Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:40
The social media of that time. Was there a company kind of acquiring these social media channels at that time, or what happened to a lot of social media sites? I think I was seeing something with Myspace, and the founder was like on some island, it ended up being acquired. But what was were they? It was a conglomerate of the social media sites at that time. What happened to a lot of them?
Mark Weinstein: 16:06
Well, let’s frame the time for everybody, because in web one, you know, Sir Tim wasn’t really I didn’t know him. I didn’t know was Sir Tim Raj. These are all, you know, Sherry Turkle, these are all extraordinarily wonderful people who came to my side and, and, you know, came to advise me in web two and web one. Web one washes out because the economic model washes out. So.
And what happens in Web1 is called the new economy. Because, you know, the way investors invest in web one was based on whether you could get members, we call them eyeballs back then. So your eyeballs were what made you or, you know, didn’t make you. And so investors were throwing money at, you know, entrepreneurs in web one based on how many eyeballs they could get. And, you know, we were developing, you know, community platforms.
They were called community portals back then. They social media wasn’t a buzz, you know, a buzz phrase back then, community portals were. So now here’s what happened. But for everybody, whether you were a drugstore.com or whatever, you were Pets.com, whatever you were, it was all about attracting the members, attracting the customers, and profits had nothing to do with anything. So and what happened with Web1 was all of a sudden in 2001, the investors panicked because, and this was not fair because, you know, the game was keep getting your members, get your eyeballs, and then we’ll all figure out our revenue models.
Right now, get your members, get your loyal, you know, consumers. And all of a sudden investors panicked. There were some emotions. There were some concerns about there was no economics. And of course, there weren’t supposed to be.
Then you’re supposed to build your site first, build your membership first. But investors panicked, and literally thousands of companies went out of business in web one and web one collapsed. Web one imploded in 2001. It just collapsed. Now, out of the ashes of that web two was born.
And hence, in the book I talk about this surveillance capitalism was born, where all of a sudden your data was everything. And targeting and manipulating your thoughts, your opinions and your purchase decisions was everything. Because that’s where revenue came from in the web two business model. And hence, you know, as you know, fast forwarding to my 2020 Ted talk, you know, on the rise of surveillance capitalism. And there’s a great book by Shoshana Zuboff at Harvard about surveillance capitalism and surveillance capitalism has become an integrated part of our lives and very, very creepy.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:08
Let’s talk about a few examples. Right. Because like in your I encourage anyone to check out the Ted talk. You talk in there like the algorithm sometimes knows. You know that you’re pregnant before anyone else knows.
They know certain things about you before you. sometimes. Maybe before someone else knows about them, just by what they’re searching, what they’re looking at, and they get served. Yeah. Serving.
Served. I’ve heard these stories, too. Like people getting, you know, served ads for diapers. And the husband’s like, I don’t know why I’m getting served ad for diapers. And then the wife’s like, well, actually I’m pregnant. So talk about a few examples. You’ve seen that kind of illustrate the surveillance capitalism piece.
Mark Weinstein: 19:57
You know, for everybody too. So that is basic surveillance capitalism the way it had been because it’s supercharged now was and I said this in 2012, I did an interview on Fox Business the day before Facebook went public because they wanted somebody to say, what’s the problem with this? And I said, very clearly. I said, the problem is that they’re reading everything that I’m writing and they are serving an ad if I say need. Need some dog food to a friend of mine, then immediately within, you know.
Seconds I get a dog food ad. So that’s the original surveillance capitalism. Where? You know, what they would do is the algorithm was engineered to study everything that you wrote about, everything you talked about. Because, you know, those apps are listening to where you are, what you’re doing, who you’re with, and create this data packet on you.
So they knew everything about you what your likes, dislikes, your personality, your concerns, your health issues, your financial circumstances, your politics, your religion. You know, all your perspectives on everything. And this is where surveillance capitalism was born from that meta Facebook was able then to sell access to you, you know, advertisers, marketers, politicians, you know, nefarious political operatives. Anybody who can pay, can target and manipulate you and your, you know, whatever it is they want to manipulate you about your opinions, your purchase decisions, your health issues, finances, sexuality, whatever. It’s all there.
Now here’s the really scary part. As if this isn’t bad enough, now we have AI, and AI now supercharges the algorithms that are tracking and studying and targeting you. So it’s not only that they can figure out what you want or what you think and how to change that. But now with these with AI supercharged algorithms, literally, these companies can anticipate your thoughts before you think them. And this is really spectacular in its insanity.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:18
I’m going to share my screen for a second? I’d love to hear. So, like, what do we do? Right? What do we do?
But, like, I remember watching this, this is we’re looking at the social dilemma, right. And there’s people from Facebook from these social networks saying how crazy this is and how they don’t want they won’t let their kids install the social media apps on their phones. So knowing all of this, like obviously restoring our sanity online, what are some of the things people can do.
Mark Weinstein: 22:50
You know, thank you for sharing that. Right. And, you know, every social media executive I know everybody. They don’t let their kids on social media, certainly not until they’re, you know, 15 or 16. You know, they’re very, very careful.
They know how destructive it is. It wasn’t designed to be that way in Web1. It’s become that way because of course, we all know about body shaming, bullying, self, you know, image issues, Suicides. The addiction. The other thing, Jeremy, that we need to just mention around that algorithmic, you know, tracking is that this is why you even see old people.
You might see your parents or your grandparents or yourself totally hooked, whether it’s on TikTok or on Insta or Facebook, wherever it is, because the AI supercharged algorithm now can keep your newsfeed going. It knows exactly how to manipulate your brain to keep you hooked on whatever it is that you’re looking at, and keep feeding it more and more and more. That’s why people are hooked for longer periods of time, more than ever. And you notice this. I hear this all the time.
Hey, you know, my dad, my uncle, my aunt, you know, it’s like, yeah, it’s incredible. So what can we do everybody? So, you know, it’s.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:11
Hard to be disciplined. I’m, you know, watching Mark Weinstein videos and TED Talks and all of a sudden I’m served these, you know, basketball dunk videos and I’m off like five deep on, you know, keep serving me those Michael Jordan highlights or all these highlights. So I get dragged into it as well.
Mark Weinstein: 24:33
Yeah, absolutely. Listen you know none of us are really impervious now because even as The Wall Street Journal reported, I don’t know, in like 2016 that Meta was tracking you whether you were logged in or not, whether you were a member or not. I should say at that point is Facebook, that they were aggregating data on people that weren’t members, you know, and if you are a member and you, you know, it’s pretty easy. They’re listening on your phone. All you have to do is talk about something, you know, with a friend of yours.
Well, you know, you’ve got your phone around and all of a sudden you’re going to see, you know, hey, you know, you reach out to this person, you know, hey, remind about this or, you know, hey, buy this. It’s creepy how pervasive this is today. So, you know, and there’s a bunch of strategies in the book, you know, restoring our city online. There’s a bunch of strategies in addition to advice on how we shift it all. But there’s a bunch of strategies for you as an individual, for kids, for parents.
What you can do right now. And, you know, some things are really fundamental. I mean, we’re seeing that authorities like schools, the school systems, the Los Angeles school system, for example, has decided to, you know, ban the use of phones at schools, in public schools. Now, that’s really important because that’s helpful for kids. You know, one of the things everybody is to role model, and I don’t care whether you’re listening to this and you’re 15 or you’re 30 or 45 or 60 or 75, whatever you are.
We’re all role models for our kids. We’re role models for our parents. And so if you’re living in a house and you’re a family and you’re part of the family, that role model, then don’t use phones at the dinner table or the breakfast table. Put it down, put it away. Make some rules and stick to them.
Because don’t expect your kids to, you know. You know that old rule that your kids do what you do, not what you say. So don’t be a hypocrite. And also, you need to discipline yourself. And, you know, phones shouldn’t be in anybody’s bedroom at night.
You know, by eight, nine, 10:00, whatever it is. Curfew for everybody, phones downstairs being charged. You know, it’s not like go sneak and look at it. No, it’s like it’s over, you know? And then you’ve really got to look at the studies today that show that five kids, you know, 10 to 13 are on these phones 5 to 7 hours a day on media.
You know, we’ve got to stop that. You’ve got to be part of this. So. And also babies for your babies. Listen, Sweden just announced that up until, you know, for the first two years of a kid’s life, don’t show them a screen because it’s all addictive.
Now we know all too well how addictive it is. You just heard Jeremy say how he got hooked by dunk videos. You know, the screen is so addictive and this is not new. You know, Jeremy and I had televisions and phones in our houses when we were growing up. Before this, this tech era, you know, and our parents had to regulate those things.
So it’s — still we need to regulate. But today we need to regulate ourselves. And, you know, there’s lots of different ways to do it. Also, you want to look at the sites that you’re on because you want to teach your kids critical thinking and yourself because there are so many fundamental mistruths and deep fakes, all this stuff online. So you want to get back to not believing everything you see.
And, you know, historically, Jeremy, and our listeners, if you’re 13 or under, you believe everything that an advertisement told you. So how do we expect a 13-year-old or a 12-year-old to be able to filter a YouTube video for its truth or all the falsehoods and, you know, exaggerations that are being perpetrated online? So it’s time for a new era of critical thinking. So, you know, it’s a great opportunity to teach your kids critical thinking what’s real, what’s not, what’s the fact, what isn’t. How do we uncover this? You know, there’s a lot of things we can do right now.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:53
I want to hear some more of Mark’s rules. I’ll call them Mark’s rules. Okay. I love these, by the way. So no phone at the dinner table.
Have a curfew for the phone? No phone. The. Yeah, any eating table. Curfew. No phone in the bedroom. No screens before two years old. What are some other rules that you think about? And maybe they’re in the book. Maybe they’re not.
Mark Weinstein: 29:25
Well, here’s something that you want to be recognized, everybody. Bots and trolls understand that bots and trolls are everywhere, even on X, even blue checked on X because bots and trolls, these are farms. Basically, they’re run by human beings. There can be tens of thousands of them. They can all be programmed to have a credit card.
And then therefore, to put it up on X to get a blue check, you know, to be a premium member, so to speak. So again, you want to recognize that even, you know, your followers. And certainly it’s well documented that Elon Musk’s followers that even Joe Biden’s followers now, Trump’s followers that, you know, bots and trolls can easily make up half of those. If you see a conversation where there’s a whole bunch of negativity and their names associated with those posts, half of them or more are not real people. There are foreign adversarial, you know, countries, Russia, China, others and political operatives in this country who want us to believe things that aren’t true, who want to disrupt our democracy.
So here’s one of Mark’s rules that’s really important. Disagreement is the backbone of democracy. So remember, we don’t hate our neighbors or our friends or people of different opinions. We were made to the bots and trolls have Thrown salt, had thrown gasoline on the fire. Pull it back.
Remember, we’re Americans. We actually love each other. We believe in the same things. We might have a different opinion of being a Republican or a Democrat, or a different opinion about issues that’s supported. That’s what makes us a democracy. Remember that democracy is where disagreement is supported and you’re not hated and you’re not put in jail and you’re not harassed because of your opinion. That’s what democracy is. We’ve all got to get back to remembering the backbone of democracy is disagreement, and that we’re all Americans and we really love being Americans.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:51
So what should people do as far as that goes? So like they see a bunch of negativity that’s like, just be aware these are bots and not engage or what do you recommend.
Mark Weinstein: 32:04
Stop believing everything that you see and read on social media from either side for any side. Start using common sense. Use critical thinking. You know, ideas of perpetration of one side or the other. Let’s get back to the common sense of America.
So the idea here is and this is really where your phone comes in and you know, your computer, it’s like, all right, you want to be entertained and make sure you know you’re being entertained. So to stop believing that it’s true what you’re saying and come back to, you know, we got to get back inside our heads because right now our heads have been kidnapped. So remember, and this is where social media was kidnapped. You know The algorithms, the now, the AI supercharged algorithms, the AI friends. Remember, AI is not your friend.
AI is a completely neutral product that then is programmed for one thing or another. AI can be very good. We can use AI to get rid of the bots. Bots are AI, but we can use good AI to get rid of bad AI. So, you know, listen, you’ve just got to come back to, you know, and we’ve got to have some common rules about AI, you know, but that’s coming.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:34
That’s I want to I want to hear this is actually on, on my list to, to ask you about because I’ve seen people talk on both sides of this and we’ll say AI ChatGPT I’ve seen, you know, people take really opposite stances here, which is one, hey, I don’t want my kids on it at all. I want them to learn critical thinking. I don’t want them to take shortcuts. And I’ve heard the opposite of People like, I want my kids literally asking ChatGPT any question they have and learn to start to use it and, you know, utilize it for what it is and expand on whatever idea or answer questions. Because if they don’t, they’re going to be left behind.
So I’m curious your thought on kids at this point in time, right. It’s obviously AI is going to it rapidly changes. But using like a ChatGPT to, you know, ask you questions and engage with it or not. What are your thoughts?
Mark Weinstein: 34:35
Well, listen the way you just described that Siri that’s Alexa, that’s ChatGPT. They’re really not very different. You know there always was AI. AI now is has just become, you know, more intelligent, more supercharged asking you know, listen, there’s nothing wrong with educating all of us, our kids, you know, it’s great to be able to ask your phone, you know, a question that you can get an answer to right away. You know how many bones are in the body or, you know, when was Taylor Swift born?
Whatever you want to know. But to have I write your term paper or, you know, I think the perfect example, Jeremy, is during the Paris Olympics where Google with its Gemini. I ran an ad many times with a dad and his eight-year-old daughter asking Gemini to write a letter for her to an athlete. Now that’s ridiculous. Then this is where we are impairing on the education and the, you know, qualitative and quantitative abilities of our kids and ourselves.
Now, teach your kids how to write a letter. You know, let them practice writing a letter. If you use AI to write your papers, to write your letters, to do your math, to do that, then, you know, then we’re going to have a bunch of humans who don’t know how to do much, who basically can’t think for themselves at all. So I had a high function. This is great.
You know, Jeremy, when we were kids, we had encyclopedias in our house. So, you know, the encyclopedias like these huge, you know, volumes of books where we could go learn about anything. We had a topic. There wasn’t a button we could push or. Siri, tell me about this. Or Alexa, you know, how do you do this? We went and looked in the encyclopedia. So in certain ways this is just the encyclopedia live in real time, able to generate the best answer it can quickly, but use it appropriately. Does that make sense?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:32
Yeah. It’s basically, you know, use it for, you know, certain things that you’re, you know, maybe certain questions, but maybe don’t overuse it for something that you should be doing yourself and missing out on.
Mark Weinstein: 36:47
Yeah, we’re already using Google to research if we have a physical ailment or, you know, a fever or symptoms or whatever, you know. I mean, Google. Google is now supercharged by AI. But the search engines, you know, Google, DuckDuckGo, they were already providing us with information. Where we crossed the line is because AI has this capacity to mimic the human brain.
So for example, on snap you have an AI friend and things like that. This is where, you know, they’re now stuffed animals with this sort of like AI, this talking stuffed animal that’s actually talking to your toddler, you know, or your young child and then, you know, listening to them and using AI because it’s connected to the web to provide, you know, some kind of answer for them. And this is where it gets dangerous, because that’s also collecting data on your kid, all this stuff, you know, don’t use AI inappropriately. But AI is almost a misnomer because we already had AI for years, everybody. It’s just supercharged now.
And now it can be used for a lot more things and can also replace jobs. That’s a different conversation.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:55
There was something we were chatting about before we hit record about Facebook and Australian members. Can you talk about that for a second?
Mark Weinstein: 38:05
Yeah. You know, listen, my book is full of anecdotes because I’ve been in social media for 27 years. And look everybody like, you know, so right up to the present moment, you know, and I’ve employed countless engineers and, you know, I know all the technologies and web three, of course. And, you know, web for the book is going to introduce Web4, which is really where we need to go. So this is we’ll talk about that in a second.
But Australia and Facebook at one point just a few years ago, this is really quite recent. Just a few years ago, there was a revenge porn issue going on in Facebook with Facebook members, its Australian members. Some were using revenge porn to get back. Revenge porn to get back at their, you know, former relationships. The former loved ones, you know, whatever.
And revenge porn is a pretty nasty, you know, get back. You know, basically it requires you to you take some, you know, of your, your porno photos, your sexy photos of your partner from previous times, and you just broadcast them for everybody to see. It’s a terrible thing because, you know, you expose the other person in very terrible private. You ruin their privacy now. So here’s Facebook’s idea for how to fix this problem, because this is the hilarious part.
So Facebook, Facebook decides, in their infinite wisdom, to ask every one of their Australian members for a naked nude photo of themselves so Facebook can create this huge nude photo database of every Australian member so they could run that, you know, and match that against any foreigners being put up on Facebook so they could pull them down. Now, does that sound like a good idea that Facebook would have a nude photo of every one of its Australian members in a database for hackers? It’s like, you have just got to be kidding me. That’s your solution to collect nude photos from all your Australian members. Fortunately, Australia, you know, people in Australia are smarter than Facebook.
They would they hadn’t they? They weren’t going for this. And they basically laughed it out of, out of Facebook’s agenda. But Facebook sent messages. This is real everybody. Facebook really came up with this idea and tried to implement it. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:30
I don’t know how that got out of the brainstorming room where it was hatched. Right. Like, oh, this sounds good. Let’s do it.
Mark Weinstein: 40:41
Yeah. Yeah. How in the world does somebody say, wait, I have an idea. Let’s get all of our members in Australia to give us a nude photo of himself. Yeah, we’ll create this database. Yeah. No. You know.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:54
You know, Mark, what made you decide to write the book? Because obviously you could just keep along the journey. You know, you found in Miami, you had other books in speaking engagements. Why did you write Restoring your Sanity Online?
Mark Weinstein: 41:11
Look, everybody, and of course, the books in the background, and, you know, this is it right here. But I’m an ethical business person. I love capitalism, you know, I’m a pure capitalist. And capitalism really works because the whole idea of it is to create something that delights people. And then it’s called doing well by doing good as my friend Raj Sisodia says.
And then you can prosper from serving people and giving them something that’s of value to them. The problem with capitalism is when you’re so good at it, then you become the best in the business, you know. Or the most popular. And investors throw money at you and then you lose your ethics. Now, case in point is Facebook.
Facebook, you know, in web two came up with, you know, a pretty good engineering solution for a new kind of community portal for people to connect and stay connected and find their friends and share all this life. And then Facebook became successful. And then investors through hundreds of millions of dollars added Facebook, blocked out competitors, bought competitors, became, you know, Mark Zuckerberg made a statement in 2010, this is really the epitome of it all. And he said privacy is a social norm of the past. Why?
Because he had discovered how great surveillance capitalism was for his wallet and for the coffers of Facebook. So here’s the problem with capitalism when it becomes Monopolism creates its own set of problems that we need to fix. This is why we need the government. We need antitrust regulations. We need to keep the marketplace competitive.
I left Miami in 2022 to write this book. MeWe still exist. You know that’s not this book is about how do we fix this whole industry. So this problem not just social media, but surveillance capitalism, bots and trolls, the mental health of our children, you know, the mental health of all of us, democracy. These are huge issues that must be reconciled with.
We’ve got to solve it. And there are ways to do it. There are technologies coming. So as I mentioned, Sir Tim has invented pods so that we can own our data so we can’t be manipulated. So, you know, we there’s all these things coming.
I’m explaining it all in the book while telling all these stories and also comparing. There’s fascinating parallels between big agriculture, big energy, big tech, the stories, the ways that we save ourselves, our families, our societies. It’s time big tech has gotten a little unwieldy. So I took three years to heavily research and to formulate the way home. And that’s restoring our sanity online.
And it’s a good read if you read the reviews on Amazon. I mean, thank you everybody who’s put up reviews. It’s a good read. People love it because it’s also my sense of humor comes through. So you’re going to chuckle.
You’re going to read stories. Then you’re going to get to see the actions that we can do right now. As I call out and I’m going to introduce you to web three, because nobody really understands web three. And I’m going to introduce you to web four. So you will become savvy.
And it’s 155 pages of text. There’s a whole bunch of appendices, so it’s an easy, punchy, good read, and it will empower you to help, you know, we’re going to go to a new place that’s better for all of us.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:54
Mark, I want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing your journey. It’s pretty, pretty remarkable journey. You could see if you’re watching the video, you could see you go to Markweinsteininventor.com/book. You can also find it on Amazon. Is there any other places online we should we should point people?
Mark Weinstein: 45:13
Sure. It’s wherever books are sold. You know Barnes and Noble, Amazon. You know the independent bookstores. You can go into bookstore, look for it or order it.
I know it’s been in the airport bookstores, the Hudson bookstores. Many of you probably saw it in the book shops if you’ve been traveling during the holidays. You know, it’s out. It’s available. Please share it with your friends.
I always ask people to buy one for yourself and if you love it, then buy one for somebody else, or for a school, or for a library. We’ve got to get this conversation going because it’s up to us and we can do this. And this book makes it really clear to everybody what happened. Where are we? How do we get to the next place?
And, you know, we’re all ready for it. Let’s get this started. Let’s get this party started, as they say.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 46:04
Everyone check it out. Restoring Our Sanity online. And Mark Weinsteininventor.com more episodes of the podcast and we’ll see everyone next time. Mark. Thanks so much.
Mark Weinstein: 46:16
Jeremy. Thank you. Thanks everybody.
