In this episode, we talk to the CEO and Founder of Oculus, Shane Smith. Shane talks about how he got into virtual reality and augmented reality and how it's changed the way we see and experience the world. We talk about the future of VR and Augmented Reality and how companies like Oculus are revolutionizing how we see the world and how technology can help us do so. We also talk about some of the new features that are coming to the Oculus headset in October, and how they can be used to enhance your experience in real life. This episode is sponsored by Oculus Connect. A big thank you to Oculus for sponsoring this episode. If you like the show, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe to our new podcast, The Anthropology, wherever you get your podcasts, and help spread the word about the show. Timestamps: 3:00 - What are the benefits of virtual reality? 4:30 - The benefits of Augmented and Virtual Reality? 5:20 - How can we improve our perception of the world? 6:15 - What can we do to make the world better? 7:40 - How does technology help us connect better with each other? 8:00 9:00- What are some of our biggest challenges? 11:30- How do we get better at being present? 12:40- What is the ultimate expression of technology? 13:20- Why do we need to be present in life? 14: How do you feel present in the most authentic experience? 15: What are we all connected? 16:10 - What is real? 17: What do you want to be in the world through technology in the 21st century? 18:40 19:30 21:10- What do we want to do in virtual reality in the real world in the next decade? 22:10 Can we be a better version of ourselves in the best experience in the future? 25:10:20 26: How can I be a virtual reality machine? 27:30 What is a virtual world in 2020? ? Is it possible to be more present in real-world in the ultimate experience in my head in the near-real world in a virtual space? & 15:30 Can I be there with someone else in the first place?
00:00:49.000You can see the evolution and the progress of this stuff where it's getting to the point where it's mimicking human patterns in kind of a creepy way.
00:01:28.000How do you get this sensation of actually being present like you're right there with another person?
00:01:33.000And that's to me what virtual and eventually augmented reality are all about.
00:01:38.000And there's just this whole technology roadmap that you That we basically just need to go run down over the next decade to unlock that.
00:01:45.000So for the next device that's coming out in October, there are a few big features.
00:01:54.000I mean, the one that you're talking about, basically social presence.
00:01:58.000I mean, the ability to now have kind of eye contact in virtual reality.
00:02:04.000Have your face be tracked so that way...
00:02:07.000Your avatar, it's not just like this still thing, but if you smile or if you frown or if you pout or, you know, whatever your expression is, have that actually just in real time translate to your avatar.
00:02:18.000I mean, that's obviously like our facial expressions are just a huge, that's like a, you know, there's more nonverbal communication when people are with each other than verbal communication.
00:02:27.000You had a really good point, too, about face tracking.
00:02:30.000If you're doing a FaceTime call, that you don't look at each other in the eye.
00:02:35.000Because you're looking at the camera to look in the eye, and then you don't see the person.
00:02:38.000So if you look at the camera, you're looking up.
00:02:42.000And if you look down at the actual screen, you're not making eye contact with the person.
00:02:48.000But this is able to recreate actual eye contact.
00:03:47.000And there are all these just subtle signals and things that either deepen the illusion or break it.
00:03:56.000That each time we do a new version, we just try to...
00:04:02.000You know, break down a few more of the barriers.
00:04:04.000And one of the big ones early on, well, the first one, obviously, was just like having a headset and be able to look around.
00:04:11.000And for that, one of the key things that your eye basically refreshes...
00:04:17.000I'll call it every five milliseconds or something.
00:04:19.000So if you turn your head and the image isn't kind of refreshed to where you're looking within five milliseconds, then there's this huge mismatch between your visual system and your vestibular system and your kind of balance in your ear.
00:04:33.000And people used to kind of feel uncomfortable from that, right?
00:04:36.000Because it's like a physical discomfort because what you were looking at didn't match as you were rotating your head.
00:04:46.000And there was this whole thing that was super interesting there where at first we wanted to, you know, display your whole arm, which makes sense, right?
00:04:54.000Because, I mean, you'd think, okay, it's a little weird to just see your hand.
00:04:57.000But it turns out that your brain is perfectly willing to just accept seeing your hand without your arm.
00:05:06.000Because your hand is the thing that it's trying to manipulate.
00:05:09.000And as a matter of fact, if we kind of interpolated and got your arm position wrong, right?
00:05:14.000So we'd get into these cases where your hands were here, and we'd sort of guess that your arm was like that or something.
00:05:20.000And if your arm was actually like that, but we displayed it so that it was in like that, you're like, ah, my elbow's broken!
00:05:27.000So it's actually much better to show a limited number of signals, but get them right.
00:05:31.000And then you can just add on over time.
00:05:33.000So for previous versions before this, we didn't The kind of eye contact was all just AI simulated, but we didn't actually know when you were making eye contact because we weren't tracking the eyes.
00:05:44.000And now for this version and hopefully a lot of the different ones that we build going forward, you'll be able to have realistic facial expressions and more translated directly to your avatar.
00:05:56.000But there's this whole roadmap of basically how do you deliver this real sense of presence, like you're there with another person no matter where you actually are.
00:06:03.000It was very impressive because even when I moved my jaw side to side, it did that, it made the O face.
00:06:12.000And you know, you were saying also that the way this is tracking is you're doing this without putting something on your body, without putting trackers on your body.
00:06:23.000But do you ultimately think that that's, like, are we gonna go Ready Player One where you have like a haptic feedback suit?
00:06:29.000And you have to zip this thing up to get into a game and in that way you're gonna be fully immersive or do you think that I can get to the point where it can mimic the movements of your body accurately without you having to wear something?
00:06:44.000So I think that there will be opportunities to wear things to augment the experience further, right?
00:06:49.000So we already have these experiments with haptic gloves, where you can like, if you touch a digital object, right, if you drop a ball from one hand to the other, you can feel the ball in your hand physically.
00:07:32.000You don't want to have a setup that has like 10 pieces.
00:07:36.000There are going to be times when you want to kind of have that I think it's a sort of super deep experience or maybe you have it at your home.
00:07:43.000But I think ultimately people are going to just want to have versions of this that they can bring around, whether it's on an airplane or you're doing work at the office or you're going to a coffee shop or whatever.
00:07:53.000For that, you really just want to make it work from the device.
00:07:58.000So just from a pair of glasses or something along those lines?
00:08:05.000The concepts of virtual reality and augmented reality are sort of on two different development paths, but they're obviously fundamentally interrelated.
00:08:17.000So virtual reality, it's kind of possible to build today.
00:08:30.000There's a lot of new technology that we've researched that goes into that.
00:08:33.000But it also is building on top of decades of advances in displays that came from TVs and then laptops and phones.
00:08:44.000And some of the display technology gets to piggyback on those decades of innovation and all these different companies that have done that work before.
00:08:54.000AR is a pretty different beast because what you really want to get to is not a headset.
00:09:00.000You want to get to something that's like a normal-looking pair of glasses that is...
00:09:07.000I mean, it won't be like a wireframe because you'll need to fit some electronics in it, where you'll basically need to have a computer in there and speakers and a microphone and batteries and a laser projector.
00:09:19.000And then the display, which, you know, we and a lot of other folks think is going to be this technology called waveguides.
00:09:43.000So is a waveguide a type of technology?
00:10:26.000So it's not only just is it kind of working as a hologram, but there's all these different dimensions beyond just being, like, a better video chat.
00:10:37.000If we wanted to play poker, you know, it's like I could, you know, I could, like, deal a deck of cards and we could play.
00:10:45.000It could deal hologram cards and you could have your glasses and physical you there could pick up the hologram cards and you can have a poker night where some of your friends are there physically and some of them are there as holograms.
00:11:00.000One of the thought experiments that I like to do is thinking about how few of the things that we physically have in the world actually need to be physical.
00:11:09.000Obviously, things like chairs need to be physical, where you're not going to be sitting on a hologram.
00:11:15.000But most entertainment-type stuff, I mean, not just cards, but games, most media, TVs in the future probably won't need to actually be physical things.
00:11:33.000Get the hologram there for the TV and we can have our glasses and watch whatever you want there.
00:11:38.000I don't know, they're sort of limited to being rectangular now because a bunch of limits in terms of the physics of how they get produced, but in the future you'll just have some high school students or college students developing apps and they'll just be wild.
00:11:52.000Crazy stuff will just kind of get created.
00:11:55.000So you'll eventually be able to kind of have that all come through these AR glasses.
00:12:01.000So are there these AR glasses, are they in production now?
00:12:08.000Like when you talk about this kind of technology where you can see things that aren't there and look at maps and watch videos and have it all on a small computer that's in the frame of glasses, do they exist already?
00:12:32.000But I think it'll also start off pretty expensive once it's available, and then it'll take a while to work down to something that's like hundreds of dollars.
00:12:43.000There are versions of this that you can start to see if you relax some of the constraints, right?
00:12:48.000So the kind of ultimate AR experience is that like, okay, you just have normal looking glasses that can kind of have all of these, have holograms, make it so you can interact with people wherever you want.
00:13:03.000If you relax the form factor constraint, so you have a headset instead of normal-looking glasses, that's the other thing that's coming in the new device that we're shipping in October is mixed reality in VR. So we got to play around with this a little bit in the sword fighting experience that we did.
00:13:22.000Basically, the thing about mixed reality is you see the physical world around you.
00:13:27.000In the context of VR, it's not happening through a waveguide.
00:13:31.000It's basically happening through—you have cameras on the device that capture the world and then translate that in real time into stereo images, so different images in both eyes, so that way you can—because otherwise it's weird and we kind of see stuff and— You know, 3D because our two eyes see slightly different things.
00:13:50.000The computers are putting that together on the fly.
00:13:56.000And then you can overlay digital objects on top of that.
00:13:58.000So when we were sword fighting, it's like the version of me and my sword, it's like that was a digital thing, but otherwise it was in your lobby, right?
00:14:22.000The other is basically looking at, okay, so we've got to constrain this form factor because we want to have something that looks like normal glasses.
00:14:28.000What's the most technology that we can fit into a pair of normal-looking glasses today?
00:14:34.000It's like, what's the experience that we want to have even if we can't get the form factor right?
00:14:38.000And what's the best we can do with the form factor?
00:14:40.000And then each year, those two basically converge.
00:14:43.000But on the smart glasses side, we work with Ray-Ban to basically build these smart glasses.
00:14:50.000And they're the best-selling smart glasses that have ever been built.
00:14:56.000We're continuing to work on new versions of it, but basically you can get a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers now that have a microphone and they have a speaker and they can take photos and take videos and you can post them to Instagram.
00:15:21.000I want to make sure I don't get the spec wrong and I just have all these different numbers in my head because I want to make sure I don't confuse it with the new version.
00:15:28.000Is it like similar to like a selfie camera?
00:16:24.000I think it's ever so slightly thicker, but it's within the same ballpark of weight.
00:16:31.000So we worked with a company that, Ray-Bans, these are some of the most popular and successful glasses, and part of the reason why I wanted to work with them is because they know a lot about glasses design, and that's not my thing.
00:16:43.000So I figure, okay, they'll really bring to the table some constraints around like, okay, how big can this actually be before it starts getting too heavy on your face and uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time?
00:16:54.000And I've just learned a ton working with those guys.
00:17:28.000You know, make it a really great design.
00:17:30.000And then just eventually these things converge.
00:17:32.000And then eventually they'll converge and you'll get the functionality and you'll get the kind of form factor, but it'll still be kind of expensive for a little while.
00:17:38.000And then you fast forward a few years from there and then I think it'll really be a mainstream thing.
00:17:42.000But even VR today is doing quite well.
00:17:46.000I mean, I don't think we've released exact numbers on the sales, but it's within the ballpark of Xbox or PlayStation or those kind of platforms.
00:17:57.000Yeah, so I mean, we started off, this was sort of my theory on this is like, all right, gaming is use case number one for VR. But then pretty quickly, if you look at any platform, right, so computers, phones before, games are a huge part of those platforms.
00:18:14.000But if you look at the main things that people do, it's really about communication, because I mean, this is what people do, right?
00:18:21.000And you know, that's kind of how we get meaning in our life is interacting with other people.
00:18:26.000So I was like, all right, that's going to happen with VR. And sure enough, if you look at the top apps in VR now, the top few are basically social metaverse, hang out with your friends' apps that are not centered around any specific game.
00:18:41.000So that kind of hypothesis around, okay, VR is starting to add different use cases.
00:18:46.000It's going from games first, games are still growing and going to be huge, to Just kind of social, hang out with friends, be present.
00:18:54.000And we're getting all these other use cases that are kind of crazy and are happening sooner than I thought.
00:18:58.000So, you know, another big one is fitness, right?
00:19:01.000Just because, I mean, in a way, I mean, these are like the first physical computing platforms.
00:19:06.000It's like you don't, like, move around while you're on your computer.
00:19:08.000I guess you could a little bit on your phone, but it's sort of awkward because you're looking at the small screen.
00:19:13.000VR and eventually AR are really designed to be able to move around and do things and interact with the world, and that's really important to me.
00:19:23.000I just feel like if I'm not active, I'm wasting my day.
00:19:28.000So, I don't know, there have been these awesome experiences.
00:19:31.000Basically, a couple of companies, you can kind of think about it like Peloton for VR, where it's like Peloton, they sell you the bike or the treadmill, and then you buy the subscription and you get the classes.
00:19:43.000There's a couple of companies that basically do cardio, they do dancing, they do boxing.
00:19:48.000But instead of having to buy a bike, you just have your Quest headset.
00:19:51.000And once you have that, you buy a subscription to these companies, and you can just take lessons and do different things and fitness.
00:20:03.000I thought that in the long term, something like that would start to happen.
00:20:06.000But it happened way sooner than I thought, which was really cool to see.
00:20:11.000Well, if you do one of the boxing games, you realize right away, this is a really good workout.
00:20:15.000The virtual boxer, when they come towards you and they're in that ring and they start throwing punches at you and you're moving your head, you really wind up getting a really high heart rate.
00:21:14.000Because the thing about the fencing match that we had that I thought was really interesting was like you were facing one direction like 30 feet away and I was facing another direction.
00:21:24.000Like we weren't even facing each other.
00:21:27.000So you could be in Bangladesh and I can be in Rome and we could be playing a game together.
00:21:34.000Yeah, so, I mean, the fencing demo, our internal team built, because we haven't released the new device yet, so in order to kind of make stuff work, we kind of build that ourselves.
00:21:44.000But the boxing ones are made all by other game developers and different developers.
00:22:30.000Things change in terms of, like, Positioning and movement and what you're able to get away with and not get away with.
00:22:35.000Whereas with boxing, boxing's pretty good for that.
00:22:38.000Like it's probably like the best combat sport for VR because you don't even have to hit anything to feel like you kind of are.
00:22:46.000And when you get hit with a jab, your screen lights up like you feel like you got hit.
00:22:52.000Yeah, I mean for kicking, with punching it's a little easier to throw a punch and then just pull it back.
00:22:57.000With kicking, if you're not hitting a pad or something, you want to like continue rotating or else it's tough to really put your weight into it.
00:23:05.000Do you envision a world where one day the physical experience of the game is going to be inconsequential because everything is going to be taking place in your mind?
00:23:17.000Like, it'll be so good, whether it's with haptic feedback or some other kind of input, where you'll be able to actually experience very Matrix-like, some thing that's not there.
00:23:29.000I mean, is that ultimately where all this is going?
00:23:46.000And I don't subscribe to that at all because, I mean, I don't know how you feel about stuff, but I just feel like my whole energy level and mood and kind of how I kind of interact with the world is all just based on It's so physical.
00:24:05.000I guess maybe over time it would be possible to just simulate that through your brain, but I don't believe that we're just brains in tanks or just brains in a body.
00:24:16.000I think our physical being and the actions that we take there are just as much of the experience of being human.
00:24:30.000I would agree to that, but I would also say that a lot of people just like to sit down and watch movies, and that's a very alien experience to the human body, and it's something we've become very accustomed to.
00:24:39.000So what I'm thinking is, if technology advances and it keeps going further in the direction that it's headed now, more immersive, more convincing, you know, that uncanny valley gets bridged and all of a sudden you have a real life experience,
00:24:55.000Now, whether this is through some sort of neural link type deal or some new technology that tricks the mind into actual experiences.
00:25:06.000I mean, ultimately, isn't that where this is all going to go?
00:25:08.000Where you're going to be able to have experiences without having them?
00:25:11.000And that's not to negate the beauty of real experiences or not to say we won't have real experiences anymore.
00:25:17.000But if you wanted to have a real experience, and we talked about economic restrictions that would keep you from being able to fly to another part of the world, well, you could go there with your Oculus.
00:25:28.000You could have a very realistic 3D representation of those places.
00:26:30.000I mean, I think the way that this progresses is like, it'll keep on being able to do more things really well.
00:26:40.000And I would guess that there will be other technologies or other things will advance in the world that will prevent any one thing from ever subsuming everything else.
00:27:26.000And this is the real argument for simulation theory, right?
00:27:30.000The argument for simulation theory is if there's so many civilizations out there in the universe and they're so advanced, ultimately one has to create a simulation.
00:27:43.000If the human race could survive another 100,000 years, the odds we wouldn't create a really realistic simulation is probably pretty low.
00:27:54.000Yeah, I think the question is just how realistic and how good.
00:27:57.000To me, the holy grail is building something that can create a sense of human presence.
00:28:05.000I've spent the last almost 20 years of my life building social software, Making it so that whatever limited computation you have, you can kind of share something about your experience.
00:28:17.000It started off with primarily text when I was in college.
00:28:20.000Then we all got these smartphones, they had cameras, and then it became a lot of photos.
00:28:24.000Now the mobile networks are good enough that it's starting to be a lot more video.
00:28:28.000And to me, this kind of immersive experience is clearly going to be the next step.
00:28:49.000I follow this economist who basically studies that economic opportunity and upward mobility is sort of limited or varies based on what zip code you grow up in.
00:29:00.000Because there's different opportunities in different places.
00:29:03.000Imagine if you didn't have to move to some city that didn't have your values in order to be able to get all the economic opportunities.
00:29:11.000So in the future where you can just use AR, VR and teleport in the morning to the office and show up as a hologram, I think that's going to be pretty sweet.
00:29:19.000It'll unlock a lot of economic opportunity for a lot of people.
00:29:25.000Is it ever going to be 100% as good as being there in person?
00:29:33.000When we were talking about doing this conversation, you know, we talked on the phone, right?
00:29:38.000It's like I didn't fly down to Austin to talk about whether to have this conversation.
00:29:41.000Sometimes it's like whatever amount of simulation you have is...
00:29:47.000You can create a lot of value even if it's not 100% as good as the actual physical thing.
00:29:55.000So I just view our job as we'll basically approach that like an asymptote.
00:30:00.000I don't know if you'll never be able to do all of the things that you can do in person with a person.
00:30:08.000We'll just be able to do more and more.
00:30:10.000If today it's gaming or hanging out, over the next few years it'll be working.
00:30:14.000So hopefully you'll just be able to teleport in and basically just show up as a hologram and work remotely and live wherever you want, be with your family wherever they live, but just be able to show up in whatever place.
00:30:27.000I think that that's going to be pretty awesome and I think we'll be able to do that pretty well.
00:30:31.000It's going to be a real issue for commercial real estate.
00:30:36.000There's not going to be a lot of offices.
00:30:38.000If that actually becomes as good as having a cell phone in your pocket and being able to make a phone call, you could just sort of teleport to work.
00:30:59.000Although I think being physically, being present with people, feeling a sense of presence is pretty important, regardless of where you do it.
00:31:06.000I mean, I've found, you know, over the last couple of years, the way that stuff, that the work has been done has changed a huge amount.
00:31:13.000And, you know, it's, there are all these things that are sort of complex about the office.
00:31:17.000But like, I mean, I see people in person almost every day.
00:31:21.000Sometimes I probably do more meetings in my house now than I would have before.
00:31:27.000I do think that seeing people in person having that sense of presence makes a big difference.
00:31:34.000I think so too, but there's definitely a big pushback now about people going to the office rather than working from home.
00:31:44.000People would rather just do their work from home and they're like, with the internet connections as they are today and the ability to videoconference, why do I have to be physically in the building in order to get my work done?
00:32:17.000I have this thing where I'll be in zone, kind of flow concentration, working on something, and my wife will ask me some basic question, and I'll just be like, oh, man.
00:33:10.000So in some ways, well, you would have to have a real quiet and secure place, but I think for a lot of people, just the wasted time commuting and all that, if you could eliminate that through AR or VR, some sort of a hologram system,
00:33:27.000just the stress of life would be so much better.
00:33:30.000Yeah, I mean, that's been, for me, over the last couple of years with COVID, and just kind of rethinking the way that stuff...
00:33:40.000I think reducing the commute has been one of the big efficiencies.
00:33:44.000But also being able to live in different places has been nice.
00:33:47.000I spent a lot of time down in Kauai earlier on, and I got really into surfing and hydrofoiling.
00:33:54.000I just wake up in the morning and go do that, and then just be really refreshed and go do my full day of meetings, which is obviously not something I could do in Palo Alto.
00:34:07.000I think if you can give people the ability to get their kind of fluid state, like flow state work remotely, but then also just be able to kind of in a second teleport to a place and show up as a hologram and be present, I think that that's pretty valuable.
00:34:23.000Now, that doesn't replace everything, right?
00:34:26.000I mean, one of the things that I found is...
00:34:29.000For, you know, larger meetings, one of the most useful things is not actually the meeting itself.
00:34:33.000It's just getting a chance to catch up with people before and after the meeting, right, when you're in the hallway or something.
00:34:38.000So, you know, yeah, there's a downside to being so efficient about being able to teleport in and out, too, because you can kind of miss some of those casual downtime moments.
00:34:47.000But overall, yeah, I mean, I think it's going to create this kind of crazy amount of efficiency there.
00:34:53.000Yeah, I think people are still going to crave real-world experiences no matter what.
00:34:58.000Obviously, I do stand-up comedy, so obviously that experience, you must be there.
00:35:04.000That's part of the fun, is being in the room with people.
00:35:07.000But I can envision technology improving to the point where you could create a virtual comedy club.
00:35:13.000And you would see all the different people that have the headsets on in the room, and you would probably get pretty close.
00:35:23.000There was a lot of people that did Zoom stand-up during the pandemic, and it was awful, because there was no audience.
00:35:29.000They were just basically doing their act with no crowd.
00:36:00.000So there is already at least one experience like this that I'm aware of.
00:36:05.000So we have this Horizon social platform and people can build worlds in it.
00:36:08.000It's pretty simple today, but it's designed to be this really easy world building platform and people can go in and build stuff.
00:36:14.000And people built this thing called the Soapstone Comedy Club.
00:36:17.000And this is actually one of the stories that I've heard of people using VR that I think is really touching.
00:36:23.000So there's this woman who basically lost her son and was really sad and was grieving for a while.
00:36:31.000And comedy was just a really important outlet for her.
00:36:34.000But she had a lot of social anxiety around going and physically being in front of people and performing and doing it at a club.
00:36:40.000So she started doing it at the Soapstone Comedy Club and had a little bit more anonymity because it was in virtual reality, but she could feel a real sense of presence of other people there.
00:36:50.000And, I mean, talking to her about it, it's like it's been a real important thing.
00:36:55.000Experience for her to kind of be this creative outlet and help her get over this grieving that she's had.
00:37:01.000And it's not something maybe that she would have been comfortable having the kind of full intensity experience of a physical comedy club, but you kind of got a bunch of the way there by feeling like you were present with people there.
00:37:12.000My friend Brian Redband, he does this thing called Virtual Redband.
00:37:21.000So he does it in Oculus, and he has a bunch of his friends log on at the same time, and they go into a room together and hang out.
00:37:29.000It's really interesting, because I think that...
00:37:31.000To be able to have an online community where you go to a place and you all meet up and you're all talking and hearing each other's voices and seeing the avatar moving, like that alien avatar that you showed me today, it's very real looking.
00:37:47.000I mean, I clearly see that it's this animated thing, but I would liken it to an avatar, like from the movie Avatar, like the Na'vi.
00:37:56.000There's something cool about it where it's definitely a step above a lot of these things that I've seen in the past.
00:38:05.000That's moving into this much more realistic sort of place where I could imagine a lot of people just deciding, like, today I'm going to be a penguin.
00:38:14.000I'm going to go to this diner and hang out with these guys as a penguin.
00:39:35.000It's obviously not super realistic yet.
00:39:37.000It'll get better and better over time as the computation gets better.
00:39:40.000Although, as an aside, I'm not actually convinced that even when we have photorealistic avatars, that people are going to prefer that to the expressive ones.
00:39:46.000But that's kind of a whole separate tangent that we can go down.
00:39:49.000I think you'll clearly want the ability to do both, have a photorealistic one and an expressive one.
00:39:55.000But yeah, I mean, if you're sitting around and someone's a penguin or your friends are clearly cartoony, but you're sitting around a table and you have a shared sense of space and your friend is to your right, which means that you're to their left.
00:40:07.000And when they speak, you hear it coming from that direction.
00:40:09.000You actually remember the spatial sense of that in the same way that you would a physical thing, which it's just kind of getting all those details right over time.
00:40:20.000I mean, this to me, this is some of the most exciting work that I've gotten to do in a while because I just feel like building social experiences on phones is so constrained.
00:40:31.000In some ways, it's awesome because there's billions of people that have phones.
00:40:34.000So we can build services that get used by billions of people around the world, and that's obviously rewarding in its own way, too.
00:41:29.000A unit of how you interact is around people and how you express yourself.
00:41:34.000And you'd want to be able to have an avatar and an expression of your identity and be able to just jump between a bunch of different experiences rather than have everything be so siloed.
00:41:44.000It's pretty wild to try to build this all from the ground up because it's just this incredible breadth and amount of technology.
00:41:52.000I often get criticized because we're investing just this huge amount in this.
00:42:30.000And we haven't even gotten to neural interfaces yet, but we should definitely spend some time on that.
00:42:34.000But it's like you kind of go across all these different things and it's just this incredibly wide amount of technology that needs to get built in order to basically build and deliver a realistic sense of presence like you're physically there with another person, which I just think is the most magical thing in the world.
00:43:51.000So, some people, I mean, like Elon with Neuralink and those companies, I think, I mean, that's just taking this, like, super far off.
00:43:59.000I mean, maybe it'll be ready in like a couple decades.
00:44:01.000I mean, there will probably be interesting use cases I don't want to be an early adopter.
00:44:15.000Yeah, I think you want the mature version of that, not the one where it's going to get a lot better next year and you need to get your brain implant upgraded every year.
00:44:26.000But here's the kind of version of this that I spend a lot of time thinking about.
00:44:49.000If you're in a public place or you want to be discreet or you want to just not annoy the people around you, you're not going to want to dictate everything out loud.
00:44:57.000A second way is going to be using your hands.
00:45:00.000So let's say, okay, I snap my fingers.
00:45:20.000Yeah, I mean, I think at some basic level, if you can get past that just being weird, I think most people's hands will just get tired.
00:45:28.000I mean, if you hold your hands out like this for a long enough period of time, eventually you want to put your hands down.
00:45:39.000You can basically go and have your mind give commands to the computer, in this case the glasses, without having to speak out loud, without having to wave your hands around.
00:45:53.000Even though those things will be great for some use cases, you're not going to want them all the time.
00:46:00.000It's based on the—it's basically it's input only and it's focused on—so it's not trying to send signals to your brain.
00:46:08.000It's trying to make it so that your brain can communicate with the computer.
00:46:10.000And the path that we have is it's based on the fact that we have all these extra motor neurons in our body, right?
00:46:17.000And part of the reason for that is, like, in case you get hurt, you have neuroplasticity, you can rewire, do stuff— Find a different pathway to kind of send a signal to move your finger or something.
00:46:26.000There's all these different ways that it turns out our brain could tell this finger to move.
00:46:30.000But we've sort of optimized individually.
00:46:34.000We kind of reinforce certain pathways and end up using one kind of motor neuron pathway to do a specific thing.
00:46:41.000And you have all these others that are not that used.
00:46:43.000So it turns out you can have a device on your wrist.
00:46:48.000That basically your brain can communicate with your hand, tell your hand to move in like a pattern that it isn't used to, and then the wristband can sort of pick up those signals and translate them into completely different things like having a virtual hand move in front of you while your physical hand is just kind of sitting there at your side.
00:47:13.000So, you'll be able to have this experience in the future where, like, you're sitting in a meeting, and, you know, your wife texts you, and it pops up in the corner of your glasses, and you want to respond, but you don't want to, like, pull out your phone, because that's kind of rude, right?
00:47:28.000So you just kind of, like, I don't know, twitch your wrist a little bit, maybe like this, like some super discreet motion that no one even knows you're doing it, and you just, like, send a message.
00:48:09.000One experience that I think has been interesting since I've been doing more Zoom calls, especially earlier in COVID, one thing that I think actually was quite good or is quite good is the ability to both kind of have everyone who you're meeting with on video chat,
00:48:25.000but then also have a chat thread going with some of those people.
00:48:28.000So that way, like, let's say there's something that you don't want to say to everyone who's in the room, but you want to ask one person.
00:48:56.000Whereas, if I'm having a virtual meeting over Zoom or in VR and workrooms, you can just text people while you're doing that.
00:49:06.000I actually think that it will unlock a massive amount of efficiency in communication and expression between people to make it so that people don't have to wait until they're done doing one thing to send a message to someone else.
00:49:21.000But yeah, I do think that there's a separate question.
00:49:24.000About if you have glasses and you're kind of going about...
00:49:27.000It's one thing to have VR and you put it on when you want to go play a game or do a meeting.
00:49:32.000In the kind of fullness of augmented reality, when you kind of have the glasses and you're, like, going about that through your life, having some kind of really smart do-not-disturb mode that has a sense of, like, okay, this thing really shouldn't distract you and you're doing something important,
00:49:49.000that's going to be a really important AI problem, too, I think, to be able to kind of simulate and understand...
00:49:55.000I don't think it's going to be as black and white as do not disturb on or off.
00:49:58.000I think you want some intelligence there about routing and understanding which things you're going to want to get and which things not.
00:50:05.000And maybe have certain people have priority, like if your wife or your family is trying to get a hold of you, they can get through, but business people can't get through.
00:50:13.000I worry about additional distractions.
00:50:17.000I mean, I do not keep my children from social media, because I feel like the world that they live in has social media in it, and I don't want them to be just completely disconnected from that.
00:50:28.000I limit the amount of time they use their phones, and I try to talk to them about the importance of not being...
00:50:34.000Like completely absorbed in social media and these kind of things that these kids do.
00:51:06.000But if you have glasses on, that's going to be very difficult.
00:51:09.000It's going to be very difficult to get people to, you know, especially if glasses have social media applications and also offer some sort of a benefit, like a net benefit to like the way you view life.
00:51:23.000Like maybe give you information on the amount of calories that are, if you pick up a food item, like what is that?
00:51:34.000Or, you know, other benefits, but also has social media.
00:51:39.000You're going to come into this sort of weird place where you have to figure out whether or not this is a positive thing in your life.
00:51:46.000Or whether or not it's overcoming and you're overwhelmed by it.
00:51:51.000Yeah, and I think that that's something that...
00:51:54.000It's going to end up being this balance, and hopefully our computers and platforms will help us find the reasonable balance on that.
00:52:00.000I mean, one of the things that you keep – that you've said a few times is, okay, like, I'm not sure if I'd want to do this digitally.
00:52:05.000I think about – like, it's like I want to have this experience in the real world.
00:52:09.000I mean, here's one kind of philosophical way that I think about this is I actually think when you say the real world – I call that the physical world.
00:52:18.000And I think there's the physical world and the digital world.
00:52:21.000And I think the combination of those increasingly is the real world.
00:52:27.000There's all this additional information that we bring to the physical experiences that we have that...
00:52:36.000Whether it's digital or just from our own experience or studying that we've done, that's more than just kind of the physical kind of sensation that we get.
00:52:45.000But the ratio of that may be shifting over time, right?
00:52:48.000So in a world in the future where, you know, a lot of the things that might be physical today, I mean, maybe this kind of art and sculptures and stuff that you have here, maybe in the future they're not physical, maybe they're just holograms because you can change them really easily.
00:53:02.000But Maybe over time the sort of ratio of the amount of physical stuff that we interact with to digital stuff shifts and becomes more balanced or something like that.
00:53:13.000Whereas, you know, historically it was all physical and there was very little kind of information or digital overlay on top of it.
00:53:20.000And now I think it's just steadily been increasing.
00:53:22.000But I mean, I think it's probably gonna be a lot healthier for us rather than consuming kind of all this additional context through this tiny little portal that we carry around on a phone.
00:53:31.000And you're just kind of like looking at this and you're missing the whole context.
00:53:34.000I think to have it be able to be overlaid and have kind of people be able to pop in and interact with them through it.
00:53:44.000We'll obviously need to get the balance on this right, but that's sort of how I think about it.
00:53:48.000I think probably the right way to think about what the real world is at this point is not actually just the physical world.
00:53:54.000But the physical world, I'm probably more optimistic or believe that the physical world is probably more important to our being and essence and soul than a lot of other people in the industry.
00:54:05.000So I really care about getting that balance right.
00:54:09.000I think the balance is important, but I think you're correct.
00:54:11.000I think there is an ever-increasing landscape of digital world that's undeniable, and it's a part of life now.
00:54:19.000And as the technology improves, it's going to be a bigger and bigger part of life.
00:54:23.000I wouldn't say my fear is, but my thoughts are that we're going to lead to a time someday where people become fully immersed 24-7 in a non-physical world.
00:54:33.000And I think that's the matrix, and that's what people are worried about.
00:54:36.000That as this technology advances, especially with some sort of neural interface, that we're going to get to a place where we're not really here anymore, or there always.
00:56:46.000If you're just sitting there and consuming stuff, I mean, it's not necessarily bad, but it generally isn't associated with all the positive benefits that you get from being actively engaged or building relationships.
00:57:09.000I just want to make it so that the experiences that we're having aren't just these passive things.
00:57:14.000From my perspective, there's this People spend a lot of time with screens today.
00:57:20.000It's basically computers, phones, and TVs.
00:57:23.000And I'm always amazed, because I spend all my time on phones and computers, that for Americans, still almost half the time that they spend on screens is TVs, more than phones or computers.
00:58:08.000So when people talk about being worried about the time that people are spending in different kind of social experiences...
00:58:18.000I mean, the time has to come from somewhere.
00:58:20.000I think it's worth looking at where it's coming from.
00:58:22.000If it's coming from sleep, that's probably not great.
00:58:24.000If it's coming from exercise, I wouldn't be that happy with that.
00:58:26.000If it's coming from TV, I'm pretty fine with that.
00:58:29.000I mean, that's actually maybe a net improvement in well-being for people overall if you're shifting from this more beta kind of consuming state to just being actually actively engaged, potentially building relationships.
00:58:42.000And there's just a ton of TV time to eat, right?
00:58:46.000So I think before we worry about this kind of consuming more and more of people's time, I actually just think looking at the mix of what people do today is good.
00:58:56.000And my goal for these next set of platforms, they are going to be more immersive, and hopefully they'll be more useful.
00:59:02.000But I don't necessarily want the people to spend more time with computers.
00:59:05.000I just want the time that people spend with screens to be better.
00:59:08.000Because, I mean, today so much of it is like you're just sitting around and, I don't know, in this beta state consuming stuff.
00:59:59.000You're very active, which I think is a great message, too.
01:00:04.000It's great for you, but it's also a great message for other people that here's this guy who's incredibly busy and his life is overwhelmed with technology, yet he's constantly doing physical things and using his body and exercising and getting out in nature.
01:00:19.000Yeah, I mean, I think it's something that my parents really stressed for me early on.
01:00:23.000They're like, my parents pushed me pretty hard.
01:00:26.000They're like, you're going to do well in school, and you're going to be on three varsity sports teams.
01:01:34.000So basically I go, I, like, I read, I take in all the information, and then I go do something physical for an hour or two and just kind of reset myself.
01:01:45.000And over time what I've found is that it's not actually just – I used to run a lot.
01:01:52.000But the problem with running is you can think a lot while you're running.
01:02:11.000And, like, I spent a lot of time foiling and surfing.
01:02:14.000And it's like if you're foiling or surfing and you're on, like, a wave, you have to pay attention the whole time, right, or else you're going to fall and maybe get held under.
01:03:24.000And this is sort of how I got into MMA too.
01:03:27.000Now I don't spend as much time in Kauai because things are ramping back up and I'm in the office a lot more.
01:03:32.000So it's like, alright, there's not as much foiling in Palo Alto.
01:03:35.000So it's like, alright, what's a thing that is both like...
01:03:39.000Just super engaging physically, but also intellectually, and where you can't afford to focus on something else.
01:03:45.000And I think to some degree, it's like MMA is the perfect thing, because if you stop paying attention for one second, you're going to end up on the bottom.
01:04:01.000Just really important for me in terms of what I do and being able to just kind of maintain my energy level, maintain my focus.
01:04:10.000Because then after an hour or two of working out or rolling or wrestling with friends or training with different folks, it's like, now I'm ready to go solve whatever problem at work for the day.
01:04:24.000And I've fully processed all the different news for the day that's come in.
01:04:40.000Yeah, because it was basically, I kind of, I used to just run a lot and just do that.
01:04:44.000And then it was, and then basically, since COVID, it's like, got super into surfing and foiling, then got really into MMA. So how did you, how did you initially approach it?
01:05:44.000The question isn't how did I get into it, it's how did I not know about it until just now.
01:05:48.000From the very first session that I did...
01:05:56.000Five minutes in, I was like, where has this been my whole life?
01:06:00.000It's like, alright, my mom made me do three varsity sports, and my life took a wrong turn when I chose to do fencing competitively instead of wrestling in high school or something.
01:06:10.000It's like there's something that's just so primal.
01:06:21.000Since then, I've just introduced a bunch of my friends to it, and that's been really fun because now it's like we train together and we just wrestle together.
01:06:35.000Maybe it's like there's this cultural thing where maybe a lot of people haven't considered it, but I've had 100% hit rate of introducing friends to it and converting them to people who now train.
01:06:46.000Every single person who I've kind of shown it to is like, this is amazing.
01:06:53.000This is obviously how I should be training and working out.
01:07:00.000Because a lot of people get turned off by the amount of effort that's involved, but they get excited by the problem solving, which is the more fascinating part, like learning the techniques and focusing on memorizing the techniques and developing the skills.
01:07:16.000That's probably one of the most important things about jujitsu that people don't do enough of is drilling.
01:07:21.000I made some of my biggest leaps in martial arts from blue belt to purple belt just through constant drilling.
01:07:28.000I was drilling all the time with my friend Eddie Bravo.
01:07:30.000So we were always working on techniques.
01:07:32.000And so I was able to progress much quicker.
01:07:36.000And then I noticed when I stopped doing that later, my progress kind of stagnated.
01:07:40.000It's like there's a real clear correlation between the amount of energy you put into drilling and observing the technique and then just going through the motion with someone offering 20%, 30% resistance.
01:09:21.000He did it when he was like, God, I think he was like 60. I do a lot of stuff like this with friends, but I also just find wrestling around with friends is just...
01:09:58.000I mean, both surfing and foiling and jujitsu, MMA, it's, like...
01:10:06.000I think it sort of teaches you about like the flow and momentum of things.
01:10:11.000And I think businesses like this in a similar way where it's like the hardest thing is knowing when you're in a position where you need to push through versus sort of developing the intuition for when like, all right, when...
01:10:25.000The momentum is just going in the other direction.
01:10:28.000It's like, all right, you're not going to be able to pump over this swell.
01:10:31.000If you keep your weight in this direction, you're going to get swept.
01:10:37.000I do think it's a super concrete thing.
01:10:40.000I think one of the things that's sort of frustrating running a company is the feedback loops are so long.
01:10:47.000It's like, all right, so I showed you the pre-release version of the new Yeah.
01:11:09.000I mean, made those decisions years ago.
01:11:11.000And we're not going to know if that's right until maybe a year from now until we see how that goes.
01:11:16.000So there's something that I think is sort of, it's difficult in running an enterprise of that scale to, like, try to learn from things at such a long time.
01:12:08.000I just think it's really important that they develop all these skills and appreciation for doing physical things, just like my parents taught me.
01:12:23.000Going back to the other conversation about, are we just brains and tanks?
01:12:26.000It's like, no, because this is the part of my life that I think is super fun.
01:12:32.000The building things, that's super engaging, too.
01:12:36.000It's a very different type of intellectual exercise.
01:12:40.000What's also the one-on-one physical connection with a person, I would imagine that your life has got to be very bizarre because you are the head of this enormous platform and you're dealing with so many human beings and so much negativity and positivity and all kinds of fires that you have to put out and all sorts of chaos and to just have One thing,
01:13:06.000one person right in front of you is probably really good to sort of clean the pipes out and just clear your mind and have your ability to focus on things sort of put into perspective.
01:13:21.000I've talked to people about this before.
01:13:23.000Whenever people talk about social media sites and they're doing this and they're doing that, I'm like, could you imagine trying to manage at scale 5 billion people?
01:14:00.000So I would imagine that for your mind, the amount of pressure that's involved in just maintaining, it has to be looming over you at all times in the background.
01:14:13.000It's probably very difficult for you to find things that filter that out.
01:14:26.000So I think a big part of trying to push forward is maintaining enough control of my time to push on the things that I believe need to be advanced for the future rather than being reactive.
01:14:55.000By the way, I think that's probably a somewhat extreme version because I'm running this company, but I actually think this is probably true for everyone.
01:15:02.000I think pretty much every person, I think, has a lot that gets thrown at them, and you could spend all of your time just reacting to that.
01:15:09.000And I think a lot of what kind of creates the ability to be successful long-term and to build things and change your life and build products that change other people's lives is...
01:15:20.000Carving out the time to do stuff that's proactive.
01:15:23.000And that's both taking care of yourself and being physical and getting out there and also getting to spend time with my family and my girls and all that.
01:15:35.000But it's also, I mean, I could spend all of my time just working on the things that we've already built and not trying to advance I think?
01:16:09.000A lot of the economy for the country and the world so that way more people can pursue creative endeavors.
01:16:14.000I think that's just going to be one of the most positive trends that comes out of this decade.
01:16:24.000It's really an amazing time for people to be able to carve out an alternative living and to do so through social media platforms.
01:16:31.000There's so many people using all the platforms that have developed these followings and started businesses, whether it's in fitness or there's people that are just chefs that cook online and they share and sell recipes.
01:16:48.000One of the things that That I really admire about what you do is, you know, it seems like you have a real commitment to giving a voice to a lot of different types of people, right?
01:16:58.000It feels like a big part of your theme is, you know, you have a lot of people on the show who wouldn't just nowhere, like, no chance that they get the exposure that they get from talking to you elsewhere.
01:17:11.000And, you know, part of the question that I wonder about is in Instagram and in Facebook, You have your follow graph.
01:17:18.000You have the people you choose to follow and you have your friends.
01:17:21.000But can we build AI systems that can also just help recommend better content that you didn't know to follow yet?
01:17:42.000It's not like this kind of general intelligence AI problem, but...
01:17:46.000I tend to think about things in terms of more specific problems that you can break down and try to deliver value for people.
01:17:52.000But I think I'd just love it if in, I don't know, a couple of years, a significant...
01:18:01.000Not the majority, but a significant part of the Instagram and Facebook experiences were basically highlighting different creators who you might be interested in but might have not otherwise seen.
01:18:10.000And I think that that would both be good for people who are using those experiences to discover more people, get more diversity of input into their lives, but also I think can help push that creative economy forward.
01:18:25.000That's one of the things that I'm super passionate about right now.
01:18:29.000Having an algorithm like that could really help.
01:18:32.000One of the things that Spotify does really well is suggest new music.
01:18:36.000I love how they do that, where if you like a certain kind of music and you develop these playlists, they'll start recommending you music.
01:18:47.000And I found out about so many different bands that I would never know about before.
01:18:53.000The thing that gets people with algorithms is that algorithms today have this negative connotation to them.
01:19:00.000There's a lot of argument that algorithms cause dissent and cause arguments and cause strife and that people are focusing only on the things that upset them.
01:19:14.000The real problem with that is that they're not taught how to think and focus on things.
01:19:18.000Because what the algorithms pick up on is essentially what are you spending the most time on?
01:19:24.000Well, if you're spending the most time on carpentry and parasailing and deep-sea fishing, that's what the algorithm is going to recommend to you.
01:19:32.000Like my friend Ari, we went through this experiment where it only Googled puppies.
01:20:03.000Yeah, I mean, I think that the algorithms can also obviously be designed better or worse.
01:20:08.000So, you know, one of the things that I'm pushing on a lot right now is there's this idea in designing recommendation systems of explore versus exploit in that it's like, okay, if someone has spent a bunch of time, you know, searching for puppies,
01:20:24.000you know they like puppies, so if you show them a puppy video, they'll probably engage with that.
01:20:28.000But if you only show them puppy videos...
01:20:31.000Over the long term, you're missing an opportunity to understand what other things that they're interested in.
01:20:36.000So even though it might not be kind of ideal for the experience today, carving off 5%, 10% of basically the experience to just try to expose people to different things to see if they're interested in that too ends up paying long-term dividends.
01:20:56.000So I do think that, like, these systems done well.
01:20:58.000If you design them with a long-term perspective and you're not just trying to kind of maximize engagement today, but you're really trying to understand what people care about and who people want to become and what their values are, I think you can build some stuff that gets really good over time.
01:21:15.000But I do think that the design of the system and the values that go into it matters quite a bit too.
01:21:23.000I'm neither pro nor con algorithms or recommendations.
01:21:29.000I think it's a fascinating aspect of social media, but I do think that there are certain people that, unfortunately, when they get excited about a thing or when they start going online, they gravitate towards things that irritate them and upset them.
01:21:48.000And that's the big concern that many people have with algorithms and with the use of social media, Twitter in particular, is that people are using it and getting upset and it's creating more tension and more of a divide.
01:22:08.000Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting to think about these services not just in terms of the information that is conveyed, but, you know, as a product designer Right.
01:22:46.000I find that it's hard to spend a lot of time on Twitter without getting too upset.
01:22:52.000On the flip side, I think Instagram is a super positive space.
01:22:56.000I think some of the critique that we get there is that it's very curated and potentially in some ways overly positive.
01:23:04.000But I think the energy on Instagram is generally very positive and it's easy to spend time there and kind of just absorb a lot of the positivity.
01:23:14.000I think that's true, but how did that happen?
01:23:17.000Why is Instagram generally friendlier?
01:23:20.000I mean, so, it's the design of the system, but one thing is I think images are...
01:23:30.000A little less cutting, usually, and kind of critical than text.
01:23:38.000I think the news in general is often negative.
01:23:42.000I think the incentives of the news industry are often to...
01:23:47.000Well, I think just the mission of the news industry is to kind of speak truth to power and highlight things, like hold people accountable.
01:23:55.000So I think that even if you're looking at it from that perspective, I think a lot of the stuff is like it generally has this very critical tone to it.
01:24:03.000But with everything, there's just a balance.
01:24:04.000If you spend your whole life living in criticism, then that's super negative.
01:24:10.000But I think that what we've tried to do with Facebook is have a little bit of both.
01:24:14.000Facebook has images and videos, but it also has news.
01:24:17.000And the part of it that's probably the most critical where we probably have the most controversies around the more newsy type stuff, the more political type stuff.
01:24:25.000And over time, I've generally just felt like Hey, that's not even what people in our community tell us that they want.
01:24:30.000People say that they come here because they want to connect with other people and explore interests.
01:24:37.000So I just want to emphasize that more of it.
01:24:39.000But there are some very intentional decisions that you can make in terms of designing this stuff.
01:24:44.000So for example, on Facebook, when you're reacting to a post, in addition to liking it, you can heart it, you can give it kind of an angry emotion.
01:24:55.000And One of the decisions that we've basically made is if someone gives an angry reaction, we actually don't even count that in terms of whether to show that to someone else or maybe we even discount it.
01:25:12.000So you could kind of view it as, okay...
01:25:16.000Someone chose that they, like, were interested in this post and chose to give an angry reaction, but we just don't want to amplify anger, right?
01:25:23.000That's, like, not what I kind of view us as here to do.
01:25:26.000So we're just going to basically take that signal and, like, not use it to show the post to more people.
01:25:34.000Like, how do you decide, like, what if it's anger but it's justifiable anger?
01:25:38.000Yeah, I think that this is—that's exactly the right question, is— Is basically, you know, when I was making that decision internally, a bunch of teams were like, well, you know, there is a lot of stuff that's wrong in the world, and people should be angry about that.
01:25:54.000And it's like, yeah, I think that's probably, that's fair.
01:25:59.000But I'm not here to design a service that makes people angry.
01:26:03.000So I kind of think that there's a balance.
01:26:05.000And it's not like there's not going to be any angry stuff.
01:26:07.000I mean, people can still react and say that something is negative if they don't like it.
01:26:12.000But I don't view our job as going and needing to kind of amplify all that stuff.
01:26:18.000So why do you have the option to have an anger response?
01:26:21.000Well, I think it's good for people to be able to convey it.
01:26:41.000If someone likes something or if a friend chooses to share something, we use that as a signal to say, hey, this might be something that you're interested in because someone reacted to this, right?
01:26:49.000It's like a friend had some kind of emotional reaction to this and thought it was interesting enough to engage with, so you might also think it's interesting to engage with.
01:26:56.000But we try to intentionally mute the kind of angry reactions just because that's just not what we're trying to do in the world.
01:27:06.000What do you think about the argument that algorithms in general, because the fact that they sort of appeal to human nature, like they amplify the things that you're interested in, and unfortunately people are interested oftentimes in things that upset them.
01:27:24.000What do you think about the argument that this is too Whether it's too influential or it has too much impact on people and that a better solution would be to just let everything exist how it exists and don't have any kind of algorithm and let people find what they find and share what they share and just let it exist in sort of the free market of ideas.
01:27:53.000Yeah, so we actually started there, right?
01:27:56.000Because at the beginning we didn't have the technology to do this kind of ranking.
01:28:01.000And the very first thing that you run into is if you don't do any kind of ranking, the system gets gamed in different ways.
01:28:08.000So if you're not ranking anything, the most recent stuff We're good to go.
01:28:48.000Even if we don't understand the kind of specific content of what she posted, there's going to be a ton of people commenting congrats and, you know, a ton of hearts and positive reactions.
01:29:03.000Enter into the algorithm like if if you're gonna favor something like your cousin's baby being born How would you go about doing that and how how do you how does the the AI figure out that your cousin just had a baby?
01:29:17.000And that this should be in all the people that follow her should be in all their feeds because they would want to know yeah, she had the baby and Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is just...
01:29:26.000There's a lot of signals that go into it, but at a simple level, you can kind of just look at who are the people who you care about and what do they find interesting.
01:29:45.000And then there's some kind of content-based stuff, like we have a sense that you're interested in this type of thing or that you really hate politics or whatever, so we're going to show you a little bit less of that.
01:29:54.000But in general, the thing that will differentiate that cousin's baby-was-just-born post is that even if our system has no idea what the post means, That post will almost certainly just have a ton of likes and comments on it that have a positive reaction.
01:30:10.000So that will just tell us, okay, if your friends made 500 posts today, that's the one that has the most positivity around it.
01:30:21.000We should probably show that more prominently.
01:30:24.000So I think at a basic level, a system that didn't do that stuff...
01:30:37.000Is there a way to stop businesses from spamming that you could just limit the amount of times they could post in a day?
01:30:46.000I mean, there are a bunch of things like this that we've tried over time.
01:30:52.000But then you start getting into some things that are basically pretty algorithmic or rules-based, which is like you start trying to rank stuff based on the quality of the posts or how much engagement they make.
01:31:12.000I mean, I guess you could tell people they can't share more than this amount.
01:31:19.000It kind of feels to me like you want to create a system.
01:31:24.000And there are certain creators who do pump out a large amount of content.
01:31:29.000And I'm not sure that you want to stop that.
01:31:32.000I think you just want a system that can basically titrate it and show people the amount of it that they're interested in.
01:31:41.000It's such an immense responsibility and the fact that it's a private company in some ways troubles some people because you have this ability to control the flow of information and that's really never existed before where there's been like obviously social media is very new that's never existed before And then having a company that's run by human beings that have the ability to decide what gets broadcast,
01:32:11.000what gets its signal amplified, what gets suppressed, all that stuff concerns a lot of people.
01:32:20.000Because it's basically just individual human beings with their own biases and their own perspectives and their own view of the world.
01:32:28.000And they have the ability to either slow down or ramp up or suppress or amplify so many different ideas.
01:32:36.000And in turn, that can literally shape the way the cultural narrative goes on any given subject.
01:32:46.000What is it like having that kind of responsibility?
01:32:50.000Because it seems to me that that would be an immense burden.
01:32:54.000That would be like a lot of thought would be involved in like, what are the negative consequences of the choices that we make?
01:33:01.000What are the positive consequences of the choices we make?
01:33:05.000Because, you know, as you said, you're controlling the signal of three plus billion people.
01:35:29.000I mean, there are a lot of different parts of what you just said.
01:35:37.000I mean, I think in terms of kind of helping people discover the things that they want, I think that's a pretty different wing of what we do than the policy setting of what is not allowed, which I think is in a lot of ways...
01:35:49.000I think a more controversial piece because in the what's not allowed you have to get into the nuances of specific types of content whereas in terms of the recommendation systems You kind of want to build those to be agnostic of the type of content.
01:36:05.000If I see that a team is trying to promote some type of content over another, they're almost certainly doing something wrong that is going to make us worse than a competitor in terms of effectiveness of our product.
01:36:17.000Because you should just build this technology in a way that is agnostic and lets people express the interests and things that they want and gives them that.
01:36:27.000And then every once in a while, I think that there are some editorial decisions that often they're important enough that I have to make them, right?
01:36:36.000Like that thing that we talked about before, which is like, I just don't want there to be as much anger, so we're going to not take into account the angry reaction.
01:36:43.000It's probably the case that there would be more engagement on the platform if we didn't.
01:36:47.000It's like people are expressing something and we're choosing to not listen to that thing.
01:36:52.000So at some level, it probably makes the product somewhat less engaging, but that's an example of an editorial decision that it's like, at some level, we're here not just to focus on what content people see, but the kind of emotional sense.
01:37:05.000But I try to make those very few just because the technology can enable a vast breadth of interests that different people have.
01:37:17.000And I think part of how you build something that can serve billions of people is by not telling people what to think, right?
01:37:24.000And basically having humility and basically I don't know, just valuing humanity and valuing that people can believe different things and that those beliefs are probably grounded in real lived experiences that they had and aren't the result of them being tricked or something like that.
01:37:42.000They believe what they believe for a reason and it's kind of good to generally let people express that.
01:37:51.000That's a pretty deeply held belief that I have.
01:37:54.000One of the things that's got to be bizarre about having a platform like Facebook is that you know that there are foreign actors that are utilizing the platform to either spread propaganda or to start arguments.
01:38:11.000We read once that I think it was 19 of the top 20 Christian sites on Facebook were run by a troll farm.
01:38:25.000The amount of resources that are put into creating fake pages or pages that don't really represent real people but promote certain ideologies or certain political agendas and that they'll use these and start arguments with people.
01:39:15.000But basically, we have a team of hundreds of counterterrorism and counterintelligence people I don't know who's behind those fake pages,
01:39:35.000but the Macedonian troll farms were basically a bunch of spammers who created fake pages and they wanted people to click on them so they could make money from the ads.
01:39:42.000So that one's actually pretty easy to disrupt because you just make it so that they can't use the ads to monetize anymore and their whole economic incentive goes away and they sort of dry up.
01:39:51.000Dealing with nation states is a lot harder because they're more kind of ideological or sovereignty motivated.
01:39:59.000So there, I think you just kind of need to be very vigilant and it's more of an arms race and you just kind of are building up better technology for defense and you assume that they're going to keep on getting more sophisticated and you keep on needing to get better.
01:40:13.000But I mean, at this point we have like tens of thousands of people working on this at the company.
01:40:51.000And this is obviously a super critical part of what we need to do.
01:40:54.000But then, you know, there's also this important set of philosophical discussions, which is like, all right, so I think almost everyone will agree that, like, that's bad, right?
01:41:03.000Like, you don't want, you know, countries basically creating networks of bots trying to convince people of stuff.
01:41:17.000But then the question is, okay, so you build these capabilities to try to find this stuff, and it's a combination of basically humans, really expert humans, and really powerful AI systems working together.
01:41:30.000But sometimes they get it wrong, and then we end up taking down accounts that we weren't supposed to take down.
01:41:38.000Because then we're kind of getting in the way of people expressing legitimate things.
01:41:42.000There's, you know, no system is ever going to be perfect, so the question is, you know, do you want more, I don't know, false positives or false negatives?
01:41:49.000Do you want there to be more kind of fake Christian pages, or do you want to accidentally take down, I don't know, what was the example recently of, like, the comedian who had a profile photo that had kind of a gun in it,
01:42:08.000and that we accidentally took down the This guy's page.
01:42:50.000Say, like, these Christian Facebook pages.
01:42:53.000I don't know how they found out that 19 of 20 were fake.
01:42:57.000But if someone just says, I am Bob Smith, and they post as Bob Smith, and they have a photograph, but really what they're doing is trying to talk shit about Joe Biden and get people to vote Republican in the midterms.
01:43:27.000And let's find out how you've come to this conclusion.
01:43:30.000And, you know, I believe they said that they just took a hundred random Twitter pages and looked at the interaction and there's some sort of an algorithm they applied to it.
01:43:43.000Yeah, so I think estimating the overall prevalence is one thing, but I think that the question of looking at a page and is this page authentic, I think that there's a bunch of signals around that.
01:43:54.000One of the things that we try to do is for large pages, we try to make sure that we know who the admin of that page is.
01:44:01.000You should be able to run an anonymous page.
01:44:03.000You don't necessarily need to out yourself and say who you are running it, but we want to make sure that we sort of have Like, an identity for that person on file so that way we know, like, at least behind the scenes, that that person is real.
01:44:17.000For certain political things, I think having a sense of what country they're originating from, I mean, some of that you can do just by looking at where their server traffic comes from, like, is the IP address coming from Romania or, you know, is...
01:44:33.000Because if it's, like, an ad in some other country's election, then, you know, you probably want to make sure that that ad is, you know, especially in countries that have laws around that are, like, coming from someone who's a valid citizen or, like, at least in that place.
01:44:52.000One theme in my worldview around this stuff, when it gets to some of the stuff that we talked about before, is I don't think that this stuff is black and white or that you're ever going to have a perfect AI system.
01:45:02.000I think it's all trade-offs all the way down.
01:45:05.000And you could either build a system and you can either be overly aggressive and capture a higher percent of the bad guys, but then also by accident take out some number of good guys, or you could be a And say,
01:45:21.000okay, no, the cost of taking out any number of good guys is too high, so we're going to tolerate having just a little bit more bad guys on the system.
01:45:32.000These are values questions, right, around what do you value more?
01:46:35.000You know, one of the things that I tried to create is we created this oversight board.
01:46:38.000It's an independent board that basically we appointed people whose kind of paramount value is free expression, but they also balance that with things like when is there going to be real harm to others in terms of safety or privacy or other human rights issues.
01:46:58.000People in our community can appeal cases to when they think that we got it wrong, and that board actually gets to make the final binding decision, not us.
01:47:05.000So, in a way, I actually think that that is a more legitimate form of governance than having just a team internally that makes these decisions, or maybe some of them go up to me, although I don't spend a ton of my time on this on a day-to-day basis.
01:47:20.000But like, I think it's generally good to have some kind of separation of powers where you're architecting the governance so that way you have different stakeholders and different people who can make these decisions and it's not just like one private company that's making decisions even about what just happens on our platform.
01:47:37.000How do you guys handle things when they're a big news item that's controversial?
01:47:43.000Like, there was a lot of attention on Twitter during the election because of the Hunter Biden laptop story, the New York Post.
01:47:52.000Yeah, so you guys censored that as well?
01:47:54.000So we took a different path than Twitter.
01:47:57.000I mean, basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us, some folks on our team, and was like, hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert.
01:48:08.000We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election.
01:48:12.000We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump of...
01:48:32.000If something's reported to us as potentially misinformation, important misinformation, we also have this third-party fact-checking program because we don't want to be deciding what's true and false.
01:48:46.000Five or seven days when it was basically being determined whether it was false, the distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it.
01:49:22.000A lot of people were still able to share it.
01:49:24.000We got a lot of complaints that that was the case.
01:49:26.000Obviously, this is a hyper-political issue, so depending on what side of the political spectrum, you either think we didn't censor it enough or censored it way too much.
01:49:34.000But we weren't sort of as black and white about it as Twitter.
01:49:37.000We just kind of thought, hey, look, if the FBI, which I still view as a legitimate institution in this country, it's very professional law enforcement, they come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that seriously.
01:49:50.000Did they specifically say you need to be on guard about that story?
01:49:55.000I don't remember if it was that specifically, but it basically fit the pattern.
01:49:59.000When something like that turns out to be real, is there regret for not having it evenly distributed and for throttling the distribution of that story?
01:50:33.000But I think it probably sucks, though, I think in the same way that probably having to go through a criminal trial but being proven innocent in the end sucks.
01:50:44.000It still sucks that you had to go through a criminal trial, but at the end you're free.
01:50:49.000So I don't know if the answer would have been don't do anything or don't have any process.
01:50:54.000I think the process was pretty reasonable.
01:52:11.000It's hard, because everybody wants to look at it after the fact.
01:52:14.000Now that we know that the laptop was real and it was a legitimate story and there is potential corruption involved with him, we think, oh, that should not have been restricted, that should not have been banned from sharing on Twitter.
01:52:42.000Like, if something comes along and the Republicans cook up some scheme to make it look like Joe Biden's a terrible person, and they only do it so that they can win the election, but it's really just propaganda, what are you supposed to do with that?
01:52:56.000You're supposed to not allow that to be distributed.
01:52:58.000So if they think that's the case, it makes sense to me that they would try to stop it.
01:53:04.000But I just don't think that they looked at it hard enough When the New York Post is talking about it, they're pretty smart about what they release and what they don't release.
01:53:15.000If they're going over some data from a laptop and you could talk to a person, but again, this is just one story, one individual story.
01:53:25.000How many of these pop up every day, especially in regards to polarizing issues?
01:53:31.000Like climate change or COVID or foreign policy or Ukraine.
01:53:37.000Anytime there's a really controversial issue where some people think that it's imperative that you take a very specific stance and you can't have the other stance.
01:53:48.000Those moments on social media, those trouble a lot of people because they don't know why certain things get censored or certain things get promoted.
01:54:04.000And it's like, to be in your spot, and one of the things that I really wanted to talk to you about is this, because to be in your spot must be insanely difficult.
01:54:12.000To have, no matter what decision you make, you're going to have a giant chunk of people that are upset at you.
01:54:19.000And there might be a right way to handle it, but I don't know what the fuck right way is.
01:54:23.000Well, I think the right way is to establish principles for governance.
01:54:29.000That try to be balanced and not have the decision-making too centralized.
01:54:34.000Because I think that it's hard for people to accept that some team at Meta or that I personally am making all these decisions.
01:54:44.000And I think people should be skeptical about so much concentration around that.
01:54:48.000So that's why a lot of the innovation that I've tried to push for in governance is around things like establishing this oversight board.
01:54:57.000So that way you have people who are luminaries around expression from all over the world, but also in the U.S. You know, I mean, folks like Michael McConnell, who's, I mean, he's a Stanford professor, who's like, just he was, I forget which Republican president appointed him,
01:55:14.000but I mean, he was, I think, going to be considered for the Supreme Court at some point.
01:56:15.000It is interesting that the U.S., It's actually more polarized than most other countries.
01:56:24.000So I think sitting in the US, it's easy to extrapolate and say, hey, it probably feels this way around the whole world.
01:56:32.000And from the social science research that I've seen, that's not actually the case.
01:56:36.000There's a bunch of countries where social media is just as prominent, but polarization is either flat or has declined slightly.
01:56:43.000So there's something kind of different happening in the US. But But for better or worse, it does seem like the next several years do seem like they're set up to be quite polarized.
01:56:57.000There are going to be a bunch of different decisions like this that come up.
01:57:02.000Because of the scale of what we do, almost every major world event has some angle that's like the Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp angle about how the services are used in it.
01:57:12.000So, yeah, I think just establishing as much as possible independent governance so that way...
01:57:19.000I'll obviously have to be involved, our teams.
01:57:22.000Nick Clegg, who I appointed to be the president for all the policy issues for the company, and he was formerly the deputy prime minister in the UK, a successful politician there, and very well-versed in government and all those political issues.
01:57:43.000We'll have to do some part of this, but I think also kind of getting to more and more independent governance is going to be an important part of how we deal with this.
01:57:51.000Why do you think the United States is more polarized?
01:57:54.000Like, what do you think is happening over here that's causing that?
01:57:59.000I mean, I'll speculate, but I think that there are people who have studied and thought about this a lot more.
01:58:05.000I... I think there's probably a media environment...
01:58:22.000I don't want to say uniquely because we're probably not the only country that has this, but in terms of having like Some of the news is so far left and some of it is so far right.
01:58:36.000I think there's all this talk about filter bubbles on the internet, but I think even predating this, going back to the 70s or 80s when Fox News and all these other cable, these prominent media organizations were established,
01:58:52.000I think that that has had a long-term effect and people have studied that.
01:58:58.000But there might also be something about just the way that our governance is set up where we have two parties.
01:59:03.000We have these primaries that basically make it so that it's almost like you're not promoting people who are trying to be the centrist.
01:59:14.000You're basically promoting people who are the extreme of their party.
01:59:16.000So I think that there are Really sensible reforms like open primaries that I think would probably have a pretty big impact on the political culture in the country.
01:59:26.000And some of these other countries that are a little bit more parliamentary by definition just allow there to be more candidates on more parts of the spectrum.
01:59:37.000But I want to be careful about not talking too far out of school because I'm not a political scientist.
01:59:44.000But I've obviously spent a little bit of time thinking about this because...
01:59:48.000I think a lot of people want to point to social media as the primary cause of this.
01:59:52.000And I just think when you look at the fact that polarization has been rising in the US since before the internet, that just makes it seem like it's very unlikely that social media is kind of the prime mover here.
02:00:20.000I mean, it's a really tough set of questions.
02:00:23.000I think you're dead on with the open primary idea because this idea that it's only party loyalists who get to vote on each side, you're promoting this ideological adherence instead of reasonable ideas that people can enjoy or not enjoy and resonate with or not.
02:00:41.000I don't think social media is to blame, but I think social media for a lot of people, it accentuates the divide because it gives them more time to immerse themselves with it.
02:00:55.000And I think it's an unfortunate aspect of some people that they spend a lot of time distracted on things that don't immediately affect them.
02:01:05.000But those things become their main focus in life.
02:01:09.000And I think that's a distraction that's almost like a form of procrastination that people get involved with.
02:01:16.000And it just seems like a natural thing with people.
02:01:20.000I think it's a time management issue, and I think it's a discipline issue.
02:01:23.000And I think some people have never really been taught time management or discipline, especially in regards to the type of information that you take in.
02:01:31.000They just, like, see something that upsets them.
02:01:36.000And then they just get upset, and then that's their whole day.
02:01:39.000And, you know, I see things in terms of, like, I'm very careful with time management.
02:01:47.000Because, like, anything that's going to take up too much time, that's not net benefit, that's not – I'm not enjoying or is going to wind up being a negative thing, I just – I'm not interested.
02:01:59.000But I've developed this over time to recognize, like, that's a trap.
02:02:24.000And I think that's more of the problem than social media and algorithms and all these different things that people are blaming for our woes.
02:02:34.000More of the problem is a lack of Education.
02:02:38.000Like, explaining to people that you, if you're awake for one hour, during that hour, it is your choice what to think and focus on.
02:02:49.000In 24 hours, it's the same thing, you're just spreading it out.
02:03:48.000And it's not that the other issues aren't important, right?
02:03:53.000And national civic issues, I mean, they matter.
02:03:55.000But there probably is a healthy balance.
02:04:00.000Where, yeah, I mean, this just goes back to the time management conversation we were having before, which, I mean, you could spend all your day and more a thousand times over just reacting to things that are going on in the world.
02:04:13.000I do think there's really a thing around kind of narrowing the aperture in your life to, like, what's around you, the people you care about.
02:04:31.000I think that that does drive a lot of happiness for people.
02:04:37.000So I think it's one of the interesting questions is how do we balance now having access to a historically unprecedented amount of information about issues that are going on in other places, which on the one hand drives...
02:04:51.000In theory, it should drive more transparency and accountability and energy towards those things.
02:04:56.000But maybe that energy needs to come balanced over a longer period of time or something.
02:05:05.000I tend to think that all the transparency that we've gotten from social media will lead to good progress on a lot of things.
02:05:11.000But I do think it can, if you just focus on...
02:05:20.000I do think there's a certain thing about people's happiness that has to come from what's right around you in your world.
02:05:29.000And that's not to say that you shouldn't get upset about important issues and express yourselves.
02:05:36.000It's just a matter of how much time you're spending on it.
02:05:40.000Unless you're really disciplined and really careful with your time, you can get sucked into these things and you could waste your life just arguing with people online.
02:05:57.000For entertainers and comedians in particular, it's really bad.
02:06:01.000Like, I see so many comedians that get so much anxiety from, like, reading comments and going back and forth with people who are, like, talking shit to them on Twitter.
02:06:21.000So, I mean, so, like, I actually think this is, like, one of the hard things about it.
02:06:27.000You don't want to be so closed that you're not listening to criticism because then you're not going to grow.
02:06:32.000But I think finding people and outlets that will provide criticism but from a place of actually trying to help you grow rather than tear you down is very rare.
02:06:51.000I do want to try to understand all of the different perspectives that people have.
02:06:55.000But the thing that's tough is that a lot of those people aren't necessarily trying to help us build something better.
02:07:00.000And there is just a lot of negativity and it gets to you.
02:07:05.000And I think there's a question of balance where, at what point are you kind of better off?
02:07:13.000It's like, yeah, you want to push forward on the things you believe in, but you don't want to, you know, put on blinders and not consider alternative viewpoints, but then you could spend all your time looking at critique that's not necessarily trying to be constructive, and then that's just going to be super negative for your mental health.
02:07:28.000So, yeah, I mean, I think probably a lot of the happiest and most productive people are, at least they're, I don't think you're ever going to carve out I don't think you should want to close off all that stuff completely, but I think at least being able to carve out a good amount of your day to be able to focus on what you want to push forward and things in your life that matter,
02:07:51.000I think that's just really important to being a grounded person.
02:07:56.000I think it's also important to establish an ethic where you communicate with people online the same way you communicate with them if they're in a room with you.
02:08:04.000And I think that is not something that a lot of people adhere to.
02:08:09.000People, they talk to people on Twitter like it's not a real human, they don't have real feelings, and you're just trying to say the most biting, mean, and cutting thing that you can.
02:08:48.000It's a giant issue in whether or not you want to focus on important things in life or whether you want to win these little verbal battles between people on Twitter or Facebook.
02:09:05.000What we hear from our community is that that's not what people want to spend their time.
02:09:11.000I think that part of the challenge in designing products is Sometimes what people tell you that they want to spend their time on is different from what they actually do spend their time on.
02:09:38.000There's some truth and aspiration to what they think they want to spend their time on that there is some long-term value in helping out with that, too.
02:09:45.000So that's why I've just consciously tried to just downplay a lot of the political controversy on the services a bit and What do people come to our services for?
02:10:14.000What's going on in my local community?
02:10:20.000I think that there's something that's powerful about being able to focus more on that and be a bit more grounded in that.
02:10:26.000It's not that we do that perfectly, but I do think social media tends to allow that a lot more than previous mass media did, because by definition, mass media just had to focus on issues that concerned a lot of people at once, whereas...
02:10:40.000I think one of the best parts of social media is that it is so inherently local to just what matters to you and your friend group.
02:10:48.000What's more kind of local to you than the specific people that you have relationships with?
02:10:58.000And also, the interesting aspect of social media that I think often gets ignored is the discussion of social issues.
02:11:05.000I mean, people have a greater understanding about how most people think about social issues today than we ever did in the past.
02:11:12.000We were sort of informed how we felt about things based on the news, based on, you know, the rare commentator on the news or stories that were in the news or editorials that were in the New York Times or what have you.
02:11:25.000And now you get a day-to-day sense of how people feel about things.
02:11:29.000And of course, it's also clouded by people that are saying things to sort of virtue signal and get people to like them based on the opinion they think is going to be the most likely to attract positive attention.
02:11:41.000But it at least is opening up this new field of people openly debating and discussing ideas that used to be only talked about by people that were already approved and on television and in the media.
02:11:58.000We sort of get this, particularly about videos, right?
02:12:01.000Videos are a really interesting example of that because someone can have a really concise and interesting perspective on something and that'll get shared millions and millions of times.
02:12:27.000Yeah, and I think that that's an area, hopefully, with better recommendation systems that will be able to be more possible in the future than has been in the past, I think, as the AI can help people discover things that they might be interested in.
02:12:40.000But, yeah, I mean, I'm a little more mixed on this.
02:12:46.000I mean, I think on the one hand, I think the comments and actual discussions that happen online...
02:12:54.000I mean, I think live interactions, like what we're having now, I think that's hopefully an interesting discussion for people who are watching.
02:13:04.000But I think if you look at common threads like you're talking about, I think that that experience probably needs a significant amount of innovation before it's good.
02:13:13.000But I do think being able to see different people's opinions and Maybe more like the original posts than the comments back and forth.
02:13:25.000Because when I see a friend has some opinion on something, I know where that person's coming from in terms of their values and their life story.
02:13:33.000And that just means a lot more to me than, I don't know, the New York Times telling me that something is good or bad.
02:13:43.000And there's also a lot of diversity because people tend to have friends who are from different backgrounds.
02:13:48.000And before the internet, I think the average person basically had a few different media sources.
02:13:56.000Each one had some kind of specific editorial leaning.
02:14:01.000Now, the data that I've seen on this actually is that social media generally exposes people to a way more diverse set of views.
02:14:08.000Now, there is a question about how people react to that.
02:14:11.000I think sometimes when people see stuff that they don't agree with, there's a...
02:14:39.000Filter bubbles and, like, people only see one type of thing.
02:14:42.000You know, I think it by this point has been pretty thoroughly debunked in terms of just, like, statistically the diversity of what you're seeing online from different sources is way greater than it ever was before.
02:14:53.000I think people just don't make very compelling arguments.
02:14:56.000That's one of the reasons why so few people are willing to think and listen to differing opinions on things.
02:15:02.000You know, it's so often people are either preaching to the choir or shouting down at the person that has the opposing view instead of expressing themselves in a very neutral and objective way that considers all the possibilities.
02:15:20.000And this is like, I mean, this brings me back to fact checks, like fact checkers, because oftentimes fact checkers are incorrect, and they are biased, and it is subjective as to whether or not what is a fact and what is not a fact,
02:15:35.000especially about some more controversial issues.
02:15:38.000Like, how do you choose fact checkers, and how does a fact checker How do they go through a mountain of data and come to a conclusion and then that is used for content moderation?
02:15:55.000Yeah, so there's a whole discipline around and like professional discipline around fact checking where, I mean, these organizations are supposed to basically, they get accredited and they're generally,
02:16:10.000I think, quite professional about how they do this.
02:16:14.000And so, I mean, that's another thing is, you know, not only did we not want to be deciding what is true or false, we also didn't want to be in the business of deciding which fact checkers are professional and not.
02:16:24.000So we basically outsourced that to this accreditation.
02:16:28.000I mean, it's widely respected as sort of the best that there is, even though it's not without flaws, like you're saying.
02:16:37.000But what we tried to do Was basically, we give the fact-checkers the basic guidelines to not focus on things that could be opinion-y, right?
02:16:49.000So there are things online that are, like, obviously...
02:16:55.000I don't know, just like obviously kind of wrong memes or I don't know, like crazy conspiracy theories or something like that.
02:17:04.000And I think that that's a pretty categorically different set of things than like is there some shade of to which some political candidate said something that was slightly false and like can we use that as an excuse to like ding them,
02:17:25.000When the program is working the way it's supposed to, I mean, the overwhelming majority of people in our community tell us that they don't want to see things that are kind of obviously false flowing through the system, right?
02:17:36.000It just decreases trust in the system.
02:17:38.000And if there was a way to get rid of that, then it's like people on both sides of the political spectrum would want that to be the case.
02:17:44.000I think where it ends up being an issue is when the fact checkers sort of veer towards getting into stuff that's Not as obviously black and white and a little more political.
02:17:55.000I mean, a lot of the stuff that's blatantly wrong isn't necessarily even political.
02:18:02.000So those are the areas that I've seen that become the most controversial.
02:18:07.000How do you make decisions when, like, I can understand the wanting to stop the spread of misinformation, but there's certain things that are so dumb where I feel like they should be allowed to be spread,
02:18:45.000I'm not sure I have enough time for that.
02:18:47.000There's a large group of humans out there that believe that we live in some sort of a dome and that there's essentially light bulbs hung in the sky.
02:19:07.000So one important nuance on this, though, is we don't block misinformation.
02:19:13.000We basically just have a label that goes on it that says that a fact checker says this is false and show it a little bit less in the ranking and news feed.
02:19:23.000But don't you stop a person's ability to share something with that tag?
02:20:07.000I mean, that it's like, yeah, we'll put a label on it.
02:20:09.000We'll, you know, if we have the choice to either show your cousins, you know, giving birth photo or that, we'll kind of show the other content above it.
02:20:17.000But fundamentally, we're not going to prevent you from sharing it or prevent people from seeing it.
02:20:23.000You know, when Jack Dorsey and I had a conversation about this, one of the things he said that he was in favor of and was trying to promote the idea of two versions of Twitter.
02:20:35.000He wanted to have a moderated Twitter and then he wanted to have a Wild West Twitter.
02:20:41.000Like, you wanted to have something where it's like 4chan or something.
02:20:45.000Just, like, let people do whatever they want and just open up those barn doors and as soon as you go in there, it's chaos.
02:21:33.000Most of that stuff, I actually think, is not that controversial.
02:21:37.000It's like people want it gone and they expect us to, as a technology company that operates at scale, to be able to do this reasonably well.
02:21:47.000So then I think that there are a couple of issues.
02:21:50.000One is sometimes those systems get that stuff wrong, and we say that something is bad when it wasn't, or we miss something that is bad.
02:21:56.000So there's that type of issue, which is like you just make an operational mistake, which is important, but is kind of one type of issue.
02:22:08.000There are a couple of types of issues, and I think misinformation is probably the biggest one.
02:22:15.000Where there is actually just not widespread agreement at all about how to handle it.
02:22:20.000I think that a large percent of the population, the vast majority, says that they don't want to see misinformation, but then people disagree on what misinformation is, right?
02:22:32.000So people don't want to see what they think is misinformation, but honestly, even more than that, they don't want other people to be To see what they think is misinformation.
02:22:45.000So that's pretty difficult because then different people have different views.
02:22:49.000And I think that there, I mean, maybe you could have a policy like what Jack was talking about for that type of content.
02:22:58.000I mean, I don't think you're going to have a Wild West version of social media where you're just allowing terrorism free-for-all.
02:23:18.000I mean, they have hardcore pornography.
02:23:20.000You could just accidentally stumble onto someone you follow's page and they'll have hardcore pornography.
02:23:25.000Yeah, so that's something that just is more of, going back to your point around just for the community feel, But pornography is a thing that we don't allow.
02:23:36.000And I think it's somewhat controversial.
02:23:39.000Because, I mean, you could make a pretty good argument, I think, that this isn't doing physical harm to people.
02:23:46.000I mean, I know that there's arguments on both sides of that, so I don't want to go super deep on that.
02:24:08.000But I think that's one category of content where it's kind of more of an editorial moderation decision.
02:24:14.000I don't think it's a political decision.
02:24:15.000It's more of like we want the feel of the service to be about people connecting with their friends and family and not necessarily coming across that kind of content.
02:24:24.000But yeah, I mean, that's sort of, I think, how the whole thing breaks down.
02:24:28.000I mean, there's most of the stuff that I think gets taken down.
02:24:31.000Actually, most people would agree needs to get taken down.
02:24:45.000Give people choice, and basically don't take it down, but basically let people share the stuff, but also flag if an accredited fact checker said it might be false, and also get us that we shouldn't be the ones deciding what's true and false,
02:25:00.000so kind of try to set up this independent governance to do that.
02:25:03.000I think it's a pretty well-balanced system.
02:25:06.000We'll need to keep on iterating on it and making it better over time, but those are the basic principles for kind of how I think about navigating that.
02:25:13.000One thing that people freak out about, and oftentimes I'm a little skeptical of their concerns, is people think they're being shadow banned.
02:25:37.000But that maybe refers to some of the demotions that we're talking about, right?
02:25:43.000So if someone posts something that gets marked as false by a fact checker, then it'll get somewhat less...
02:25:49.000Just that post or all of their posts is for the future?
02:25:53.000I think that if you do it once, then it's that.
02:25:56.000And then I think if there's some history within a page or there's kind of different rules for pages and groups and different things, then there can be some kind of broader policy that applies.
02:26:14.000When I look into this stuff, because a lot of my friends and people I know just send me examples, because unfortunately there are a lot of mistakes.
02:26:19.000I think part of the issue is that, okay, if there's 3.5 billion people using these services, and if we make a mistake 0.1% of the time, that's like...
02:26:35.000So there's all these cases, and that sucks.
02:26:38.000There are all these cases where we missed something that we should have taken down, or we enforced something that we weren't supposed to.
02:26:48.000But I'd say, as it relates to kind of concerns about shadow banning, a lot of the time when I look into stuff, people attribute some motive or like, ah, this is like meta has some stupid policy in place that blocked this or they're banning this thing.
02:27:01.000And a lot of the time, it was either just a mistake.
02:27:04.000So nothing was supposed to happen, but there was some bug in the system or some system didn't work the way it was supposed to, which is a real issue, but it's not an ideological issue.
02:27:17.000A lot of the time, also, when people are worried about stuff like shadow banning, it actually, like, maybe their post just wasn't as good or something, and it just didn't get the distribution that they wanted it to.
02:27:31.000I mean, you highlighted some examples to me a few weeks ago of someone who was saying that they, like, couldn't follow your account or something, and you posted it, and it was...
02:27:39.000And, I mean, so I, like, looked into it because I'm like, okay, I'm, like, I'm going to see Joe soon, and I kind of want to understand what these issues are.
02:27:48.000That's an example where it's like it had nothing to do with your account.
02:27:51.000It was basically there was some bug and that person had kind of taken a bunch of actions quickly or something and we basically just for spam protection stopped them from taking a bunch of actions.
02:28:04.000So I think people sometimes read in some ideological bent or policy thing into this that I think often isn't there.
02:28:12.000But unfortunately there just are Because the scale is so big, there are going to be millions of mistakes.
02:28:18.000You're going to be able to find almost any pattern that you want in that much data.
02:28:22.000So I haven't figured out how to crack that nut of kind of communicating.
02:28:27.000It's also an interesting problem because people don't really know what's going on behind the scenes.
02:28:34.000So there's this sort of, in their eyes, a lack of transparency.
02:29:41.000It's really nice, but the amount of countries that are using this and talk, like, I wouldn't even want to just pay attention to the people that are speaking English.
02:29:51.000If you're trying to moderate all the people that are speaking, you know, a million different languages, like, how?
02:30:28.000What has that been like for you to assume this position and to have this position evolve and spread and for you yourself to become this...
02:30:43.000Worldwide figurehead and, you know, become this insanely successful person who is involved in this social media platform that is so massive.
02:31:42.000Harvard didn't have a paper Facebook and I was like, this is stupid.
02:31:46.000Let's just make a version where people can input their own stuff because people like expressing stuff about themselves and people are really interested in learning about other people.
02:31:54.000So let's go do that and we can help people connect around that.
02:31:58.000So I launched it and I went to go get pizza with my friends.
02:32:01.000And that night we were talking about how it was really cool that I got this out at Harvard and people were going to use it at Harvard, but someday someone was going to do this for the world.
02:32:13.000It was not even a possibility for me that that was going to be us.
02:32:16.000It was completely obvious that it was going to be someone else.
02:32:23.000You have Google and Microsoft and Yahoo at the time, these great technology companies that have thousands of engineers and all these servers and all these resources.
02:33:31.000But Google and Microsoft and all these companies could never really get motivated to do it because there was probably a bunch of internal bureaucracy or forces that were naysaying against why this was a valuable thing.
02:33:43.000So then, okay, then the people who were in college started graduating, and they kept on using it.
02:33:48.000So then it was like, okay, so this clearly isn't just a college thing.
02:33:52.000And we started in 2007. We opened it up beyond college so that anyone can sign up, and people of all different ages started signing up.
02:34:01.000And then the meme shifted from this is a college thing to this is a fad, right?
02:34:06.000Because people, you know, you mentioned MySpace and, you know, there's this whole string of social apps like this.
02:34:12.000There's Friendster and there's MySpace and it was the whole thing was there's like one after another.
02:34:15.000So it's like, no, there's not going to be one for like 20 years, right?
02:34:18.000That lasts for like for 20 years or 30 years.
02:34:20.000It's like this is a fad and probably...
02:34:23.000Inside Google or Microsoft, there were probably people who thought that this would be a cool thing to do and go build this, but probably a bunch of bureaucracy and people naysaying on it.
02:35:06.000So I guess my reflection on this is that I think with so many things in the world, I think we did it because we just cared more and actually believed in it.
02:35:21.000People had more resources all along the way and cared more.
02:35:24.000And I've just found that that's actually sort of something that I've noticed in other areas too.
02:35:31.000So if you notice, if you think about what Elon's doing with rockets, or what we're trying to do with the metaverse, it's just like, these are sort of these crazy things.
02:35:42.000And I do think at some level, I think?
02:36:06.000Is probably undervalued in terms of determining who ends up doing what in the world.
02:36:13.000I think most people probably have an assumption of something that is so obviously true to you that you just assume that other people are going to go do it.
02:36:21.000But just because it's so obvious to you doesn't actually mean that it's that obvious to other people.
02:36:25.000You probably have this around a lot of the stuff that you do, the stuff that you talk about, the way you explore all these different topics on your podcast, the way you do comedy.
02:36:37.000I mean, I'm curious if you've had that experience where you feel like those things are just so obvious that obviously other people should get them too, but then just like no one does.
02:36:46.000Well, I think you had the advantage in the early days of being young and having a perspective that's not overly influenced by commerce and by corporations and by corporate politics.
02:37:04.000If you think about it, Google tried to do it with Google+.
02:37:07.000I remember I had a good friend that worked at Google.
02:37:27.000So you were trying to get people to escape, leave from other social media platforms to go to this other clunky one that is just basically like a beta version of some new Facebook.
02:37:46.000Well, it is interesting, though, because it's like when a product like yours achieves escape velocity, it gets to this point where it's just so big.
02:37:56.000And it's like you have to have Instagram.
02:38:23.000Well, how long do you see yourself doing this?
02:38:25.000How long do you see yourself running it?
02:38:26.000Do you think there's ever going to come a point in time where the stress is just overwhelming?
02:38:30.000You're like, just pawn it off to somebody else and...
02:38:33.000I'm not sure if that'll be the reason.
02:38:36.000I think I'm probably going to do this for a while just because I kind of viewed the phases of the company as the first phase was building Facebook.
02:38:47.000It was like, okay, can we build a social product that's super successful and successful?
02:39:28.000I think there were about 60 people working at WhatsApp.
02:39:30.000These were super early things when they joined us.
02:39:33.000But, and we've scaled both of those two.
02:39:35.000I mean, WhatsApp now is, you know, more than two billion people.
02:39:40.000Instagram is, I don't think it's quite two billion yet, but it's basically, it's on its way.
02:39:49.000So, and then Messenger, we kind of grew from scratch, and that has more than a billion people too.
02:39:55.000So it's like, okay, so now for the second phase of the company, it's like, went from building one One great social experience to now building force.
02:40:03.000It's like, all right, that's pretty good.
02:40:06.000And as you say, they keep on growing and the businesses around them are good.
02:40:10.000We're just empowering a lot of entrepreneurs around the world.
02:40:13.000So really happy about all that stuff and there's a lot more to do.
02:40:18.000But I look at a lot of what we're doing still just in those experiences feels constrained by the fact that it's happening on a phone.
02:40:25.000And I just think phones are very limited.
02:40:27.000So I think for the next chapter of what we're going to do, it's about continuing to build those, but also defining what the next computing platform is going to be, which is, for me, what the metaverse is all about and this kind of...
02:41:42.000And there are some things that work, right?
02:41:44.000So, like, building out the metaverse with VR and AR and building out the whole developer community and creator community around that.
02:41:51.000I view that as 10, maybe if it takes longer, 15-year project.
02:41:54.000But that's, like, something that I just want to kind of dedicate myself to.
02:41:59.000Done a lot of stuff on the philanthropy side where I just, like, it's been really cool getting a chance to work with my wife Priscilla on this.
02:42:06.000It just, like, opened up a whole new side of our relationship where, like, it's like we were We're good to go.
02:42:42.000But not within the decade, but within a century.
02:42:46.000So for that, we're taking on a bunch of kind of 10-year projects.
02:42:55.000To just sort of be able to observe different things about human biology working that haven't been seen before.
02:43:02.000So, like, one example is we're working on this imaging institute, an imaging project, where we want to be able to...
02:43:09.000And you have, like, microscopes today, and they can see stuff, but it's, like, pretty hard to see things that are going on, like, inside your body, right?
02:43:16.000You know, you're blocked by the other tissue that's in the way.
02:43:21.000But now, through a combination of different techniques, you can use this, like, cryo-EM technique, where you can, like, take certain tissue out of a person, and it still will be...
02:43:36.000I mean, there are techniques where some of the tissue will still be alive for some period of time, even though it's obviously going to die because it's been removed from you.
02:43:43.000And you can look at that under a really powerful microscope.
02:43:46.000And then you can use AI techniques over time To be able to kind of extrapolate from what you've seen in very high resolution in the tissue that you've removed from the body to now being able to...
02:43:58.000Okay, even though there's like optical and physical limits on what you can see with a microscope in a body, you can use all this data that's been generated in AI to effectively be able to see different cells interacting.
02:44:09.000Like, no one has ever seen a synapse, you know, a neuron like fire and like what it looks like in the synapse of a brain before...
02:44:20.000But I kind of think my engineering perspective on this is, like, how are you going to debug a system or help solve it if you can't, like, step through the code, right?
02:44:32.000Like, one line at a time and, like, see everything that's happening, right?
02:44:36.000If you want to really understand what's going on in the brain, you need to see that, right?
02:44:41.000So, I mean, that's the kind of project that we're doing on the philanthropy side.
02:44:55.000For the first 10 years or so, the company was so all-consuming that I really couldn't do much else and I wasn't that well-rounded of a person.
02:45:11.000There's also just personal stuff that I just really enjoy building up our ranch to be self-sustaining and 100% off the grid and being able to grow all the stuff that we want there and raise our own cattle.
02:45:27.000I think that that's a cool, fun project too.
02:45:31.000At this point, I sort of define meaning in my life more by getting to work With people who I really like on a different set of things and just get to learn from doing a bunch of different things.
02:45:45.000But I'm curious how that's kind of shifted in your life as you've grown in your career too.
02:45:50.000Well, I think what you're dealing with is you have so much success that you're comfortable enough for you to not think about just success and to only think about growing the business.
02:46:03.000Instead, you're thinking about projects that are fascinating to you.
02:46:24.000I would love to see that in more people.
02:46:27.000So many people just get caught up in the game of resources and numbers, and they just want to grow numbers and grow and have more money and have bigger toys and have bigger this and bigger that, and it's a trap.
02:46:39.000You know, and I think sometimes people are caught in that trap when they're ahead of the game.
02:46:45.000They've won the game, but yet they're still, like, sucked into it, and they never really branch off and find things that are deeply fulfilling to them.
02:46:54.000It's really unfortunate because that's the trap of the businessman.
02:46:58.000You know, the businessman gets consumed by just wealth.
02:47:03.000They get consumed by success of the company, eternal growth, and it's a real trap.
02:47:11.000I have a similar perspective in that I don't think about my show in terms of how it grows or how it does well.
02:47:36.000And when I do the podcast, The very fortunate thing that I have is that who I talk to is entirely based on whether or not someone's willing to talk to them or whether or not I'm interested in talking to them.
02:48:35.000But, you know, so I'm just fortunate that I can do this and just, and the appeal of the show, I think, I mean, if I had to think about it, I don't think about it too much, honestly.
02:48:46.000But if I thought about it, I think the appeal of the show is that I'm actually interested in what the guest has to say, and it's because those are the people I've chosen.
02:48:55.000Whether it's I'm talking to a scientist or a philosopher or an athlete or you or anybody, I'm interested.
02:49:02.000I'm genuinely curious, and if I wasn't, I wouldn't do it.
02:49:04.000And so because of that, I think it translates to the people at home, and it resonates with people.
02:49:16.000I'm not sure if it's a paradox, but I think that there actually is a feedback loop between those things, I would guess, though.
02:49:21.000You're saying that you don't care as much about the viewership or the listenership of the show, but to some degree, because you're following your curiosity, you probably are producing a more interesting show that more people want to watch.
02:49:32.000I'd bet that for me, if I were solely focused on just kind of I'm not focused on the metaverse primarily because I think there's some near-term business opportunity.
02:50:01.000I actually think we're going to lose a lot of money for a long time on this massive breadth of things that we're working on that we talked about before.
02:50:07.000I think that if we do good work on this, I think we should be positioning ourselves quite well for the future.
02:50:12.000And I do care about winning for all of our employees and our shareholders and stuff like that, too.
02:50:17.000I mean, that obviously matters because we have all these awesome people who are actually doing the work.
02:50:21.000Yeah, I mean, it's a brilliant gamble.
02:50:24.000But it's also a very well-informed gamble.
02:50:59.000And when someone can create a service or a social media platform or something where people really believe that the people behind it are trying to make it the best thing possible.
02:51:11.000And they're not just trying to grow it Yeah.
02:51:15.000Forever and make it constantly get bigger and make more money.
02:51:19.000And they're also genuinely trying to innovate and they're genuinely trying to expand into this new realm of the metaverse and they're genuinely trying to moderate content in a thoughtful way.
02:52:02.000How would I do it differently if I wasn't thinking about just money?
02:52:05.000I was thinking in terms of big picture things and making it more enjoyable, making it more thrilling to me, making it more exciting.
02:52:15.000And I think that we're very fortunate, you and I, in that we have the ability to take those kind of choices.
02:52:22.000And I think that kind of freedom is probably one of the most important freedoms for the Western person that's listening to this, that is not confined in a communist country.
02:52:31.000There's obviously a lot bigger problems that they have.
02:52:34.000But you're in a position where you can make your own choices.
02:52:38.000What would be the best choice to make?
02:52:40.000Well, the best choice to make is to actually follow your interests.
02:52:45.000And for you, the fact that you're really interested in health and philanthropy and And those things as well as also interested in the metaverse and interested in AR and VR and all these different modalities, all these different ways to express it and how enriching it is to people's lives.