Hey everybody, I got one today with a guest you're going to find really interesting

on an intriguing subject that's covered in a way which is edifying, enjoyable, and with a few lasts, you know, for a change.

I've decided to mix things up.

My guest is Tim Kendall, who as one of the top executives at Facebook early on, was in charge of monetization of Facebook.

In other words, he was the guy that Zuckerberg put in charge of figuring out the business model for Facebook

to maximize the amount of money the company would make.

And wouldn't you know it, at least from the standpoint of that goal, making the

company, you know, a going concern. He really did a commendable job. On the other hand,

it turns out there's been kind of a dark downside to the success of this business model,

which is essentially treating Facebook's users,

not so much as their customers, but as their product, meaning that advertisers would pay Facebook

for access to its users to advertise them.

And the really, really tech-savvy programmers at Facebook

developed this artificial intelligence, these algorithms,

to keep track of every Facebook user and what they liked

and what kept them on the platform.

And eventually the algorithm they developed knew more about each user and what kept him or her engaged and how to maximize that for the advertisers

and develop these bells and whistles that kept people on the

platform and learned what worked and it turned out that it would be addictive and affect folks

mental health and particularly adolescence.

And Facebook understood that some people are invested in politics and, of course, would feed them stuff that confirmed their biases.

And the algorithm discovered that some people became addicted to more and more extreme versions of the xenophobic messages that they were drawn to and weird conspiracy theories and stuff about political enemies being pedophiles.

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