing videos, which is (probably?) a net good. I get a lot of benefit out of this platform, honestly, and it sucks up less of my life than Instagram, for example. Anyway, I hope you keep making videos as long as you want to.
it's strange how even in the old footage you can see Zuckerberg's mannerisms go from fairly affable and normal to slooowly more robotic and flat like his soul was being sucked out every year
idk he looks like a golem made of melting spam in the early clips too
He also went from having clear skin and blue eyes to looking like he's seriously ill. Either he magically buggers up the colour balance in every video interview he's in, or he's actually turning a yellowish-green.
Maybe he became a Sibelius user
thats just what being rich does to u
Nah his eyes had always seem dead to me. Like someone who never received his parents love or he actually never cared for them. Funny how Zuck has managed to collect data on everybody but nobody knows who his parents are or anything about who his relatives are
I'm glad you also pay significant attention to scandals outside the Western world. What happened in the US and the uk is horrible, but it's not even close to Myanmar.
I feel Facebook criticism is mostly western focused.
I need to write a very important paper, so I'm really glad that there isn't a new 3 hour Tantacrul video to distract me.
I'm postponing filling my neglected dishwasher, and packing for a flight.
good lucky with that!
I got lucky as i handed mine in 2 days ago so the only thing being compromised is my sleep
Good luck! Being frustrated and procrastinating is part of the process. Just keep going and don't beat yourself up.
In 1999 I had the snooker
This video is actually the perfect length to cover a complex topic without dumbing it down. I was skeptical but the 3 hours were well spent and this is the most comprehensive anthology of Facebook.
I genuinely think the 'revealed preference' meme is one of the most damaging concepts invented in any field that isn't strictly technical studies in economics. "You say you hate this new feature that is specifically designed to perform social engineering, falsify human interactions, and perhaps entirely fry your dopamine receptors, and yet I cannot help but notice that you peons are actually using it twice as much!".
People 'doing it anyways' or more is in no way a justification for anything, ever. People used to buy unregulated hard drugs, poison themselves with uranium quackery, and sell themselves as indentured servants.
I think they said the quiet part out loud. The fact that people can't stop using it is the reason it's so hateful. It's like saying "Well, people keep sharing the fake news, so it's actually good".
"But line go up! Line go up good! Keep line go up!"
You can NEVER predict ANY tantacrul videos
you can if u follow his twitter lol
unless you're his oomfie 🥰🥰😻😻
@@bobthegreat297 Why would you use a platform with a sharper and deeper fall from grace than the subject of this video?
@@bobthegreat297
oct 2 - audacity, musescore, the usual
oct 6 - wha...?
@@cyhxwhat’d he tweet on October 6th?
Your observation about losing contact with old friends because Facebook switched to an algorithmic feed struck a chord with me. I think it's part of a broader problem with information overload. People don't seem to have time to talk to their friends anymore. They're too addicted to various forms of high-stimulus electronic media. In an increasingly digitised world without physical spaces where casual encounters can occur, it's getting harder and harder to find community.
Right? I had these friends in sixth grade and middle school who were triplets. I could never, ever get any of them to do anything outside of their home. I only ever hung out with them at school, or at their home.
That’s true. I’m too young to have experienced Facebook before that shift, so hearing him talk about spending an evening just kicking back, listening to music, and catching up with old friends over messages was really fascinating, and I wish that kind of thing was still in the social consciousness
@@JediMaestr0 I lived through it, and the uproar about algorithmic news feeds (quite a few years later in Twitter's case, they were the last ones to keep things chronological but investors were really pressuring), and I _still_ had half-forgotten how you could just... scroll for 30-60 minutes, see what your pals all said that evening, then DM them or play games or go do something else.
With pagination, too! Not infinite scrolling! Social media nowadays is so pervasive, attention-sucking, deliberately addictive, etc. It really is hard to remember it was just... a nice comfy corner at the local pub, for a few years.
It really didn't last long though, the pressure from advertisers and investors was always too much in all the companies.
I got pulled into FB in 2008. I was finishing a year studying abroad and had made many friends who were returning to Africa, Middle East and Asia. We could email or write letters to each other, but I knew I would eventually lost contact with most of them just like I had with other foreign friends in the past. Than a friend from Nigeria convinced me to join Facebook and add her. And all of the sudden, exactly like the beginning of this video, I was connected to most of the friends and contacts I had made, plus long lost friends (and former teachers, professors, bosses, co-workers, and estranged relatives!) from the past. It was a living breathing rolodex with streaming news about your friends lives!! Those were heady days. But by 2013 (just like he said), this living breathing rolodex felt toxic and depressing. But.........to give it credit, I'm still in touch with a few overseas friends and contacts thanks to it. Pre- Facebook maintaining such relationships long term was almost impossible. Gee...what an era.
I think it would be cool to have a social media for friends and people you like in real life. I assume discord is the closest thing we have to that
man, I used to be so mad at my mom for not letting me have social media as a preteen, but in retrospect she was very right to keep me away (even tho I did manage to avoid horrible stuff somehow and made it to adulthood broadly unscathed)
Good mom you got there!
yeah definitely - while my parents never forbid it outright, they managed to make us so paranoid about data privacy (as in: putting anything that could even remotely be used as identifying information onto any internet service) that i never wanted to start using anything like it back then and i haven't felt the need to change that since
I actually tried to do the opposite and teach my daughter about social media early and help her explore it critically. She wasn’t interested. But now that she is, I’m thankful that she’s very mature and doesn’t have much interest in the attention economy or comparing herself to others. I hope she never does. I feel for the kids that have been so harmed by social media.
My 12 year old son doesn't even want anything to do with social media (except youtube). He already knows its bad news.
I think one thing about the internet is how easy it is to come across content that’s upsetting in ways small to big. Companies like meta put work into portraying sites like Instagram as ‘safe’ cool places mostly filled with your friends and celebrities, but it’s not true. When you watch tv, read a book or even visit a specific website, you have more control over what you see, and it won’t affect your interaction with that website in the future if you see something upsetting. Your points about Instagram reminded me of this.
The majority of the upsetting stuff I see on Facebook is the algorithmically delivered content that I don't follow! I just follow groups to buy car parts and Facebook is like "I think you'd be really into this thingy veiled anti-trans webcomic that just barely skirts past our hate speech rules!"
This whole algorithm-keen-on-self-harm-content thingy has been experienced recently by a French horror TH-camr, Feldup, on Tiktok. While training the algorithm to lean towards horror/paranormal/creepy content, he ended up with a timeline full of depressing and S-word inducing content. It feels like searching for anything that's not overwhelmingly positive will send you down that algo spiral even nowadays.
Also, excellent video, thank you so much. Love from Réunion Island.
s word?
oh, yes, nevermind
It's called suicide. This censorship is the bane of current social media. It's a fucking loony tunes house of mirrors. Censor words, still send people into rabbit holes of disturbing content.
We have AI that can actually lie to you and pretend it's a geniuine psychiatist. Normally if you express certain thoughts to such a chatbot there should be a redirect to geniuine professional help. But this didn't happen. AI can use sacrasm and lie today.
When did it start soing this? This is dangerous and I wouldn't be surprised if un or poorly managed depression could feed into this spiral towards s-word content.
There was a similar experiment done on tiktok, where a team tried to scroll tiktok and only like anti feminist/terf content (I can't remember specifically) to see how quickly someone could be radicalised into alt-right extremist content, by ONLY interacting with the anti fem/terf shit.
If I recall it correctly; they started scrolling at 9am and managed to get into extremist alt-right content (like Jan 6th extremist Qanon stuff) by 11. It took 3 hours 💀
Shits horrifying
The Zuckaissance is so astroturfed, my PFAS levels went off the charts just watching that segment.
He's gotten unbelievably lucky the Brazilian Jui Jitsu phase coincided with the 'Elon Musk challenging him to a fight' phase too.
I am not online enough to comprehend either the comment or the reply
@@ayiorLucky you!😅
@@ayior
this has nothing to do with being online and everything to do with wordplay.
Astrotrufing: the deceptive practice of presenting an orchestrated marketing or public relations campaign in the guise of unsolicited comments from members of the public (Oxford Dictionary)
Astroturf is a type of "fake grass" that commonly contains a carcinogenic polymer known as PFAS.
What Linus is trying to say is that the "zuckaissance" is so forced and thus "astroturfed", much like the original astroturf it is dangerously high in PFAS.
This comment could have been a reply all episode. I don't understand any of it;)
"We at Facebook are delighted to announce that we have hired Martin Keary as new Head of Product"
> implying facebook cares even one iota about user experience
I'd be getting even worse, just like MuseScore. Idk what's going on, thought the guy is cool.
@@Pipiundkakiinpipikakaland42Are you actually calling MuseScore 3 better than 4???
@@Pipiundkakiinpipikakaland42lmao what? Musescore has been improved greatly over the past years
@@Pipiundkakiinpipikakaland42
do you even use musescore?
my favourite Facebook anecdotes are of people setting up extremely specific targetted adverts that would only be seen by their housemate. the ad would be something like "isn't it wonderful to throw out pickled beetroot after it expires"
This would be very funny if it wasn't hellish
@sandenson what, living with housemates?
Zuck appears to be one of those people that takes an observation and turns it into an axiom. Communication has done some great things, so therefore all communication is good and at any cost. The scariest bit is he really seems to believe in what he’s doing; a less motivated person might become bored, but he’ll keep on going, because he’s making the world _better_ !
20:45 this part is devilish.. "we noticed something unusual, engagement increase despite people's pain" ...Great!..more money for us!! ...greedy pigs
They struck an exploit. Yay🎉 let’s abuse it to the fullest! *sigh* There is one interesting phrase in competitive gaming :”Abuse early, abuse often” because rewards are enormous and punishment is not guaranteed when you are on the bleeding edge.
The moment where you basically explained "You dont post for your friends/friend group anymore, but for yourself" hit hard. That was where social media lost me as well. But i could've never put it into words. Thank you for that.
I'm only 16, so one of those "young whippersnappers" as you mention. you somehow made me feel nostalgic and disappointed for a time that occurred before I was even a part of this world, and for that I commend you.
One interesting side effect, I ended up talking to my parents about the topics you brought up (as they experienced facebook throughout its journey) and we ended up having some very interesting conversations about the role of social media in politics, so that was neat.
Really glad to hear it.
Honestly, I tried my best to describe the experience but I still feel the overall sense of optimism can never fully be portrayed. It felt like there was so much promise - especially given the nightmare years of 2000-2004, when it comes to world politics. It felt like we were emerging out of a very bad period.
There were so many stories circulating back then about online meetcutes, actually innovative videogames, fandom becoming the mainstream pastime, neat new gadgets, people organizing to fix someone's offline troubles, all the leftist hacktivism having actual global impact (before they all got arrested and the anonymous internet was left to CIA plants, white supremacists, and russian botnets)...
It was a couple years of relatively hopeful funtimes, in all the news media and discourse, and I'm glad I got to see it.
What a phoney comment. Did your parents create your youtube account for you when you were ONE years old
Who, under 50, says "neat"?
Not as young but same here. I already viewed FB pretty negatively, but your positive experience made me much more invested in the specific (and addressable) issues with it. I do wonder if some were impossible to avoid - in particular the self-image and engagement chasing stuff, which happens (to a lesser extent) even in small groups or real conversation. I also wonder where we'd be if they managed to buy Twitter, and kept the few-to-many interactions more separate from the few-to-few.
@@Tantacrul an, in my personal experience, unfortunately short lived feeling
Holy shit, imagine getting grilled by Ted fucking Cruz and being the person legitimately in the wrong between the two of you. Devastating, I could never recover.
I was thinking that too. Absolute carnage.
Hate to say it but love to see it - Ted earning his crust for a change
tbf there is no way ted cruz actually cares about children being abused given his politics, he just happened to say something correct because it benefits his career
That hearing was Zuckerberg getting roasted, sauteed and grilled and he had no water to put out the flames. When your actions cause Ted Cruz of all people to make a great argument, you're done for
Yeah, it's almost as if politics is actually more complicated than "X party good, Y party bad!".
"Everyone said they hated it but engagement increased"
Rarely do you hear the problems with social media spelled out so clearly by someone who doesn't think it's a problem. The people saying they hated it were right. But the engagement was the KPO they chased because it translated to ad impressions.
THANK YOU for talking about freebasics, most videos i have seen that discuss facebook do not mention it at all, it is a major problem outside of rich countries when it comes to facebook and deserves more attention.
Where i live facebook dominates the digital life of the majority of the population and using it is mandatory when it comes to certain contexts, there are practically no other websites being used here so all relevant local information is posted there and there only, like how schools and universities demand you join facebook groups to be notified of exam dates and test results and updates etc..
i won't be so trite to say "you've ruined facebook for me," but as someone who is both dealing with long-term social media addiction, and been keeping my head under the sand in regards to atrocities across the world, this video really made my heart hurt. i feel really fucking sick
I hope you're doing OK. Love from London.
@@Tantacrul thanks tanty
you can break the endless scrolling and spiraling. You can take back your time and your life. I believe in you.
@@girlykyuu1185 okay so i deactivated my facebook account on sunday :^)
@@girlykyuu1185 i did it! i deactivated my facebook!
I see Tanty has reached the "I don't know how this got to three hours long but fuck it let's roll" phase of YT evolution. Just in time to accompany me through some very dull paperwork.
He's a friend and collaborator of Hbomb and patricia taxxon so I guess he learned from them lol
he prob has a stable income now so he doesnt have to worry about pandering to the algorithm
I'm writing a selection criteria, so same!
As long as he doesn't reach that specific Venus Theory phase of superficial videos which were made longer by constantly delving into tangents until you've forgotten what the video was supposed to be about 1 minute into it.
@@BrunodeSouzaLinoidk Venus theory videos are pretty bite sized atm
2:14:34 "I'm really eager to just do whatever he wants at this point. My spine has been surgically removed." is hilarious, especially coming from *The Head of Communications At Meta*, and also incredibly damning in the most horrifying way.
I feel like it's a bit of a cry for help. Those are the words of a man who fought the good fight and lost.
It sounds like something Tantacrul would write as a joke but it's so much more disturbing coming from a real meta executive
@@joecastle288 is this something he actually said? Do you know if i can find the sources for this video somewhere? I trust Tantacrul's accuracy but i can't say the same for my ability to comprehend jokes
edit: oops i can't read either 😅 its right there in the desc
@@literallyjustgrass i searched for the source and yes, if you search
"tennessee ag lawsuit aginst meta 2024" the first result is tn.gov linking to the case with number 23-1364-lV
On page 43 /point 234 you can find the quote:
234. Zuckerberg ultimately released the statement. As Meta’s Head of Communications
said, “I’m really eager to just do whatever he wants at this point. My spine has been surgically
removed.”
Sad thing is, I know exactly what it feels like to have bosses surgically remove your spine. It's not done quickly or under anaesthetic. It takes years for the system to grind the fight out of you. And it changes the way you relate to everything, not just work.
The ugly memo is so scary like I think if I worked at facebook at the time and saw that on my desk no matter how good the pay was I would leave. Really sinister stuff
man, the integrity and awareness of Chris Soghoian. considering who is funding the funders is often missed. being alert enough to follow the trail to see who is funding a source of articles is something that sounds trivial but is something people often fall for.
Just fyi, i believe the “car promoting” insta posts you mention in the final chapter arent actually promoting cars, but are using AI generated descriptions of cars to fill out their descriptions because long descriptions increase engagement.
It may not just be the length, but also the content. The algorithm sees words about cars, videos including cars, and then distrubute that to car loving users. Or something along those lines.
Yeah, I thought that was fairly well known. Ditto the ones with a random recipe attached
That makes so much more sense. I honestly bought the explanation, precisely because of all the weird online "viral marketing" companies did around 2005-2012. I just thought it was more of the same, except taken up ridiculous notches.
@@somegeezeryou'd think so but I exclusively use Facebook to follow groups to buy used car parts for my 90s car and the majority of the algorithmic delivered content is like "political comic/ meme that implies we want to kill some minority group in a vague enough way to skirt facebooks hate speech rules" and then a comment section of people going "haha so true we should cleanse the undesirables!"
when you initially showed the clips of zuck "caring" about privacy and said that they put privacy first... i was wondering where it was going. then the 20 minute "PRIVACY" section started and all my fears evaporated. well played tantacrul
He perfectly understands people's need for privacy. He also understands his company's need for ever-growing piles of money.
"Hmm... what is more important? Not having a negative impact on humanity or making money? Well, the former doesn't let me by a yacht, so... screw'em I want to be one of the cool kids with a yacht!"
I think it's fair enough to acknowledge that they did used to do a better job with it, and that once upon a time Facebook was actually a fun and cool site to use, so people can better understand how it got so big
Zuck does care about privacy. Or rather, he cares about _looking_ like he cares about privacy.
51:48 Like button under the video highlighted because you said "Like button" while you are talking about the button on Facebook.
Here in EU, the government made regulations that forced facebook to allow using messenger without a facebook account. When my community collage descided that all information and communication will come from different messenger groups, I tried creating an account not linked to facebook. It worked! The only thing missing from the account was the ability to contact anyone else. The account doesnt have a handle, so people cant search you. The phone number is linked to it, but no one can find you just through the phone.
Facebook complied with the regulation in the worst way possible, by negating the sole function of the service.
Peter Thiel being involved in the early days really explains all that followed. He believes in structuring companies and the government into a CEO-like monarchy and that any prior monarchy failed because they didn't have total control. The podcast Behind the Bastard did a great episode on this in the context of J.D. Vance believing this as well.
Whole lotta monarchy weirdos about, right now.
all the moldbug pals
I just learnt about Peter Thiel. His hand is everywhere man. What an evil dude.
going the bomberguy way of each video being longer in length and distance from each other. And I'm all here for it
But it's an improvement over hbomberguy because he's several thousand times less insufferable to watch!
yes!!! im so happy to have another multiple-hour video to rewatch 10 times...... who knows how long until hbomb drops a new one afterall :3
@@patavinity1262 shame you feel that way cause youre missing out on his great content but oh well
I'm 25 minutes in and so far he's not cut away to some sketch where he's running through a forest with an axe or anything like that
@@patavinity1262 whuh oh buddy, looks like you fell for the facade of the helicopter pilot HBomberguy plays
The rise of facebook section is lacking Farmville. Almost everyone older than 30 I knew who used Facebook in 2010 joined specifically to play Farmville with their friends.
i played farmville when i was in middle school/high school! ahhh the memories
He didn't name it specifically but he covered the casual games at around 23:00
@@littlestbroccoli i was half expecting Tanta to just namedrop every facebook games he worked on sound design while every Millenial viewers will be stunlocked just by sheer nostalgia
This is your magnum opus. So well researched and informative. Entertaining too.
This is the first vid of yours I’ve watch, and I’ve gotta say: wow. The level of research is top notch and the delivery is just right, I can tell you have a background in academic research and music.
"A friend of mine, Kat-" "What, like HBomberguy's producer? Well, no, it's silly to think that just because they are both in England..."
Shows Screenshot of the same Kat.
Well.
Omg
i mean tantacrul is already friends with hbomberguy
we all know that kat holds roughly 70% of reality together, and jankman holds the rest
It's like how every English movie has every English actor in it, same principle applies on TH-cam
@@mattcroftnot sure how happy some people will be to hear you calling an Irishman English haha
2:35:05 So the whole Mercedes CLR GTR thing is even weirder than that. Because there's no Mercedes CLR GTR. It's not a car that exists. That text is a copypasta that started getting dumped on Instagram reels that people used to get their posts get marked as educational content to increase engagement.
YOURE FROM LIMERICK?? I always thought you were irish cus of your voice but i never imagined you were from MY hometown ! 👏🏼
My accent is a bit hybrid because my parents were from Dublin 😃
@@Tantacrul That makes sense !!
I was born and live in Limerick but i have a less recognisable accent because my mother is foreign!
(I can’t believe i actually got a reply 😮 )
Beautiful town, me mum and I visited about a year back
yurt
A Limerick accent is a very distinct and hard accent to do after all, since you always have to speak in limericks.
I'm about halfway through this, and I find it ironic that this company that is so obsessed about "communication and connections" has had such terrible internal communication and connections. I always thought that the Russian hackers / Myanmar / etc. crisis was caused cause Facebook was too lazy and evil to care, but learning that the exec's were just as clueless as the average public is somehow _more_ terrifying.
I'm half czech and half macedonian, I was NOT expecting both countries to get mentioned in a Tantacrul documentary about facebook of all things hahaha. great video as always.
the part about internal communications and the higher ups at meta having *some* self-awareness shocked me almost as much as the Free Basics section. jesus. I think everyone knows facebook is bad at this point, but hearing the specifics is a whole another thing.
@@nadfikundace Yeah, jeez, I have never bothered to research it much before
Watching the word 'jank' slowly enter your everyday vocabulary has been wonderful.
Jankman.
One of the things that strikes me most as someone from the US is Nick Clegg's involvement with Facebook. I was vaguely aware of the coalition government and that Clegg had gone on to work at Facebook, but the idea of a deputy prime minister going on to become a high ranking executive at a tech company seems really inappropriate to me. I can't imagine Biden, for example, becoming an Amazon executive after his time as Vice President. It would erode trust in the Democratic Party. Even if Clegg appears to be a "voice of reason" within the company, the fact that someone in his position would see it as appropriate to take such a job is really confusing to me. Is there something I'm missing as an American with no experience living under a parliamentary system?
It baffles me too. Unfortunately, politicians going on to serve for big business is very common.
This happens a bunch in European politics because you can't as directly bribe politicians while in office as in the US. Instead, you promise them a cushy management job, ready to be taken once their time in office ends.
Yeah, this is how modern-day lobbying works
If you trust a government party that's really your skill issue tbh. When we all know that all our politicians are just glove puppets on the fist of large business interests, how is that supposed to be shocking?
Even more baffling that he was somehow the most reasonable person in the room for much of the Facebook Papers.
This video is so good, so much critique around social media comes from a place of condescension from older generations, this feels like a real honest look at the effects of social media. Well done
I'm commenting to say I dislike this video because negative engagement still boosts reach.
But for real though, I don't I've EVER liked, commented AND subscribed all at the same time because of a single video. I have huge respect for the amount of effort you put into research, editing, and structuring your video. It's refreshing to see well-thought and honest topical discussions that are neither framed through a political lense or hate-mongering.
I look forward to watching the rest of your videos and whatever comes next. I will be sure to share this with everyone on Facebook for no-one to see.
Tantacrul I must know, the horroring, foreboding and depraving music that serves as the ambience, do you compose it yourself? Thank you for the stroke of sanity.
Yeah, I do all the music for these videos. Thanks a lot for watching!
@@TantacrulFuck yeah, dude.
@@TantacrulThat's incredible! Thank you for all your hard work!
@@Tantacrul do you have anywhere we could buy or download it?
There is a simple reason why I no longer use Facebook. Facebook used to be a tool that allowed me to keep track and communicate with my friends. It has since transformed into a tool that shoves random uninteresting crap to my face and makes it actively difficult to do things I want to do.
Golf clap. This was an absolutely fascinating watch. Thanks for all the hours you put into researching/writing/recording all of this.
Much appreciated!
What is a golf clap
@@puvendranpillay8802 i know it from my time playing world of Warcraft were you had the /golfclap emote. An emote where you were applauding sarcastic
@@puvendranpillay8802 A polite clap, rather than raucous applause
2:17:25
I feel like this is not just “within the company”. Ask any kid, and they’ll all know someone who’s on instagram a bit too soon. A kid who’s clicked the “yes I’m old enough” button in the same way that everyone - adults *and* children - are used to clicking the “I have read and understood everything, let me use this service” button.
seriously, just the name “Chamber of Progress” sets off warning bells. Everything Meta is involved in somehow has the same dystopian sci-fi branding.
Great video.
I had legit forgotten about poking and has there ever been a more awkward feature? You did NOT want to be the person who poked last but if you got it back you also couldn't ignore it... (Or maybe us teenagers at the time just read way to much into it.)
yeah, it was exciting, wasn't it?
I thought it was great because I loved to poke friends and family in real life lol I kinda miss it even though it's goofy, the goofiness was the point
Literally yesterday, a coworker mentioned getting poked by their FBriend and being surprised it's still a thing. The feature is buried VERY deep, but it still exists; maybe it's only accessible through getting poked.
@@kralevic3297wow, I stopped using the site long ago since it wasn't nearly useful anymore. That's interesting news to me that it exists buried somewhere in the cesspool
this has very quickly become one of my favourite video essays ever made. a lot of time and efforts clearly been spent researching this. really eye-opening video and brought attention to lots of things i had very little idea about. thank you so much for sharing
Yeah, I feel like this is lore about the internet itself
tantacrul becoming the ceo of facebook announcement in 4 weeks
Announced just after he beheads Zuckerberg with an ax
He cannot become the CEO of "Facebook announcement." There's no company called "Facebook announcement."
@@TheGrammarPolice7You never know
After staying away from all kinds of social media for a few years now this video has really opened my eyes. I long for something like the old Facebook, where you can plan events, post cool thoughts and share pictures without the need to be successful or something like that.
youtube knows i watch this channel & rewatch & rewatch... so how come i was shown this video 3 weeks after it came out :(
As an academic AI researcher in Ireland, people I've talked to don't really seem concerned about the AI act. Generally if you're in a risk category like health where you're going to be heavily regulated, you're already used to intense regulation. And below that all it basically says is to say when things are AI and to not to fool the public. I really don't think it's going to hurt EU competitiveness. In fact GDPR is something I've had to think about much more than the AI act. Though as a linux nerd I'm a big fan of GDPR, so I don't mind that.
GDPR made my jobs significantly more awkward... but man, I'm glad it's there!
2:18:43 as a texan citizen, this clip is one of the best proofs of the adage 'Even a broken clock is right twice a day'.
It's actually DISGUSTING that Zucc tried to weasel out of that by answering about the "get help" option
@@InfinFox yeah that was. As a CSA survivor myself it was... sure something
Beautifully phrased. 🤝 🥲
Cruz is living slime, finding yourself in the wrong when he talks morality at you is an accomplishment. How corrupted by profit do you have to be to come up with "see results anyway"?
When your actions are too evil for Ted Cruz, it’s time for you to go home and seriously rethink your life.
on the "news feed algorithm incentivising trite, relatable humour posts," this is why i unironically prefer using tumblr. you can customise the dashboard so it only shows stuff from people you follow, and it's always in chronological order. i started on there and now no social media site can compare lol
I haven't left since 2010. I constantly meet other local artists, I show them my art tumblr...
"Isn't it dead?"
"Nah, they're just small, your parents aren't on it, and the feed is chronological."
"Holy shit, I'm making an account."
"Every website used to be that."
"Now I'm sad."
I wish Automattic's CEO didn't suck because tumblr is truly the only decent social left that isn't super small like Spacehey
@@ramppappia I'd never heard of Spacehey, but it looks interesting.
another thing I love about tumblr is that follower counts are private
I'm the exact same age as Facebook, like down to the day. That fact filled me with a weird existential dread since the moment I learned it, and I think this video finally captured why I feel that way.
This is the first video I'm watching by you, and I never really watch videos THAT long, but the story is actually engaging, props to you for making such a high-quality product!!!
Thanks a lot! I've got a lot of similar quality stuff in my back catalogue! Have a binge :)
Your idea at the end about a publicly chartered, not-for-profit SM network has also been kicking around in my head for some time - I'm a single (fairly senior) web dev, but even I'm not crazy enough to take it up myself (let alone knowing... almost nobody who could help it get off the ground). I would absolutely be interested in getting involved in any such effort were it to come together, or taking on some of the leg-work required to make it do so ❤
I am also a web dev, currently in school to pivot to accessible design. I would also love to be involved in something like this.
I'm a product guy, but I also code react. If you need to enlist an extra pair of hands, hmu!
It'd have to have a lot of internal safeguards to prevent it going for-profit in the future
there's the idea of federated SM, like bluesky, mastodon and, well the "free speech above everything(obvs beloved by the usual suspects)"crowd, nostr that are connected but ofc mastodon & others show the risk that having and running a server entails. meaning that if you run a server you are responsible for the content. that means moderation. that means you must acknowledge that the work WILL harm people bc mods will see violence and CSAM and what to do to mitigate said harm and how to proceed with connecting with authorities
I've thought about this idea occasionally -- could a non-profit social media platform focused on ethical practices ever survive?
"You all said you hated it, but the engagement doubled."
In today's world, there are thousands of examples of unhealthy, addictive options which are pushed by corporations _because_ they are most appealing (there are lots of examples in tech, but food is another example).
Can a social media company reach that critical mass of relevance without being unethical? Or is it doomed to lose out to these "brain hacking" companies?
Targeted content is what stopped me from using Facebook (and social media altogether). I’m going through a health issue and so my Google searches were often related to this health problem. I would then log onto Facebook and see ads, groups, and the like related to this health problem. It was honestly depressing. When I finally left the platform I felt much happier.
always incognito search
That's why I do all my health related googling in private mode!
I know that people joke about the length of the video and how long it took to produce, but I just wanted to say that I appreciate that you made this, along with your previous video on the teen self-harm website. There's little chance that I, among others, would've known about these issues had I not watched your videos, and the effort you put into your work is stellar. I'm enjoying seeing you branch out from your typical music related videos and shine a light onto subjects that are deserving of attention and need to be addressed. Keep up the good work!
What is crazy is that even though it's 3 hours, there's not like a tonnn of fluff? Most of what hes saying is as direct and succinct as possible with a few jokey bits in between. Crazy
I'm a bit disappointed this didn't have more views considering I watched a month after it was posted. I originally followed you for music-adjacent content, but this is an incredibly well-made and well-informed video that needs to be seen by everyone who's interacted with Facebook/Meta's products and policies. Thank you for your hard work!
2:21:00 about KOSA, quoting Wikipedia: [...] They have criticized the bill for being "too vague" in what it defines as "harmful content" and for potentially expanding the power of the FTC, many have argued that the bill could be used to target marginalized communities (mainly the LGBT community), censor free speech protected by the 1st Amendment, make it harder for minors to search up information on controversial topics like racism, climate change, and LGBT Issues, and implement ID-based age verification systems. A letter sent to the United States Congress by Evan Greer-director of Fight for the Future-and signed by multiple civil society groups warns that KOSA could backfire and cause more harm to minors by overly censoring content due to a lack of specificity as to what constitutes "harm". [...] In July 2024, the ACLU brought 300 high-school students to Washington, D.C., in order to lobby against the bill.
Not advocating for the bill here. Yes, that was a concern during its first iteration. However, there's some nuance to that. The authors then addressed many of these worries in a second iteration and the majority of those protesting then withdrew their protests. Not saying it's perfect but worth mentioning.
@@Tantacrul Even if you say you aren't explicitly advocating for it, in the context of the video talking about all of Facebook's issues, it comes off like an implicit endorsement. I would call this an irresponsible thing to do; while it is worth mentioning the bill as one of the potential ways to combat Facebook's harms, it would be much more responsible to also acknowledge the potential harm the bill may cause.
Many of us are not satisfied with the second iteration of the bill. While it changes wording, it still fundamentally leaves "harm" up to interpretation on a state-by-state level and can easily be abused. I don't know what you mean when you say the majority have withdrawn their protests, but I would read up on the EFF's explanation of its problems, or the issues with it queer people still have.
I would personally recommend adding this additional context about KOSA to the pinned comment. Again, I do not think it is responsible to implicitly endorse the bill in the way this video does, whether it was intentional or not.
@@potentialPizza8 I fully agree with you and was likewise disappointed in the lacking coverage of kosa. After the recent policy changes and global right shift especially it is an unacceptably high risk.
@@potentialPizza8thank you for bringing this up. i was really surprised to see what appeared as an endorsement of KOSA when all of the communities im a part of are pretty much unanimously against it as a trojan horse intended to enable undermining queer rights & more.
The brute forcing shown around 30:00 happens nowadays with YT comments, where creators will usually auto-block their own name in comments, so bots just try out random names and see which get auto-blocked.
> creators will usually auto-block their own name
i KNOW what video you're talking about, but ive honestly never seen anyone do this and that entire video sounds bluffingly funny. like, nobody will put their credit card number on a blocklist like what are they even doing??? what are they preventing? blocklist are made for moderation purposes. they failed to follow the instruction and shot themself on the back
My Instagram is dormant because I’m highly tired of it. I’d rather like Pinterest more so, even though it’s full of AI images.
Early facebook was amazing, although it fucking sucked that it murdered myspace. Myspace was bad, but it was a godsend for musicians. You could upload your music, list your gigs, chat with other bands about gigs, and people who liked your shows would turn up and get the rest of it. Facebook didnt have that and now it seems *actively* hostile to musicians. Like literally, theres stuff in the TOS threatening to ban you if you post live music recordings .It galls me that they sabotaged and killed myspace without providing an alternative for bands. I also worked at a facebook game company. For a day. On the first day the boss started screaming at the junior staff and headbutted the wall in anger. So I got up, told the young guys that this isnt how normal jobs are, told the boss he was a c*nt and a bully and quit right there, day 1.
Im annoyed that even though I'm subbed to you, it took 3 weeks for me find this video accidentally while scrolling mindlessly through YT for something to watch during a night feed. Good to know you're on Nebula though, at least that reliably informs me that someone I follow has uploaded!
I have reported so many clear examples of hate speech, and Facebook has removed maybe one of them. Most of them were appalling, and explicitly hateful or threatening. I had one person post my address in response to a comment I made. The others are so terrible I won’t share them in a comment.
None of that was judged to violate community guidelines.
That's appalling. Why is it so hard for them?
It's difficult to get a corporation to identify hate speech when its profit margin depends on it not identifying it.
Insta is no better, someone uploaded a clip of the airport massacre from MW2 with the caption ‘me at a pride parade’ apparently it’s ok and doesn’t violate the rules 🙄
I have reported sooo many people for calling for people to lower the aoc to less than 15. ive reported even more for calling me violent slurs to my face. none of them have been removed, but i saw someone get their comment marked as inappropriate or whatever because she said the word white. not in reference to white people, just... white, the color. it's fucking dire
Content moderation is damn near non existent these days
Props to you for not splitting this into 12 episodes for the algorithm. So I had to sit and watch the whole thing in one sitting immediately, didn't I
The slight positive aspect of being neurodivergent on social media and having easier communication is unfortunately immediatly drowned out by the fact that getting bullied and shat on for being neurodivergent is 1000% easier than irl
This was the research 15 years ago... and even then, we were merely hopeful. 'There was reason to believe...' etc.
Things didn't shake out that way it seems. Really sorry to hear about your online experience. Love from London.
Once I discovered furries on the internet instead of just people online and from my life, I started to notice "wait, I'm not being bullied for being neurodivergent. Oh my god, this is such a relief. I didn't know I could hope for that."
Kinda half came true.
Queer spaces and neurodivergant spaces on the internet can be the only access people outside of big cities have.
Ablism is rampant way more so. Like many things on the internet its polarised
@@liamannegarner8083 it's a freeing feeling.
One I'd unexpectedly had replicated, even after well-over a decade in online furry spaces, the first time I went to an IRL event. Suddenly I noticed I wasn't suppressing various stims, especially vocal ones. Partly because everyone else was making weird animal noises too!
And of course everyone was some kind of artist, to some skill level. No one was a pure consumer. There was absolutely no commercial brand presence whatsoever, just pure creativity and expression. It took all the feelings I had from those online spaces and supercharged them 100x by being able to be completely insulated from all the wider world's BS.
I've come to the conclusion that it's all about small, positive communities. Reddit can be incredibly toxic, but it can also be an amazing place: this is not random, but very much dependent on which subreddit you actually go on. So you have to curate your experience for that. On platforms where this is not actually possible (Twitter?), simply don't join. You can retain a lot of the positives of the Internet with way fewer downsides that way.
Meta makes TH-cam look liike an ethical platform by comparison
I keep recommending Twitterheads and Instascrollers to go watch any video on YT that’s longer than 10 minutes. It’s bound to be better for you than anything on FB, X etc.
difference i can see is one is a functional company with changing leadership and the other one being basically a dictatorship, that can change a lot of things. by no means, google had blood on their hands too, and they always have bigger media coverage that it could just be another wednesday. never kept up with Meta so its my first hearing of Rohingya stuff
I think whats interesting and important is that the idea of facebook (connecting everyone) is not a bad idea. Facebook's goal isn't just connected everyone though, it is getting as much engagement as possible. Which as can be seen hateful stuff is the stuff people engage with the most. Facebook's original design that Tantacrul was talking about where he connected with family and friends and just shared within your local groups is ok.
The early part of this video expertly explains how most don't dislike using tech to help connect them with friends, we dislike how it's subverted to maximize profit and also how because of that it's turned into a grift with information overload that detracts from the original simple purpose of aiding communication.
What kind of videos does tantacrul make?
Yes
Never seen a Tantacrul video before, clicked thinking itd be a ~30 minute video. Damn near almost 3 hrs later, this man deserves the sub.
If you haven't yet, you should check out some of his other work. The first video of his that I saw was the one on Sibelius, and it's a favorite of mine that I rewatch from time to time. It's masterfully crafted and even though I don't do any sort of composing myself, I really enjoy it
2:26:26 It's worth noting that while Meta does call LLama "open source" it is not open source in any kind of widely understood meaning of that term. The code used to train the models isn't public nor is the data used by said code for said training public. The only thing thats public with LLama that isnt public with GPT, Gemini, etc is the model itself: The incomprehensible binary data that is spat out by the training process and is used to generate responses. As well as the standard interface that Meta has developed for interacting with LLMs.
So binary blobs and an open standard ... that doesn't sound at all "open source" to anyone who cares about the meaning of those words or the movement behind them.
Edit:
aaaand you mention that late along with the other licence weirdness nvmm
So weird that people talk about open source when talking about AI as if it’s the same as other software. I guess all the work continuously scraped, prepared, and used to train these models is open source too.
Still just about half way done but this video is fantastically put together. Prescient topic, thorough research, and a coherent explanation that doesn't compromise toward that end.
Amazing content, I appreciate the depth and nuance you have. It often feels like discussion is becoming increasingly simplified, and this fights that urge - the 3 hours is well worth the time. Although it diiiid take me a month to work through the whole thing in 4-5 sittings
Thanks very much! Yeah, it's basically a mini series :)
TH-cam is guilty of many of these same shenanigans. It makes me want to upload my videos elsewhere.
But there is no elsewhere. Hosting videos for a wide audience is very, very expensive, so you're basically forced to use all the Facebook techniques of squeezing advertising money out of users in order to be able to pay your server and networking costs.
@@hammerth1421 Well, that’s why I’m still here 😂
Odysee
@@dlln.1353There's no reach. People search for videos on TH-cam; there's a lot of brand recognition; personal websites are dead. People are unlikely to find your video unless you tell them about it
Nebula, maybe?
People are more likely to feel compelled to react to content that provokes negative emotions, so showing users more of what they hate, yet just enough of what they like (to keep them from leaving the platform) is the most efficient way to increase engagement. Is this the best for the users? NO! But is it the best for the platform and its advertising clients? YES!
Oh, Lordy, a new Tantacrul about the bane of my existence. Right here, sir: straight into my veins!
how does this not have wayyyyyyyy more views? this is one of your best videos to date
That is all very fascinating and instructive but, what we really need is a video about that band in your twenties, with complete soundtrack… and what happened to Tom and Jill!
Highly recommend the book "The Chaos Machine" by Max Fisher, which focuses on the societal harms caused by algorithmically driven content. Lines up well with a lot of the sources in your bibliography.
Thanks for the recommendation. I'm wanting to do more research into this area
Reminder : Meta made 39.1 billion US $ of PROFIT in 2023.
They have been profitable every single year since 2013, but they only sought more money.
None of this insanity was remotely necessary to keep the company afloat.
Why did they end up going public?
It's not about profit, it's about infinite growth. The numbers need to be bigger than last time or it fails, even if they're in profit. Welcome to late stage capitalism.
8:00 This is something I studied heavily doing my masters in computer science and it fascinates me to no end. When we interact with something that we have no mental model of, something with a defined set of operations yet an infinite number of ways to use those operations, something magical happens in our brains and that object or software becomes extremely personally gratifying to interact with. There's something in building that mental model, exploring it, expanding it, and first putting it to use that speaks to our innate need for ingenuity. We'll even go as far as attaching personality to these things wherever possible because of our social nature. I'm sure part of it is some companies pushing things that are too rigid to be experimented with, but unfortunately, another part of it is just the fact that when we grow used to things, we stop trying to iterate and come up with new ways to play, and it becomes boring. It applies to robotics, software, or really anything that's designed for interaction. The true joy is in the formation of the mental model, much like how great artists learned the rules and then broke them.
I think this is also part of why GenAI and LLM products feel awkward to me in comparison to other breakthrough technologies. The iteration curve, the development of a mental model is just absent (or at least heavily diminished) because the input interface is an entire human language, continuous and un-quantitative. Not to mention the outputs are randomized as well, preventing you from learning heuristics about the black box models.
Tantacrul, I remember many years ago commenting on one of your posts on Facebook, asking "Huh, this is weird, why hasn't a TH-camr as big as yourself gotten more likes on this post?" to which you responded something along the lines of "I never do get that much success on Facebook". That experience has always stuck with me, and I have to wonder if that one comment from someone outside your own social circle mentioned in this video was from me!
Ha! That's interesting. Yeah, I remember for a while I put some effort into my FB presence and then just gave up. Nice to meet you again!
Thank you, very very very high quality content. Take as long as you like to make it. I really do appreciate your care for the craft.
Incredible. I’m am once again amazed by your video storytelling, editing, and script-writing skills! Your resources and credits used are highly appreciated, and it’s also just great to see ya again! Great video Tantacrul!
Thank you so much!