{"id":14909,"date":"2019-04-26T21:03:19","date_gmt":"2019-04-26T21:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/zuckerberg-warns-of-authoritarian-data-localization-trend-2.html"},"modified":"2019-04-26T21:03:19","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T21:03:19","slug":"zuckerberg-warns-of-authoritarian-data-localization-trend-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/zuckerberg-warns-of-authoritarian-data-localization-trend-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Zuckerberg warns of authoritarian data localization trend"},"content":{"rendered":"

If free nations demand companies store data locally, it legitimizes that practice for authoritarian nations, which can then steal that data for their own nefarious purposes, according to Facebook <\/a> CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He laid out the threat in a new 93-minute video<\/a> of a discussion<\/a> with Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari released today as part of Zuckerberg\u2019s 2019 personal challenge<\/a> of holding public talks on the future of tech.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg has stated that Facebook will refuse to comply with laws and set up local data centers in authoritarian countries where that data could be snatched.<\/p>\n

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Mark Zuckerberg speaks with Yuval Noah Harari<\/p>\n

Russia and China already have data localization laws, but privacy concerns and regulations proposals could see more nations adopt the restrictions. Germany now requires telecommunications metadata to be stored locally, and India does something similar for payments data.<\/p>\n

While in democratic or justly ruled nations, the laws can help protect user privacy and give governments more leverage over tech companies, they pave the way for similar laws in nations where governments might use military might to see the data. That could help them enhance their surveillance capabilities, disrupt activism or hunt down dissidents.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg explains that:<\/p>\n

\n

When I look towards the future, one of the things that I just get very worried about is the values that I just laid out [for the internet and data] are not values that all countries share. And when you get into some of the more authoritarian countries and their data policies, they\u2019re very different from the kind of regulatory frameworks that across Europe and across a lot of other places, people are talking about or put into place . . . And the most likely alternative to each country adopting something that encodes the freedoms and rights of something like GDPR, in my mind, is the authoritarian model, which is currently being spread, which says every company needs to store everyone\u2019s data locally in data centers and then, if I\u2019m a government, I can send my military there and get access to whatever data I want and take that for surveillance or military. I just think that that\u2019s a really bad future. And that\u2019s not the direction, as someone who\u2019s building one of these internet services, or just as a citizen of the world, I want to see the world going. If a government can get access to your data, then it can identify who you are and go lock you up and hurt you and your family and cause real physical harm in ways that are just really deep.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That makes the assumption that authoritarian governments care about their decisions being previously legitimized, which might not be true. But for nations in the middle of the spectrum of human rights and just law, seeing role model countries adopt these laws might convince them it\u2019s alright.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg said on this week\u2019s Facebook earnings call that Facebook accepts the risks to its business of being shut down in authoritarian countries where it refuses to comply with data localization laws.<\/p>\n

Throughout the talk, Zuckerberg explained his view that a lack of strong positive communities and economic opportunities push people to join extremist groups or slip into destructive behavior. That\u2019s why he\u2019s so focused on making Groups a centerpiece of Facebook\u2019s product.<\/p>\n

Is The User Always Right?<\/h2>\n

There was one big question to which Zuckerberg failed to give a straight answer: can we trust users to do what\u2019s right for them and society in an age of manipulation by authoritarian governments, self-serving politicians, and greedy capitalist algorithms?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari<\/p>\n

Harari did a great job of crystallizing this question, and bringing the conversation back to it again and again despite Zuckerberg challenging the premise that much has changed here rather than providing a response. Harari says:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m hearing from you and from many other people when I have these discussions, is ultimately the customer is always right, the voter knows best, people know deep down, people know what is good for them. People make a choice: If they choose to do it, then it\u2019s good. And that has been the bedrock of, at least, Western democracies for centuries, for generations. And this is now where the big question mark is: Is it still true in a world where we have the technology to hack human beings and manipulate them like never before that the customer is always right, that the voter knows best? Or have we gone past this point? And we can know\u2013 and the simple, ultimate answer that \u201cWell, this is what people want,\u201d and \u201cthey know what\u2019s good for them,\u201d maybe it\u2019s no longer the case.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For Facebook, that raises the questions of whether users can be trusted to properly protect their own privacy, to only share facts rather than false news that fits their agenda, to avoid clickbait and low-value viral videos, and most importantly, to stop browsing Facebook when it\u2019s no longer positively impacts their life.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg replied that \u201cit\u2019s not clear to me that that has changed . . . I\u00a0think people really don\u2019t like and are very distrustful when they feel like they\u2019re being told what to do.\u201d Yet that ignores how the urge for self-defeating or society-defeating behavior can come from inside after a lifetime of grooming by tech platforms.<\/p>\n

Given we\u2019re already prone to sugar, gambling, and TV addictions, the addition of online manipulation could further stoke our short-sighted tendencies. Until Zuckerberg can admit humans don\u2019t always do what\u2019s right for themselves and their world, it will be difficult for Facebook to change to support us in moments of decision-making weakness rather than exploit us.<\/p>\n

\n

We\u2019ll have more analysis on Zuckerberg\u2019s talk soon. Here\u2019s the full transcript:<\/i><\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b <\/a> Hey everyone. This year I\u2019m doing a series of public discussions on the future of the internet and society and some of the big issues around that, and today I\u2019m here with Yuval Noah Harari, a great historian and best-selling author of a number of books. His first book, \u201cSapiens: A Brief History of Humankind\u201d, kind of chronicled and did an analysis going from the early days of hunter-gatherer society to now how our civilization is organized, and your next two books, \u201cHomo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow\u201d and \u201c21 Lessons for the 21st Century\u201d, actually tackle important issues of technology and the future, and that\u2019s I think a lot of what we\u2019ll talk about today. But most historians only tackle and analyze the past, but a lot of the work that you\u2019ve done has had really interesting insights and raised important questions for the future. So I\u2019m really glad to have an opportunity to talk with you today. So Yuval, thank you for joining for this conversation.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b I\u2019m happy to be here. I think that if historians and philosophers cannot engage with the current questions of technology and the future of humanity, then we aren\u2019t doing our jobs. Only you\u2019re not just supposed to chronicle events centuries ago. All the people that lived in the past are dead. They don\u2019t care. The question is what happens to us and to the people in the future.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b So all the questions that you\u2019ve outlined\u2013 where should we start here? I think one of the big topics that we\u2019ve talked about is around\u2013 this dualism around whether, with all of the technology and progress that has been made, are people coming together, and are we becoming more unified, or is our world becoming more fragmented? So I\u2019m curious to start off by how you\u2019re thinking about that. That\u2019s probably a big area. We could probably spend most of the time on that topic.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah, I mean, if you look at the long span of history, then it\u2019s obvious that humanity is becoming more and more connected. If thousands of years ago Planet Earth was actually a galaxy of a lot of isolated worlds with almost no connection between them, so gradually people came together and became more and more connected, until we reach today when the entire world for the first time is a single historical, economic, and cultural unit. But connectivity doesn\u2019t necessarily mean harmony. The people we fight most often are our own family members and neighbors and friends. So it\u2019s really a question of are we talking about connecting people, or are we talking about harmonizing people? Connecting people can lead to a lot of conflicts, and when you look at the world today, you see this duality in\u2013 for example, in the rise of wall, which we talked a little bit about earlier when we met, which for me is something that I just can\u2019t figure out what is happening, because you have all these new connecting technology and the internet and virtual realities and social networks, and then the most\u2013 one of the top political issues becomes building walls, and not just cyber-walls or firewalls\u2013 building stone walls; like the most Stone Age technology is suddenly the most advanced technology. So how to make sense of this world which is more connected than ever, but at the same time is building more walls than ever before.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b I think one of the interesting questions is around whether there\u2019s actually so much of a conflict between these ideas of people becoming more connected and this fragmentation that you talk about. One of the things that it seems to me is that\u2013 in the 21st century, in order to address the biggest opportunities and challenges that humanity\u2013 I think it\u2019s both opportunities\u2013 spreading prosperity, spreading peace, scientific progress\u2013 as well as some of the big challenges\u2013 addressing climate change, making sure, on the flipside, that diseases don\u2019t spread and there aren\u2019t epidemics and things like that\u2013 we really need to be able to come together and have the world be more connected. But at the same time, that only works if we as individuals have our economic and social and spiritual needs met. So one way to think about this is in terms of fragmentation, but another way to think about it is in terms of personalization. I just think about when I was growing up\u2013 one of the big things that I think that the internet enables is for people to connect with groups of people who share their real values and interests, and it wasn\u2019t always like this. Before the internet, you were really tied to your physical location, and I just think about how when I was growing up\u2013 I grew up in a town of about 10 thousand people, and there were only so many different clubs or activities that you could do. So I grew up, like a lot of the other kids, playing Little League baseball. And I kind of think about this in retrospect, and it\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019m not really into baseball. I\u2019m not really an athlete. So why did I play Little League when my real passion was programming computers?\u201d And the reality was that growing up, there was no one else really in my town who was into programming computers, so I didn\u2019t have a peer group or a club that I could do that. It wasn\u2019t until I went to boarding school and then later college where I actually was able to meet people who were into the same things as I am. And now I think with the internet, that\u2019s starting to change, and now you have the availability to not just be tethered to your physical location, but to find people who have more niche interests and different kind of subcultures and communities on the internet, which I think is a really powerful thing, but it also means that me growing up today, I probably wouldn\u2019t have played Little League, and you can think about me playing Little League as\u2013 that could have been a unifying thing, where there weren\u2019t that many things in my town, so that was a thing that brought people together. So maybe if I was creating\u2013 or if I was a part of a community online that might have been more meaningful to me, getting to know real people but around programming, which was my real interest, you would have said that our community growing up would have been more fragmented, and people wouldn\u2019t have had the same kind of sense of physical community. So when I think about these problems, one of the questions that I wonder is maybe\u2013 fragmentation and personalization, or finding what you actually care about, are two sides of the same coin, but the bigger challenge that I worry about is whether\u2013 there are a number of people who are just left behind in the transition who were people who would have played Little League but haven\u2019t now found their new community, and now just feel dislocated; and maybe their primary orientation in the world is still the physical community that they\u2019re in, or they haven\u2019t really been able to find a community of people who they\u2019re interested in, and as the world has progressed\u2013 I think a lot of people feel lost in that way, and that probably contributes to some of the feelings. That would my hypothesis, at least. I mean, that\u2019s the social version of it. There\u2019s also the economic version around globalization, which I think is as important, but I\u2019m curious what you think about that.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b About the social issue, online communities can be a wonderful thing, but they are still incapable of replacing physical communities, because there are still so many things\u2013<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b That\u2019s definitely true. That\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b \u2013that you can only do with your body, and with your physical friends, and you can travel with your mind throughout the world but not with your body, and there is huge questions about the cost and benefits there, and also the ability of people to just escape things they don\u2019t like in online communities, but you can\u2019t do it in real offline communities. I mean, you can unfriend your Facebook friends, but you can\u2019t un-neighbor your neighbors. They\u2019re still there. I mean, you can take yourself and move to another country if you have the means, but most people can\u2019t. So part of the logic of traditional communities was that you must learn how to get along with people you don\u2019t like necessarily, maybe, and you must develop social mechanisms how to do that; and with online communities\u2013 I mean, and they have done some really wonderful things for people, but also they kind of don\u2019t give us the experience of doing these difficult but important things.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah, and I definitely don\u2019t mean to state that online communities can replace everything that a physical community did. The most meaningful online communities that we see are ones that span online and offline, that bring people together\u2013 maybe the original organization might be online, but people are coming together physically because that ultimately is really important for relationships and for\u2013 because we\u2019re physical beings, right? So whether it\u2019s\u2013 there are lots of examples around\u2013 whether it\u2019s an interest community, where people care about running but they also care about cleaning up the environment, so a group of organize online and then they meet every week, go for a run along a beach or through a town and clean up garbage. That\u2019s a physical thing. We hear about communities where people\u2013 if you\u2019re in a profession, in maybe the military or maybe something else, where you have to move around a lot, people form these communities of military families or families of groups that travel around, and the first thing they do when they go to a new city is they find that community and then that\u2019s how they get integrated into the local physical community too. So that\u2019s obviously a super important part of this, that I don\u2019t mean to understate.
\nYuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah, and then the question\u2013 the practical question for also a service provider like Facebook is: What is the goal? I mean, are we trying to connect people so ultimately they will leave the screens and go and play football or pick up garbage, or are we trying to keep them as long as possible on the screens? And there is a conflict of interest there. I mean, you could have\u2013 one model would be, \u201cWe want people to stay as little as possible online. We just need them to stay there the shortest time necessary to form the connection, which they will then go and do something in the outside world,\u201d and that\u2019s one of the key questions I think about what the internet is doing to people, whether it\u2019s connecting them or fragmenting society.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah, and I think your point is right. I mean, we basically went\u2013 we\u2019ve made this big shift in our systems to make sure that they\u2019re optimized for meaningful social interactions, which of course the most meaningful interactions that you can have are physical, offline interactions, and there\u2019s always this question when you\u2019re building a service of how you measure the different thing that you\u2019re trying to optimize for. So it\u2019s a lot easier for us to measure if people are interacting or messaging online than if you\u2019re having a meaningful connection physically, but there are ways to get at that. I mean, you can ask people questions about what the most meaningful things that they did\u2013 you can\u2019t ask all two billion people, but you can have a statistical subsample of that, and have people come in and tell you, \u201cOkay, what are the most meaningful things that I was able to do today, and how many of them were enabled by me connecting with people online, or how much of it was me connecting with something physically, maybe around the dinner table, with content or something that I learned online or saw.\u201d So that is definitely a really important part of it. But I think one of the important and interesting questions is about the richness of the world that can be built where you have, on one level, unification or this global connection, where there\u2019s a common framework where people can connect. Maybe it\u2019s through using common internet services, or maybe it\u2019s just common social norms as you travel around. One of the things that you pointed out to me in a previous conversation is now something that\u2019s different from at any other time in history is you could travel to almost any other country and look like you\u2013 dress like you\u2019re appropriate and that you fit in there, and 200 years ago or 300 years ago, that just wouldn\u2019t have been the case. If you went to a different country, you would have just stood out immediately. So there\u2019s this norm\u2013 there\u2019s this level of cultural norm that is united, but then the question is: What do we build on top of that? And I think one of the things that a broader kind of set of cultural norms or shared values and framework enables is a richer set of subcultures and subcommunities and people to actually go find the things that they\u2019re interested in, and lots of different communities to be created that wouldn\u2019t have existed before. Going back to my story before, it wasn\u2019t just my town that had Little League. I think when I was growing up, basically every town had very similar things\u2013 there\u2019s a Little League in every town\u2013 and maybe instead of every town having Little League, there should be\u2013 Little League should be an option, but if you wanted to do something that not that many people were interested in\u2013 in my case, programming; in other people\u2019s case, maybe interest in some part of history or some part of art that there just may not be another person in your ten-thousand-person town who share that interest\u2013 I think it\u2019s good if you can form those kind of communities, and now people can find connections and can find a group of people who share their interests. I think that there\u2019s a question of\u2013 you can look at that as fragmentation, because now we\u2019re not all doing the same things, right? We\u2019re not all going to church and playing Little League and doing the exact same things. Or you can think about that as richness and depth-ness in our social lives, and I just think that that\u2019s an interesting question, is where you want the commonality across the world and the connection, and where you actually want that commonality to enable deeper richness, even if that means that people are doing different things. I\u2019m curious if you have a view on that and where that\u2019s positive versus where that creates a lack of social cohesion.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah, I mean, I think almost nobody would argue with the benefits of richer social environment in which people have more options to connect around all kind of things. The key question is how do you still create enough social cohesion on the level of a country and increasing also on the level of the entire globe in order to tackle our main problems. I mean, we need global cooperation like never before because we are facing unprecedented global problems. We just had Earth Day, and to be obvious to everybody, we cannot deal with the problems of the environment, of climate change, except through global cooperation. Similarly, if you think about the potential disruption caused by new technologies like artificial intelligence, we need to find a mechanism for global cooperation around issues like how to prevent an AI arms race, how to prevent different countries racing to build autonomous weapons systems and killer robots and weaponizing the internet and weaponizing social networks. Unless we have global cooperation, we can\u2019t stop that, because every country will say, \u201cWell, we don\u2019t want to produce killer robot\u2013 it\u2019s a bad idea\u2013 but we can\u2019t allow our rivals to do it before us, so we must do it first,\u201d and then you have a race to the bottom. Similarly, if you think about the potential disruptions to the job market and the economy caused by AI and automation. So it\u2019s quite obvious that there will be jobs in the future, but will they be evenly distributed between different parts of the world? One of the potential results of the AI revolution could be the concentration of immense wealth in some part of the world and the complete bankruptcy of other parts. There will be lot of new jobs for software engineers in California, but there will be maybe no jobs for textile workers and truck drivers in Honduras and Mexico. So what will they do? If we don\u2019t find a solution on the global level, like creating a global safety net to protect humans against the shocks of AI, and enabling them to use the opportunities of AI, then we will create the most unequal economic situation that ever existed. It will be much worse even than what happened in the Industrial Revolution when some countries industrialized\u2013 most countries didn\u2019t\u2013 and the few industrial powers went on to conquer and dominate and exploit all the others. So how do we create enough global cooperation so that the enormous benefits of AI and automation don\u2019t go only, say, to California and Eastern China while the rest of the world is being left far behind.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah, I think that that\u2019s important. So I would unpack that into two sets of issues\u2013 one around AI and the future economic and geopolitical issues around that\u2013 and let\u2019s put that aside for a second, because I actually think we should spend 15 minutes on that. I mean, that\u2019s a big set of things.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Okay. Yeah, that\u2019s a big one.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b But then the other question is around how you create the global cooperation that\u2019s necessary to take advantage of the big opportunities that are ahead and to address the big challenges. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s just fighting crises like climate change. I think that there are massive opportunities around global\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Definitely. Yeah.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Spreading prosperity, spreading more human rights and freedom\u2013 those are things that come with trade and connection as well. So you want that for the upside. But I guess my diagnosis at this point\u2013 I\u2019m curious to hear your view on this\u2013 is I actually think we\u2019ve spent a lot of the last 20 years with the internet, maybe even longer, working on global trade, global information flow, making it so that people can connect. I actually think the bigger challenge at this point is making it so that in addition to that global framework that we have, making it so that things work for people locally. Right? Because I think that there\u2019s this dualism here where you need both. If you just\u2013 if you resort to just kind of local tribalism then you miss the opportunity to work on the really important global issues; but if you have a global framework but people feel like it\u2019s not working for them at home, or some set of people feel like that\u2019s not working, then they\u2019re not politically going to support the global collaboration that needs to happen. There\u2019s the social version of this, which we talked about a little bit before, where people are now able to find communities that match their interests more, but some people haven\u2019t found those communities yet and are left behind as some of the more physical communities have receded.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b And some of these communities are quite nasty also. So we shouldn\u2019t forget that. laughs<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yes. So I think they should be\u2013 yes, although I would argue that people joining kind of extreme communities is largely a result of not having healthier communities and not having healthy economic progress for individuals. I think most people when they feel good about their lives, they don\u2019t seek out extreme communities. So there\u2019s a lot of work that I think we as an internet platform provider need to do to lock that down even further, but I actually think creating prosperity is probably one of the better ways, at a macro level, to go at that. But I guess\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b But I will maybe just stop there a little. People that feel good about themselves have done some of the most terrible things in human history. I mean, we shouldn\u2019t confuse people feeling good about themselves and about their lives with people being benevolent and kind and so forth. And also, they wouldn\u2019t say that their ideas are extreme, and we have so many examples throughout human history, from the Roman Empire to slave trade into modern age and colonialism, that people\u2013 they had a very good life, they had a very good family life and social life; they were nice people\u2013 I mean, I guess, I don\u2019t know, most Nazi voters were also nice people. If you meet them for a cup of coffee and you talk about your kids, they are nice people, and they think good things about themselves, and maybe some of them can have very happy lives, and even the ideas that we look back and say, \u201cThis was terrible. This was extreme,\u201d they didn\u2019t think so. Again, if you just think about colonialism\u2013
\nMark Zuckerberg:\u200b Well, but World War II, that came through a period of intense economic and social disruption after the Industrial Revolution and\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Let\u2019s put aside the extreme example. Let\u2019s just think about European colonialism in the 19th century. So people, say, in Britain in the late 19th century, they had the best life in the world at the time, and they didn\u2019t suffer from an economic crisis or disintegration of society or anything like that, and they thought that by going all over the world and conquering and changing societies in India, in Africa, in Australia, they were bringing lots of good to world. So I\u2019m just saying that so that we are more careful about not confusing the good feelings people have about their life\u2013 it\u2019s not just miserable people suffering from poverty and economic crisis.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Well, I think that there\u2019s a difference between the example that you\u2019re using of a wealthy society going and colonizing or doing different things that had different negative effects. That wasn\u2019t the fringe in that society. I guess what I was more reacting to before was your point about people becoming extremists. I would argue that in those societies, that wasn\u2019t those people becoming extremists; you can have a long debate about any part of history and whether the direction that a society chose to take is positive or negative and the ramifications of that. But I think today we have a specific issue, which is that more people are seeking out solutions at the extremes, and I think a lot of that is because of a feeling of dislocation, both economic and social. Now, I think that there\u2019s a lot of ways that you\u2019d go at that, and I think part of it\u2013 I mean, as someone who\u2019s running one of the internet platforms, I think we have a special responsibility to make sure that our systems aren\u2019t encouraging that\u2013 but I think broadly, the more macro solution for this is to make sure that people feel like they have that grounding and that sense of purpose and community, and that their lives are\u2013 and that they have opportunity\u2013 and I think that statistically what we see, and sociologically, is that when people have those opportunities, they don\u2019t, on balance, as much, seek out those kind of groups. And I think that there\u2019s the social version of this; there\u2019s also the economic version. I mean, this is the basic story of globalization, is on the one hand it\u2019s been extremely positive for bringing a lot of people into the global economy. People in India and Southeast Asia and across Africa who wouldn\u2019t have previously had access to a lot of jobs in the global economy now do, and there\u2019s been probably the greatest\u2013 at a global level, inequality is way down, because hundreds of millions of people have come out of poverty, and that\u2019s been positive. But the big issue has been that, in developed countries, there have been a large number of people who are now competing with all these other people who are joining the economy, and jobs are moving to these other places, so a lot of people have lost jobs. For some of the people who haven\u2019t lost jobs, there\u2019s now more competition for those jobs, for people internationally, so their wages\u2013 that\u2019s one of the factors, I would\u2013 the analyses have shown\u2013 that\u2019s preventing more wage growth; and there are 5 to 10 percent of people, according to a lot of the analyses that I\u2019ve shown, who are actually in absolute terms worse off because of globalization. Now, that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that globalization for the whole world is negative. I think in general it\u2019s been, on balance, positive, but the story we\u2019ve told about it has probably been too optimistic, in that we\u2019ve only talked about the positives and how it\u2019s good as this global movement to bring people out of poverty and create more opportunities; and the reality I think has been that it\u2019s been net very positive, but if there are 5 or 10 percent of people in the world who are worse off\u2013 there\u2019s 7 billion\u00a0people in the world, so that\u2019s many hundreds of millions of people, the majority of whom are likely in the most developed countries, in the U.S. and across Europe\u2013 that\u2019s going to create a lot of political pressure on those in those countries. So in order to have a global system that works, it feels like\u2013 you need it to work at the global level, but then you also need individuals in each of the member nations in that system to feel like it\u2019s working for them too, and that recurses all the way down, so even local cities and communities, people need to feel like it\u2019s working for them, both economically and socially. So I guess at this point the thing that I worry about\u2013 and I\u2019ve rotated a lot of Facebook\u2019s energy to try to focus on this\u2013 is\u2013 our mission used to be connecting the world. Now it\u2019s about helping people build communities and bringing people closer together, and a lot of that is because I actually think that the thing that we need to do to support more global connection at this point is making sure that things work for people locally. In a lot of ways we\u2019d made it so the internet\u2013 so that an emerging creator can\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b But then how do you balance working it locally for people in the American Midwest, and at the same time working it better for people in Mexico or South America or Africa? I mean, part of the imbalance is that when people in Middle America are angry, everybody pays attention, because they have their finger on the button. But if people in Mexico or people in Zambia feel angry, we care far less because they have far less power. I mean, the pain\u2013 and I\u2019m not saying the pain is not real. The pain is definitely real. But the pain of somebody in Indiana reverberates around the world far more than the pain of somebody in Honduras or in the Philippines, simply because of the imbalances of the power in the world. Earlier, what we said about fragmentation, I know that Facebook faces a lot of criticism about kind of encouraging people, some people, to move to these extremist groups, but\u2013 that\u2019s a big problem, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the main problem. I think also it\u2019s something that you can solve\u2013 if you put enough energy into that, that is something you can solve\u2013 but this is the problem that gets most of the attention now. What I worry more\u2013 and not just about Facebook, about the entire direction that the new internet economy and the new tech economy is going towards\u2013 is increasing inequality between different parts of the world, which is not the result of extremist ideology, but the result of a certain economic and political model; and secondly, undermining human agency and undermining the basic philosophical ideas of democracy and the free market and individualism. These I would say are my two greatest concerns about the development of technology like AI and machine learning, and this will continue to be a major problem even if we find solutions to the issue of social extremism in particular groups.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah, I certainly agree that extremism isn\u2019t\u2013 I would think about it more as a symptom and a big issue that needs to be worked on, but I think the bigger question is making sure that everyone has a sense of purpose, has a role that they feel matters and social connections, because at the end of the day, we\u2019re social animals and I think it\u2019s easy in our theoretical thinking to abstract that away, but that\u2019s such a fundamental part of who we are, so that\u2019s why I focus on that. I don\u2019t know, do you want to move over to some of the AI issues, because I think that that\u2019s a\u2013 or do you want to stick on this topic for a second or\u2013?<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b No, I mean, this topic is closely connected to AI. And again, because I think that, you know, one of the disservices that science fiction, and I\u2019m a huge fan of science fiction, but I think it has done some, also some pretty bad things, which is to focus attention on the wrong scenarios and the wrong dangers that people think, \u201cOh, AI is dangerous because the robots are coming to kill us.\u201d And this is extremely unlikely that we\u2019ll face a robot rebellion. I\u2019m much more frightened about robots always obeying orders than about robots rebelling against the humans. I think the two main problems with AI, and we can explore this in greater depth, is what I just mentioned, first increasing inequality between different parts of the world because you\u2019ll have some countries which lead and dominate the new AI economy and this is such a huge advantage that it kind of trumps everything else. And we will see, I mean, if we had the Industrial Revolution creating this huge gap between a few industrial powers and everybody else and then it took 150 years to close the gap, and over the last few decades the gap has been closed or closing as more and more countries which were far behind are catching up. Now the gap may reopen and be much worse than ever before because of the rise of AI and because AI is likely to be dominated by just a small number of countries. So that\u2019s one issue, AI inequality. And the other issue is AI and human agency or even the meaning of human life, what happens when AI is mature enough and you have enough data to basically have human beings and you have an AI that knows me better than I know myself and can make decisions for me, predict my choices, manipulate my choices and authority increasingly shifts from humans to algorithms, so not only decisions about which movie to see but even decisions like which community to join, who to befriend, whom to marry will increasingly rely on the recommendations of the AI.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b And what does it do to human life and human agency? So these I would say are the
\ntwo most important issues of inequality and AI and human agency.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah. And I think both of them get down to a similar question around values, right, and who\u2019s building this and what are the values that are encoded and how does that end up playing out. I tend to think that in a lot of the conversations around AI we almost personify AI, right; your point around killer robots or something like that. But, but I actually think it\u2019s AI is very connected to the general tech sector, right. So almost every technology product and increasingly a lot of not what you call technology products have\u2013 are made better in some way by AI. So it\u2019s not like AI is a monolithic thing that you build. It\u2019s it powers a lot of products, so it\u2019s a lot of economic progress and can get towards some of the distribution of opportunity questions that you\u2019re raising. But it also is fundamentally interconnected with these really socially important questions around data and privacy and how we want our data to be used and what are the policies around that and what are the global frameworks. And so one of the big questions that\u2013 So, so I tend to agree with a lot of the questions that you\u2019re raising which is that a lot of the countries that have the ability to invest in future technology of which AI and data and future internet\u00a0technologies are certainly an important area are doing that because it will give, you know, their local companies an advantage in the future, right, and to be the ones that are exporting services around the world. And I tend to think that right now, you know, the United States has a major advantage that a lot of the global technology platforms are made here and, you know, certainly a lot of the values that are encoded in that are shaped largely by American values. They\u2019re not only. I mean, we, and I, speaking for Facebook, and we serve people around the world and we take that very seriously, but, you know, certainly ideas like giving everyone a voice, that\u2019s something that is probably very shaped by the American ideas around free speech and strong adherence to that. So I think culturally and economically, there\u2019s an advantage for countries to develop to kind of push forward the state of the field and have the companies that in the next generation are the strongest companies in that. So certainly you see different countries trying to do that, and this is very tied up in not just economic prosperity and inequality, but also\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Do they have a real chance? I mean, does a country like Honduras, Ukraine, Yemen, has any real chance of joining the AI race? Or are they\u2013 they are already out? I mean, they are, it\u2019s not going to happen in Yemen, it\u2019s not going to happen in Honduras? And then what happens to them in 20 years or 50 years?<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Well, I think that some of this gets down to the values around how it\u2019s developed, though. Right, is, you know, I think that there are certain advantages that countries with larger populations have because you can get to critical mass in terms of universities and industry and investment and things like that. But one of the values that we hear, right, both at Facebook and I think generally the academic system of trying to do research hold is that you do open research, right. So a lot of the work that\u2019s getting invested into these advances, in theory if this works well should be more open so then you can have an entrepreneur in one of these countries that you\u2019re talking about which, you know, maybe isn\u2019t a whole industry-wide thing and, you know, certainly, I think you\u2019d bet against, you know, sitting here today that in the future all of the AI companies are going to be in a given small country. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s far-fetched to believe that there will be an entrepreneur in some places who can use Amazon Web Services to spin up instances for Compute, who can hire people across the world in a globalized economy and can leverage research that has been done in the U.S. or across Europe or in different open academic institutions or companies that increasingly are publishing their work that are pushing the state of the art forward on that. So I think that there\u2019s this big question about what we want the future to look like. And part of the way that I think we want the future to look is we want it to be\u2013 we want it to be open. We want the research to be open. I think we want the internet to be a platform. And this gets back to your unification point versus fragmentation. One of the big risks, I think, for the future is that the internet policy in each country ends up looking different and ends up being fragmented. And if that\u2019s the case, then I think the entrepreneur in the countries that you\u2019re talking about, in Honduras, probably doesn\u2019t have as big of a chance if they can\u2019t leverage the\u2013 all the advances that are happening everywhere. But if the internet stays one thing and the research stays open, then I think that they have a much better shot. So when I look towards the future, one of the things that I just get very worried about is the values that I just\u00a0laid out are not values that all countries share. And when you get into some of the more authoritarian countries and their data policies, they\u2019re very different from the kind of regulatory frameworks that across Europe and across a lot of other people, people are talking about or put into place. And, you know, just to put a finer point on it, recently I\u2019ve come out and I\u2019ve been very vocal that I think that more countries should adopt a privacy framework like GDPR in Europe. And a lot of people I think have been confused about this. They\u2019re like, \u201cWell, why are you arguing for more privacy regulation? You know, why now given that in the past you weren\u2019t as positive on it.\u201d And I think part of the reason why I am so focused on this now is I think at this point people around the world recognize that these questions around data and AI and technology are important so there\u2019s going to be a framework in every country. I mean, it\u2019s not like there\u2019s not going to be regulation or policy. So I actually think the bigger question is what is it going to be. And the most likely alternative to each country adopting something that encodes the freedoms and rights of something like GDPR, in my mind, the most likely alternative is the authoritarian model which is currently being spread, which says, you know, as every company needs to store everyone\u2019s data locally in data centers and you know, if I\u2019m a government, I should be able to, you know, go send my military there and be able to get access to whatever data I want and be able to take that for surveillance or military or helping, you know, local military industrial companies. And I mean, I just think that that\u2019s a really bad future, right. And that\u2019s not\u2013 that\u2019s not the direction that I, as, you know, someone who\u2019s building one of these internet services or just as a citizen of the world want to see the world going.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b To be the devil\u2019s advocate for a moment,\u2013<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b laughs<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b I mean, if I look at it from the viewpoint, like, of India, so I listen to the American President saying, \u201cAmerica first and I\u2019m a nationalist, I\u2019m not a globalist. I care about the interests of America,\u201d and I wonder, is it safe to store the data about Indian citizens in the U.S. and not in India when they\u2019re openly saying they care only about themselves. So why should it be in America and not in India?<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Well, I think that there\u2019s, the motives matter and certainly, I don\u2019t think that either of us would consider India to be an authoritarian country that had\u2013 So, so I would say that, well, it\u2019s\u2013 laughs<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Well, it can still say\u2013 Mark<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg:\u200b You know, it\u2019s\u2013 laughs<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b We want data and metadata on Indian users to be stored on Indian soil. We don\u2019t want it to be stored in\u2013 on American soil or somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah. And I can understand the arguments for that and I think that there\u2019s\u2013 The intent matters, right. And I think countries can come at this with open values and still conclude that something like that could be helpful. But I think one of the things that you need to be very careful about is that if you set that precedent you\u2019re making it very easy for other countries that don\u2019t have open values and that are much more authoritarian and want the data not to\u2013 not to protect their citizens but to be able to surveil them and find dissidents and lock them up. That\u2013 So I think one of the\u2013 one of the\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b No, I agree, I mean, but I think that it really boils down to the questions that do we trust America. And given the past two, three years, people in more and more places around the world\u2013 I mean, previously, say if we were sitting here 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 40 years ago, then America declared itself to be the leader of the free world. We can argue a lot whether this was the case or not, but at least on the declaratory level, this was how America presented itself to the world. We are the leaders of the free world, so trust us. We care about freedom. But now we see a different America, America which doesn\u2019t want even to be\u2013 And again, it\u2019s not a question of even what they do, but how America presents itself no longer as the leader of the free world but as a country which is interested above all in itself and in its own interests. And just this morning, for instance, I read that the U.S. is considering having a veto on the U.N. resolution against using sexual violence as a weapon of war. And the U.S. is the one that thinks of vetoing this. And as somebody who is not a citizen of the U.S., I ask myself, can I still trust America to be the leader of the free world if America itself says I don\u2019t want this role anymore.
\nMark Zuckerberg:\u200b Well, I think that that\u2019s a somewhat separate question from the direction that the internet goes then, because I mean, GDPR, the framework that I\u2019m advocating, that it would be better if more countries adopted something like this because I think that that\u2019s just significantly better than the alternatives, a lot of which are these more authoritarian models. I mean, GDPR originated in Europe, right.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b And so that, because it\u2019s not an American invention. And I think in general, these values of openness in research, of cross-border flow of ideas and trade, that\u2019s not an American idea, right. I mean, that\u2019s a global philosophy for how the world should work and I think that the alternatives to that are at best fragmentation, right which breaks down the global model on this; at worst, a growth in authoritarianism for the models of how this gets adopted. And that\u2019s where I think that the precedents on some of this stuff get really tricky. I mean, you can\u2013 You\u2019re, I think, doing a good job of playing devil\u2019s advocate in the conversation\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b laughs<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Because you\u2019re bringing all of the counterarguments that I think someone with good intent might bring to argue, \u201cHey, maybe a different set of data policies is something that we should consider.\u201d The thing that I just worry about is that what we\u2019ve seen is that once a country puts that in place, that\u2019s a precedent that then a lot of other countries that might be more authoritarian use to basically be a precedent to argue that they should do the same things and, and then that spreads. And I think that that\u2019s bad, right. And that\u2019s one of the things that as the person running this company, I\u2019m quite committed to making sure that we play our part in pushing back on that, and keeping the internet as one platform. So I mean, one of the most important decisions that I think I get to make as the person running this company is where are we going to build our data centers and store\u2013 and store data. And we\u2019ve made the decision that we\u2019re not going to put data centers in countries that we think have weak rule of law, that where people\u2019s data may be improperly accessed and that could put people in harm\u2019s way. And, you know, I mean, a lot has been\u2013 There have been a lot of questions around the world around questions of censorship and I think that those are really serious and important. I mean, I, a lot of the reason why I build what we build is because I care about giving everyone a voice, giving people as much voice as possible, so I don\u2019t want people to be censored. At some level, these questions around data and how it\u2019s used and whether authoritarian governments get access to it I think are even more sensitive because if you can\u2019t say something that you want, that is highly problematic. That violates your human rights. I think in a lot of cases it stops progress. But if a government can get access to your data, then it can identify who you are and go lock you up and hurt you and hurt your family and cause real physical harm in ways that are just really deep. So I do think that people running these companies have an obligation to try to push back on that and fight establishing precedents which will be harmful. Even if a lot of the initial countries that are talking about some of this have good intent, I think that this can easily go off the rails. And when you talk about in the future AI and data, which are two concepts that are just really tied together, I just think the values that that comes from and whether it\u2019s part of a more global system, a more democratic process, a more open process, that\u2019s one of our best hopes for having this work out well. If it\u2019s, if it comes from repressive or authoritarian countries, then, then I just think that that\u2019s going to be highly problematic in a lot of ways.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b That raises the question of how do we\u2013 how do we build AI in such a way that it\u2019s not inherently a tool of surveillance and manipulation and control? I mean, this goes back to the idea of creating something that knows you better than you know yourself, which is kind of the ultimate surveillance and control tool. And we are building it now. In different places around the world, it\u2019s been built. And what are your thoughts about how to build an AI which serves individual people and protects individual people and not an AI which can easily with a flip of a switch becomes kind of the ultimate surveillance tool?<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Well, I think that that is more about the values and the policy framework than the technological development. I mean, it\u2019s a lot of the research that\u2019s happening in AI are just very<\/p>\n

fundamental mathematical methods where, you know, a researcher will create an advance and now all of the neural networks will be 3 percent more efficient. I\u2019m just kind of throwing this out.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b And that means that, all right, you know, newsfeed will be a little bit better for people. Our systems for detecting things like hate speech will be a little bit better. But it\u2019s, you know, our ability to find photos of you that you might want to review will be better. But all these systems get a little bit better. So now I think the bigger question is you have places in the world where governments are choosing to use that technology and those advances for things like widespread face recognition and surveillance. And those countries, I mean, China is doing this, they create a real feedback loop which advances the state of that technology where, you know, they say, \u201cOkay, well, we want to do this,\u201d so now there\u2019s a set of companies that are sanctioned to go do that and they have\u2013 are getting access to a lot of data to do it because it\u2019s allowed and encouraged. So, so that is advancing and getting better and better. It\u2019s not\u2013 That\u2019s not a mathematical process. That\u2019s kind of a policy process that they want to go in that direction. So those are their\u2013 the values. And it\u2019s an economic process of the feedback loop in development of those things. Compared to in countries that might say, \u201cHey, that kind of surveillance isn\u2019t what we want,\u201d those companies just don\u2019t exist as much, right, or don\u2019t get as much support and\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b I don\u2019t know. And my home country of Israel is, at least for Jews, it\u2019s a democracy.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b That\u2019s\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b And it\u2019s one of the leaders of the world in surveillance technology. And we basically have one of the biggest laboratories of surveillance technology in the world which is the occupied territories. And exactly these kinds of systems\u2013<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Are being developed there and exported all over the world. So given my personal experience back home, again, I don\u2019t necessarily trust that just because a society in its own inner workings is, say, democratic, that it will not develop and spread these kinds of technologies.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah, I agree. It\u2019s not clear that a democratic process alone solves it, but I do think that it is mostly a policy question, right. It\u2019s, you know, a government can quite easily make the decision that they don\u2019t want to support that kind of surveillance and then the companies that they would be working with to support that kind of surveillance would be out of business. And, and then, or at the very least, have much less economic incentive to continue that technological progress. So, so that dimension of the growth of the technology gets stunted compared to others. And that\u2019s\u2013 and that\u2019s generally the process that I think you want to follow broadly, right. So technological advance isn\u2019t by itself good or bad. I\u00a0think it\u2019s the job of the people who are shepherding it, building it and making policies around it to have policies and make sure that their effort goes towards amplifying the good and mitigating the negative use cases. And, and that\u2019s how I think you end up bending these industries and these technologies to be things that are positive for humanity overall, and I think that that\u2019s a normal process that happens with most technologies that get built. But I think what we\u2019re seeing in some of these places is not the natural mitigation of negative uses. In some cases, the economic feedback loop is pushing those things forward, but I don\u2019t think it has to be that way. But I think that that\u2019s not as much a technological decision as it is a policy decision.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b I fully agree. But I mean, it\u2019s every technology can be used in different ways for good or for bad. You can use the radio to broadcast music to people and you can use the radio to broadcast Hitler giving a speech to millions of Germans. The radio doesn\u2019t care. The radio just carries whatever you put in it. So, yeah, it is a policy decision. But then it just raises the question, how do we make sure that the policies are the right policies in a world when it is becoming more and more easy to manipulate and control people on a massive scale like never before. I mean, the new technology, it\u2019s not just that we invent the technology and then we have good democratic countries and bad authoritarian countries and the question is what will they do with the technology. The technology itself could change the balance of power between democratic and totalitarian systems.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b And I fear that the new technologies are inherent\u2013 are giving an inherent advantage, not necessarily overwhelming, but they do tend to give an inherent advantage to totalitarian regimes. Because the biggest problem of totalitarian regimes in the 20th century, which eventually led to their downfall, is that they couldn\u2019t process the information efficiently enough. If you think about the Soviet Union, so you have this model, an information processing model which basically says, we take all the information from the entire country, move it to one place, to Moscow. There it gets processed. Decisions are made in one place and transmitted back as commands. This was the Soviet model of information processing. And versus the American version, which was, no, we don\u2019t have a single center. We have a lot of organizations and a lot of individuals and businesses and they can make their own decisions. In the Soviet Union, there is somebody in Moscow, if I live in some small farm or kulhose [ph?] in Ukraine, there is somebody in Moscow who tells me how many radishes to grow this year because they know. And in America, I decide for myself with, you know, I get signals from the market and I decide. And the Soviet model just didn\u2019t work well because of the difficulty of processing so much information quickly and with 1950s technology. And this is one of the main reasons why the Soviet Union lost the Cold War to the United States. But with the new technology, it\u2019s suddenly, it might become, and it\u2019s not certain, but one of my fears is that the new technology suddenly makes central information processing far more efficient than ever before and far more efficient than distributed data processing. Because the more data you have in one place, the better your algorithms and then so on and so forth. And this kind of tilts the balance\u00a0between totalitarianism and democracy in favor of totalitarianism. And I wonder what are your thoughts on this issue.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Well, I\u2019m more optimistic about\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah, I guess so.
\nlaughter<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b About democracy in this.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b I think the way that the democratic process needs to work is people start talking about these problems and then even if it seems like it starts slowly in terms of people caring about data issues and technology policy, because it\u2019s a lot harder to get everyone to care about it than it is just a small number of decision makers. So I think that the history of democracy versus more totalitarian systems is it always seems like the totalitarian systems are going to be more efficient and the democracies are just going to get left behind, but, you know, smart people, you know, people start discussing these issues and caring about them, and I do think we see that people do now care much more about their own privacy about data issues, about the technology industry. People are becoming more sophisticated about this. They realize that having a lot of your data stored can both be an asset because it can help provide a lot of benefits and services to you, but increasingly, maybe it\u2019s also a liability because there are hackers and nation states who might be able to break in and use that data against you or exploit it or reveal it. So maybe people don\u2019t want their data to be stored forever. Maybe they want it to be reduced in permanence. Maybe they want it all to be end-to-end encrypted as much as possible in their private communications. People really care about this stuff in a way that they didn\u2019t before. And that\u2019s certainly over the last several years, that\u2019s grown a lot. So I think that that conversation is the normal democratic process and I think what\u2019s going to end up happening is that by the time you get people broadly aware of the issues and on board, that is just a much more powerful approach where then you do have people in a decentralized system who are capable of making decisions who are smart, who I think will generally always do it better than too centralized of an approach. And here is again a place where I worry that personifying AI and saying, AI is a thing, right, that an institution will develop and it\u2019s almost like a sentient being, I think mischaracterizes what it actually is. Right. It\u2019s a set of methods that make everything better. Or, like, sorry. Then, sorry, let me retract that.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b laughs<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b That\u2019s way too broad. It\u2019s a lot of technological processes more efficient. And, and I think that that\u2019s\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b But that\u2019s the worry. Mark<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg:\u200b But that\u2019s\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b It makes also\u2013<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b But that\u2019s not just for\u2013 that\u2019s not just for centralized folks, right, it\u2019s\u2013 I mean, in our context, you know, so we build, our business is this ad platform and a lot of the way that that can be used now is we have 90 million small businesses that use our tools and now because of this access to technology, they have access to the same tools to do advertising and marketing and reach new customers and grow jobs that previously only the big companies would have had. And that\u2019s, that\u2019s a big advance and that\u2019s a massive decentralization. When people talk about our company and the internet platforms overall, they talk about how there\u2019s a small number of companies that are big. And that\u2019s true, but the flip side of it is that now there are billions of people around the world who have a voice that they can share information more broadly and that\u2019s actually a massive decentralization in power and kind of returning power to people. Similarly, people have access to more information, have access to more commerce. That\u2019s all positive. So I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m an optimist on this. I think we have real work cut out for us and I think that the challenges that you raise are the right ones to be thinking about because if we get it wrong, that\u2019s the way in which I think it will go wrong. But I don\u2019t know. I think that the historical precedent would say that at all points, you know, where there was the competition with\u2013 between the U.S. and Japan in the eighties and the seventies or the Cold War before that or different other times, people always thought that the democratic model, which is slow to mobilize but very strong once it does and once people get bought into a direction and understand the issue, I do think that that will continue to be the best way to spread prosperity around the world and make progress in a way that meets people\u2019s needs. And that\u2019s why, you know, when we\u2019re talking about internet policy, when you\u2019re talking about economic policy, I think spreading regulatory frameworks that encode those values I think is one of the most important things that we can do. But it starts with raising the issues that you are and having people be aware of the potential problems.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree and I think the last few decades it was the case that open democratic systems were better and more efficient. And this, I\u2019m again, one of my fears is that it might have made us a bit complacent, because we assume that this is kind of a law of nature that distributed systems are always better and more efficient than centralized systems. And we lived\u2013 we grew up in a world in which there was kind of this\u2013 to do the good thing morally was also to do the efficient thing, economically and politically. And a lot of countries liberalized their economy, their society, their politics over the past 50 years, more because they were convinced of the efficiency argument than of the deep, moral argument. And what happens if efficiency and morality suddenly split, which has happened before in history? I mean, the last 50 years are not representative of the whole of history; we had many cases\u00a0before in human history in which repressive centralized systems were more efficient and, therefore, you got these repressive empires. And there is no law of nature, which says that \u201cThis cannot happen again.\u201d And, again, my fear is that the new technology might tilt that balance; and, just by making central data processing far more efficient, it could give a boost to totalitarian regimes. Also, in the balance of power between, say, again, the center and the individual that for most of history the central authority could not really know you personally simply because of the inability to gather and process the information. So, there were some people who knew you very well, but usually their interests were aligned with yours. Like, my mother knows me very well, but most of the time I can trust my mother. But, now, we are reaching the point when some system far away can know me better than my mother and the interests are not necessarily aligned. Now, yes, we can use that also for good, but what I\u2019m pointing out\u2013 that this is a kind of power that never existed before and it could empower totalitarian and authoritarian regimes to do things that were simply, technically impossible.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Mm-hm. Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Until today. Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b And, you know, if you live in an open democracy\u2013 so, okay, you can rely on all kinds of mechanisms to protect yourself. But, thinking more globally about this issue, I think a key question is how do you protect human attention [ph?] from being hijacked by malevolent players who know you better than you know yourself, who know you better than your mother knows you? And this is a question that we never had to face before, because we never had\u2013 usually the malevolent players just didn\u2019t know me very well.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah. Okay, so, there\u2019s a lot in what you were just talking about.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg: \u200bI mean, I think in general one of the things that\u2013 do you think that there is a scale effect where one of the best things that we could do to\u2013 if we care about these open values and having a globally connected world, I think making sure that the critical mass of the investment in new technologies encodes those values is really important. So, that\u2019s one of the reasons why I care a lot about not supporting the spread of authoritarian policies to more countries, either inadvertently doing that or setting precedents that enable that to happen. Because the more development that happens in the way that is more open, where the research is more open, where people have the\u2013 where the policymaking around it is more democratic, I think that that\u2019s going to be positive. So, I think kind of maintaining that balance ends up being really important. One of the reasons why I think democratic countries over time tend to do\u00a0better on serving what people want is because there\u2019s no metric to optimize the society, right? When you talk about efficiency, a lot what people are talking about is economic efficiency, right?<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Are we increasing GDP? Are we increasing jobs? Are we decreasing poverty? Those things are all good, but I think part of what the democratic process does is people get to decide on their own which of the dimensions in society matter the most to them in their lives.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b But if you can hijack people\u2019s attention and manipulate\u2013<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b See\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b \u2013them, then people deciding on their own just doesn\u2019t help, because I don\u2019t realize it that somebody manipulated me to think that this is what I want. If\u2013 and we are reaching the point when for the first time in history you can do that on a massive scale. So, again, I speak a lot about the issue of free will in this regard\u2013<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b \u2013and the people that are easiest to manipulate are the people who believe in free will and who simply identify with whatever thought or desire pops up in their mind, because they cannot even imagine\u2013<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Mm-hm.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b \u2013that this desire is not the result of my free will. This desire is the result of some external manipulation. Now it may sound paranoid\u2013 and for most of history it was probably paranoid, because nobody had this kind of ability to do it on a massive scale-<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b \u2013but, here, like in Silicon Valley, the tools to do that on a massive scale have been developed over the last few decades. And they may have been developed with the best intentions; some of them may have been developed with the intention of just selling stuff to people and selling products to people. But now the same tools that can be used to sell me something I don\u2019t really need can now be used to sell me a politician I really don\u2019t need or an ideology that I really don\u2019t need. It\u2019s the same tool. It\u2019s the same hacking the human animal and manipulating what\u2019s happening inside.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah, okay. So, there\u2019s a lot going on here. I think that there\u2019s\u2013 when designing these systems I think that there\u2019s the intrinsic design, which you want to make sure that you get right and then there\u2019s preventing abuse\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b \u2013which I think is\u2013 so, I think that there\u2019s two types of questions that people raise. I mean, one is we saw what the Russian government tried to do in the 2016 election. That\u2019s clear abuse. We need to build up really advanced systems for detecting that kind of interference in the democratic process and more broadly being able to identify that, identify when people are standing up networks of fake accounts that are not behaving in a way that normal people would, to be able to weed those out and work with law enforcement and election commissions and folks all around the world and the intelligence community to be able to coordinate and be able to deal with that effectively. So, stopping abuse is certainly important, but I would argue that, even more, the deeper question: Is that the intrinsic design of the systems, right?<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah, exactly.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b So, not just fighting the abuse. And, there, I think that the incentives are more aligned towards a good outcome than a lot of critics might say. And here\u2019s why: I think that there\u2019s a difference between what people want first order and what they want second order over time. So, right now, you might just consume a video, because you think it\u2019s silly or fun. And, you know, you wake up\u2013 or you kind of look up an hour later and you\u2019ve watched a bunch of videos and you\u2019re like, \u201cWell, what happened to my time?\u201d And, okay, so, maybe in the narrow short-term period you consume some more content and maybe you saw some more ads. So, it seems like it\u2019s good for the business, but it actually really isn\u2019t over time, because people make decisions based on what they find valuable. And what we find, at least in our work, is that what people really want to do is connect with other people. Right? It\u2019s not just passively consumed content. It\u2019s\u2013 so, we\u2019ve had to find and constantly adjust our systems over time to make sure that we\u2019re rebalancing it; so, that way you\u2019re interacting with people; so, that way we make sure that we don\u2019t just measure signals in the system, like, what are you clicking on, because that can get you into a bad local optimum.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b But, instead, we bring in real people to tell us what their real experience is in words, right? Not just kind of filling out scores, but also telling us what were the most meaningful experiences you had today, what content was the most important, what interaction did you have with a friend that mattered to you the most and was that connected to something that we did? And, if not, then we go and try to do\u00a0the work to try to figure out how we can facilitate that. And what we find is that, yeah, in the near-term, maybe showing some people some more viral videos might increase time, right? But, over the long term, it doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s not actually aligned with our business interests or the long-term social interest. So, kind of in strategy terms, that would be a stupid thing to do. And I think a lot of people think that businesses are just very short-term oriented and that we only care about\u2013 people think that businesses only care about the next quarter profit, but I think that most businesses that get run well that\u2019s just not the case. And, you know, I think last year on one our earnings calls, you know, I told investors that we\u2019d actually reduced the amount of video watching that quarter by 50 million hours a day, because we wanted to take down the amount of viral videos that people were seeing, because we thought that that was displacing more meaningful interactions that people were having with other people, which, in the near-term, might have a short-term impact on the business for that quarter, but, over the long term, would be more positive both for how people feel about the product and for the business. And, you know, one of the patterns that I think has actually been quite inspiring or a cause of optimism in running a business is that oftentimes you make decisions that you think are going to pay off long down the road, right? So, you think, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m doing the right thing long term, but it\u2019s going to hurt for a while.\u201d And I almost always find that the long term comes sooner than you think and that when you make these decisions that there may be taking some pain in the near term in order to get to what will be a better case down the line, that better case\u2013 maybe you think it\u2019ll take five years, but, actually, it ends up coming in a year. Right? And I think people at some deep level know when something is good. And, like, I guess this gets back to the democratic values, because, at some level, I trust that people have a sense of what they actually care about. And it may be that, you know, if we were showing more viral videos, maybe that would be better than the alternatives that they have to do right now, right? I mean, maybe that\u2019s better than what\u2019s on TV, because at least they\u2019re personalized videos. You know, maybe it\u2019s better than YouTube, if we have better content or whatever the reason is. But I think you can still make the service better over time for actually matching what people want; and if you do that, that is going to be better for everyone. So, I do think the intrinsic design of these systems is quite aligned with serving people in a way that is pro-social and that\u2019s certainly what I care about in running this company is to get there.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah, and I think this is like the rock bottom, that this is the most important issue that, ultimately, what I\u2019m hearing from you and from many other people when I have these discussions, is ultimately the customer is always right, the voter knows best, people know deep down, people know what is good for them. People make a choice: If they choose to do it, then it\u2019s good. And that has been the bedrock of, at least, Western democracies for centuries, for generations. And this is now where the big question mark is: Is it still true in a world where we have the technology to hack human beings and manipulate them like never before that the customer is always right, that the voter knows best? Or have we gone past this point? And we can know\u2013 and the simple, ultimate answer that \u201cWell, this is what people want,\u201d and \u201cthey know what\u2019s good for them,\u201d maybe it\u2019s no longer the case.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Well, yeah, I think that the\u2013 it\u2019s not clear to me that that has changed, but I think that that\u2019s a very deep question about democracy.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah, I was going to say, this is the deepest\u2013<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b I don\u2019t think that that\u2019s a new question. I mean, I think that people have always\u00a0wondered\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b No, the question isn\u2019t this. The technology is new. I mean, if you lived in 19th century America and you didn\u2019t have these extremely powerful tools to decipher and influence people, then it was a different\u2013<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Well, let me actually frame this a different way\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Okay.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b \u2013which is I actually think, you know, for all the talk around \u201cIs democracy being hurt by the current set of tools and the media,\u201d and all this, I actually think that there\u2019s an argument the world is significantly more democratic now than it was in the past. I mean, the country was set up as\u2013 the U.S. was set up as a republic, right? So, a lot of the foundational rules limited the power of a lot of individuals being able to vote and have a voice and checked the popular will at a lot of different stages, everything from the way that laws get written by Congress, right, and not by people, you know, so, everything\u2013 to the Electoral College, which a lot of people think today is undemocratic, but, I mean, it was put in place because of a set of values that a democratic republic would be better. I actually think what has happened today is that increasingly more people are enfranchised and more people have a voice, more people are getting the vote, but, increasingly, people have a voice, more people have access to information and I think a lot of what people are asking is \u201cIs that good?\u201d It\u2019s not necessarily the question of \u201cOkay, the democratic process has been the same, but now the technology is different.\u201d I think the technology has made it so individuals are more empowered and part of the question is \u201cIs that the world that we want?\u201d And, again, this is an area where it\u2019s not\u2013 I mean, all these things are with challenges, right? And often progress causes a lot of issues and it\u2019s a really hard thing to reason through, \u201cWow, we\u2019re trying to make progress and help all these people join the global economy,\u201d or help people join the communities and have the social lives that they would want and be accepted in different ways, but it comes with this dislocation in the near term and that\u2019s a massive dislocation. So, that seems really painful. But I actually think that you can make a case that we\u2019re at\u2013 and continue to be at the most democratic time and I think that overall in the history of our country at least, when we\u2019ve gotten more people to have the vote and we\u2019ve gotten more representation and we\u2019ve made it so that people have access to more information and more people can share their experiences, I do think that that\u2019s made the country stronger and has helped\u00a0progress. And it\u2019s not that this stuff is without issues. It has massive issues. But that\u2019s, at least, the pattern that I see and why I\u2019m optimistic about a lot of the work.
\nYuval Noah Harari:\u200b I agree that more people have more voice than ever before, both in the U.S. and globally. That\u2019s\u2013 I think you\u2019re absolutely right. My concern is to what extent we can trust the voice of people\u2013 to what extent I can trust my voice, like I\u2019m\u2013 we have this picture of the world, that I have this voice inside me, which tells me what is right and what is wrong, and the more I\u2019m able to express this voice in the outside world and influence what\u2019s happening and the more people can express their voices, it\u2019s better, it\u2019s more democratic. But what happens if, at the same time that more people can express their voices, it\u2019s also easier to manipulate your inner voice? To what extent you can really trust that the thought that just popped up in your mind is the result of some free will and not the result of an extremely powerful algorithm that understands what\u2019s happening inside you and knows how to push the buttons and press the levers and is serving some external entity and it has planted this thought or this desire that we now express? \u200b \u200bSo, it\u2019s two different issues of giving people voice and trusting\u2013 and, again, I\u2019m not saying I know everything, but all these people that now join the conversation, we cannot trust their voices. I\u2019m asking this about myself, to what extent I can trust my own inner voice. And, you know, I spend two hours meditating every day and I go on these long meditation retreats and my main takeaway from that is it\u2019s craziness inside there and it\u2019s so complicated. And the simple, na\u00efve belief that the thought that pops up in my mind \u201cThis is my free will,\u201d this was never the case. But if, say, a thousand years ago the battles inside were mostly between, you know, neurons and biochemicals and childhood memories and all that; increasingly, you have external actors going under your skin and into your brain and into your mind. And how do I trust that my amygdala is not a Russian agent now? How do I know\u2013 the more we understand about the extremely complex world inside us, the less easy it is to simply trust what this inner voice is telling, is saying.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah, I understand the point that you\u2019re making. As one of the people who\u2019s running a company that develops ranking systems to try to help show people content that\u2019s going to be interesting to them there\u2019s a dissonance between the way that you\u2019re explaining what you think is possible and what I see as a practitioner building this. I think you can build systems that can get good at a very specific thing, right? At helping to understand which of your friends you care the most about so you can rank their content higher in newsfeed. But the idea that there\u2019s some kind of generalized AI that\u2019s a monolithic thing that understands all dimensions of who you are in a way that\u2019s deeper than you do, I think doesn\u2019t exist and is probably quite far off from existing. So, there\u2019s certainly abuse of the systems that I think needs to be\u2013 that I think is more of a policy and values question, which is\u2013 you know, on Facebook, you know, you\u2019re supposed to be your real identity. So, if you have, to use your example, Russian agents or folks\u00a0from the government, the IRA, who are posing as someone else and saying something and you see that content, but you think it\u2019s coming from someone else, then that\u2019s not an algorithm issue. I mean, that\u2019s someone abusing the system and taking advantage of the fact that you trust that on this platform someone is generally going to be who they are, so you can trust that the information is coming from some place and kind of slipping in the backdoor that way and that\u2019s the thing that we certainly need to go fight. But, I don\u2019t know, as broad matter, I do think that there\u2019s this question of, you know, to what degree are the systems\u2013 this kind of brings it full circle to where we started on \u201cIs it fragmentation or is it personalization?\u201d You know, is the content that you see\u2013 if it resonates, is that because it actually just more matches your interests or is it because you\u2019re being incepted and convinced of something that you don\u2019t actually believe and doesn\u2019t\u2013 and is dissonant with your interests and your beliefs. And, certainly, all the psychological research that I\u2019ve seen and the experience that we\u2019ve had, is that when people see things that don\u2019t match what they believe, they just ignore it.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Mm-hm.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Right? So, certainly, there is a\u2013 there can be an evolution that happens where a system shows information that you\u2019re going to be interested in; and if that\u2019s not managed well, that has the risk of pushing you down a path towards adopting a more extreme position or evolving the way you think about it over time. But I think most of the content, it resonates with people because it resonates with their lived experience. And, to the extent that people are abusing that and either trying to represent that they\u2019re someone who they\u2019re not or are trying to take advantage of a bug in human psychology where we might be more prone to an extremist idea, that\u2019s our job in either policing the platform, working with governments and different agencies, and making sure that we design our systems and our recommendation systems to not be promoting things that people might engage with in the near term, but over the long term will regret and resent us for having done that. And I think it\u2019s in our interests to get that right. And, for a while, I think we didn\u2019t understand the depth of some of the problems and challenges that we faced there and there\u2019s certainly still a lot more to do. And when you\u2019re up against nation-states, I mean, they\u2019re very sophisticated, so they\u2019re going to keep on evolving their tactics. But the thing that I would\u2013 that I think is really important is that the fundamental design of the systems I do think\u2013 and our incentives are aligned with helping people connect with the people they want, have meaningful interactions, not just getting people to watch a bunch of content that they\u2019re going to resent later that they did that and certainly not making people have more extreme or negative viewpoints than what they actually believe. So.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Mm-hm. Maybe I can try and summarize my view in that we have two distinct dangers coming out of the same technological tools. We have the easier danger to grasp, which is of extreme totalitarian regimes of the kind we haven\u2019t seen before, and this could happen in different\u2013 maybe not in the U.S., but in other countries, that these tools, you say that\u2013 I mean, that these are abuses. But in some countries, this could become the norm. That you\u2019re living from the moment you are\u00a0born in this system that constantly monitors and surveils you and constantly kind of manipulates you from a very early age to adopt particular ideas, views, habits, so forth, in a way which was never possible before.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Mm-hm.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b And this is like the full-fledged totalitarian dystopia, which could be so effective that people would not even resent it, because they will be completely aligned with the values or the ideals of the sys\u2013 it\u2019s not \u201c1984\u201d where you need to torture people all the time. No! If you have agents inside their brain, you don\u2019t need the external secret police. So, that\u2019s one danger. It\u2019s like the full-fledged totalitarianism. Then, in places like the U.S., the more immediate danger or problem to think about is what, increasingly, people refer to as surveillance capitalism; that you have these systems that constantly interact with you and come to know you and it\u2019s all supposedly in your best interests to give you better recommendations and better advice. So, it starts with recommendation for which movie to watch and where to go on vacation. But, as the system becomes better, it gives you recommendation on what to study at college and where to work, ultimately, whom to marry who to vote for, which religion to join\u2013 like, join a community. Like, \u201cYou have all these religious communities. This is the best religion for you for your type of personality, Judaism, nah, it won\u2019t work for you. Go with Zen Buddhism. It\u2019s a much better fit for your personality. You would thank us. In five years, you would look back and say, \u2018This was an amazing recommendation. Thank you. I so much enjoy Zen Buddhism.\u2019\u201d And, again, people will\u2013 it will feel that this is aligned with their own best interests and the system improves over time. Yeah, there will be glitches. Not everybody will be happy all the time. But what does it mean that all the most important decisions in my life are being taken by an external algorithm? What does it mean in terms of human agency, in terms of the meaning of life?<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Mm-hm.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b You know, for thousands of years, humans tended to view life as a drama of decision-making. Like, life is\u2013 it\u2019s a journey, you reach an intersection after intersection and you need to choose. Some decisions are small, like what to eat for breakfast, and some decisions are really big like whom to marry. And almost all of art and all of religion is about that. Like, almost every\u2013 whether it\u2019s a Shakespeare tragedy or a Hollywood comedy, it\u2019s about the hero or heroine needing to make a big decision, \u201cTo be or not to be,\u201d to marry X or to marry Y. And what does it mean to live in a world in which, increasingly, we rely on the recommendations of algorithms to make these decisions until we reach a point when we simply follow them all the time or most of the time. And they make good recommendations. I\u2019m not saying that this is some abuse, something sinister\u2013 no! They are good recommendations, but I\u2019m just\u2013 we don\u2019t have a model for understanding what is the meaning of human life in such a situation?<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Well, I think the biggest objection that I\u2019d have to what\u2013 to both of the ideas that you just raised is that we have access to a lot of different sources of information, a lot of people to talk to about different things. And it\u2019s not just like there\u2019s one set of recommendations or a single recommendation that gets to dominate what we do and that that gets to be overwhelming either in the totalitarian or the capitalist model of what you were saying.\u200b \u200bTo the contrary, I think people really don\u2019t like and are very distrustful when they feel like they\u2019re being told what to do or just have a single option. One of the big questions that we\u2019ve studied is how to address when there\u2019s a hoax or clear misinformation. And the most obvious thing that it would seem like you\u2019d do intuitively is tell people, \u201cHey, this seems like it\u2019s wrong. Here is the other point of view that is right,\u201d or, at least, if it\u2019s a polarized thing, even if it\u2019s not clear what\u2019s wrong and what\u2019s right, \u201chere\u2019s the other point of view,\u201d on any given issue. And that really doesn\u2019t work, right? So, what ends up happening is if you tell people that something is false, but they believe it, then they just end up not trusting you.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Right? So, that ends up not working. And if you frame two things as opposites\u2013 right? So, if you say, \u201cOkay, well, you\u2019re a person who doesn\u2019t believe in\u2013 you\u2019re seeing content about not believing in climate change, I\u2019m going to show you the other perspective, right? Here\u2019s someone that argues that climate change is a thing,\u201d that actually just entrenches you further, because it\u2019s, \u201cOkay, someone\u2019s trying to kind of control\u2013\u201d<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah, it\u2019s a\u2013 mm-hm.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Okay, so what ends up working, right\u2013 sociologically and psychologically, the thing that ends up actually being effective is giving people a range of choices. So, if you show not \u201cHere\u2019s the other opinion,\u201d and with a judgement on the piece of content that a person engaged with, but instead you show a series of related articles or content, then people can kind of work out for themselves, \u201cHey, here\u2019s the range of different opinions,\u201d or things that exist on this topic. And maybe I lean in one direction or the other, but I\u2019m kind of going to work out for myself where I want to be. Most people don\u2019t choose the most extreme thing and people end up feeling like they\u2019re informed and can make a good decision. So, at the end of the day, I think that that\u2019s the architecture and the responsibility that we have is to make sure that the work that we\u2019re doing gives people more choices, that it\u2019s not a given\u2013 a single opinion that can kind of dominate anyone\u2019s thinking but where you can, you know, connect to hundreds of different friends. And even if most of your friends share your religion or your political ideology, you\u2019re probably going to have five or 10 percent of friends who come from a different background, who have different ideas and, at least that\u2019s getting in as well. So, you\u2019re getting a broader range of views. So, I think that these are really important questions and it\u2019s not like there\u2019s an answer that is going to fully solve it one way or another.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b That\u2019s\u2013 definitely not. [ph?]<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b But I feel these are the right things to talk through. You know, we\u2019ve been going for 90 minutes. So, we probably should wrap up. But I think we have a lot of material to cover in the next one of these\u2013<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b \u2013that, hopefully, we\u2019ll get to do at some point in the future. And thank you so much for
\ncoming and joining and doing this. This has been a really interesting series of important topics to discuss.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Yeah, so, thank you for hosting me and for being open about these very difficult questions, which I know that you, being the head of a global corpora\u2013 I can just sit here and speak whatever I want\u2013
\nlaughter<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b \u2013but you have many more responsibilities on your head. So, I appreciate that kind of you putting yourself on the firing line and dealing with these questions.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Thanks. All right.<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari:\u200b Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg:\u200b Yeah.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/3KxJDGkHoAs\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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