Arab Spring Leader Wael Ghonim on Modern Social Media's Promise And Peril

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2021-02-24

YouTube video id: AnaxO-NO7CM

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnaxO-NO7CM

hey yo hey alex how are you
good good to see you again thank you
okay i'm just going to read the ad
and then we'll get into it um here we go
the big technology podcast is sponsored
by media ocean looking for a job in big
tech you might want to take a look at
media ocean they were just named by
adage as the number one place to work
in advertising technology go to
mediaocean.com
big tech to learn more about the company
and check out their careers hub
media ocean is building the mission
critical platform for omnichannel
advertising
if that sounds cool or if you just want
to find out what those buzzwords mean
hit up mediaotion.com bigtech and browse
their job listings and big thanks to
media ocean for supporting the big
technology podcast
okay let's do it hello and welcome
hello and welcome to the big technology
podcast a show for cool-headed nuanced
conversation of the tech world
and beyond joining us today is one of
the most original thinkers in tech i've
ever met
and someone who is not only a thinker
but a person who's had the guts to put
his own safety on the line for causes
that matter to him welcome help spark
the egyptian revolution
in 2011 by creating a facebook page that
rallied
the country against the regime he's also
a friend of mine
i think i can say that who's healthy
thank you i appreciate that
you are a friend of mine too oh thank
you very much
okay so it's confirmed and while you've
helped me think through the issues
through different lens and i've been
looking through this conversation since
before i started the podcast
so an official welcome to the show
welcome maya
uh thank you alex and i'm happy to be uh
with you and uh we've
kind of developed an interesting
relationship as we got
introduced to each other and since then
i'm happy to
uh to have of course call you a friend
because um
i do think that uh at the end of the day
i'm getting from you
is good vibes and experiences and we
share insights so it's a good way to
start a friendship anyway
yeah likewise i i i've told you this
before but i feel like every time we
talk about tech and talk about life
i come away having learned something and
and not only like learned like a new
fact or figure
but a new way of appreciating the world
a new way of looking at the world
and uh that means a lot of you see it
that way
for sure for sure 100 um so i think i'd
like to start just by introducing you
to the audience so you were working for
google as a head of marketing
in the middle east in 2011 and then um
the egyptian regime killed a man khalid
sayed
and you created a facebook page we are
all khalid saeed
so can you take which eventually ended
up leaving leading to the overthrow of
the regime
so can you take us back to that moment
what were you feeling then
and what were you thinking well it's
um it was basically a moment of
frustration because uh i'm someone who
was born in 1980 and since i was
one year old since i was like coming to
life there was only one
president that runs the country and the
ruling party was
um kind of getting old in their
positions of power it's been like 30
years at the time
and unfortunately uh the way the country
runs
has not been ideal in in the perspective
of a lot of people
especially young people uh who were kind
of exposed
to the global phenomena who got
together on the internet who so uh when
when the event of health this happened
and the response that came from the
government about
his case um was was just
basically um a denial and uh
and saying that no he did not die from
being
beaten up by police officers he just
swallowed um
uh some drugs and and that's what
basically caused him to die
uh when that happened i started a page
and my idea at the time was not to
start any kind of massive unrest or any
kind of massive revolutions or anything
it was just
as simple as i am i know how to
communicate i learn how to communicate i
have a background in engineering and as
well as
master of business administration a lot
of experience in the street
and it must be that people like me
should be doing something about the
the environment so i was trying to raise
awareness about
uh police brutality human rights
violations
um uh the calling for democracy in egypt
and all of that was happening kind of
like
in the realm of uh between 2010 and uh
for months until 2011 happened just to
give people perspective of the numbers
um
after three days of creating the
facebook page about a hundred thousand
people
were on it and and the page grew like
uh to uh when the time the the
revolution
um kind of started the page had about
400 500 000 members and at the time in
2011 that was like a huge number
uh within a page that has some sort of a
political agenda
um and uh at the time
because of my frustration and because of
my desire to do something i just decided
to take a bit of a risk
uh by operating this page anonymously so
it was not a full risk it was an
anonymous uh management of the page
and um basically and it is interesting
yeah go ahead
now please go ahead now go ahead yeah i
was i was just going to
say it was interesting yeah at the
moment uh
there's a bit of a delay so it's okay
but
oh yeah wow the floor is yours yeah the
way the way events unfold
is not about moments actually you know
there is no like
we try as journalists or we try as
people who write books and we try as
people try and understand experiences to
come
to come up with some sort of an analysis
of what happened
but most of the time um there is a
there's always like a butterfly effect
the trailing effect for all the events
so it was not just
the khaled side death that triggered
everything i did not join politics just
because he died you know what i mean it
it's mostly just general observation
frustration anger
that eventually gets manifested when an
event
uh like the what happened to hadith
happens
and then as we grouped and as people
were together
when the events in tunisia happened i
kind of had a change of
my own internal faith towards whether
should we or
should we not do something in the
streets not that i'm the one who who
holds the key
and what happened in tunisia um in
tunisia basically
in 14th of january ben ali the president
of tunisia for over 20 years
uh due to protests um announced that he
is resigning and he had to
flew outside of tunisia at the time
actually
his his plane was on the air and they
were trying to find
the pilot was trying to find which
country is going to take him because
france said no
you know a few other countries said no
we can't have you
because there's a lot of trouble and and
he ended up
landing in saudi arabia but the point i
was trying to make is
that kind of event gave us a perspective
that actually
uh change in systems could happen that
individuals are powerful at the time i
like thought the power of the people is
greater than the people in power
i still think the same but it's kind of
like it came manifested
um in uh in the scene so uh i just used
the page
and the 400 000 people winning the page
to call for
uh let's all you know i just put a date
and a time and hoped for um
us to to start working towards this of
course uh just to clarify i'm not saying
that i'm the one who
just ignited it the real ones who
ignited it are the regime and
if i was not there would have been a
different scenario
that takes uh people somewhere that's
that's also not favorable because at the
end of the day there was like a total
um collapse in the in the system and
uh that was also met with a total new
new technology that's coming bright and
exciting everybody was excited on
facebook and liking and
hearting and you know there was no heart
at the time liking and getting like in
the hype of like feeling
that they're powerful that they can do
things which is kind of true
uh but at the end of the day that kind
of contributed to the fall of
president mubarak during the
the revolution for 18 days i got
arrested for 11 days out of the 18 days
they captured me from the street and i i
was arrested for about
uh 11 days and there was huge pressure
coming from the street
coming from uh different governments
different countries
and and also like of course google as
the company have
done some uh diplomatic effort to just
try and help me out not
not to get me out but just to make sure
that i'm okay because at the time
uh no one even knew who where i was i
was just basically taken out from the
street
and put in a solitary confinement in
somewhere
that i did not even personally knew
because they cover my eyes
so i mean long story short it it was
basically this kind of uh
a collective action that got together
and i was i was in the middle
of it because of the
you know how internet savvy and also how
frustrated and how driven i was about
having a better future for the country
right and the way that you describe it
is um
you know great perspective talking about
how what happened was a manifestation of
frustration
passed but on the other hand it does
take a certain type of
individual to help lead what you led
and you know i'd love to speak about
social media throughout
this conversation because obviously our
perspectives on facebook have
changed uh since then it was sort of the
height of why people like facebook and
we'll get to that in the next question
but i just want to know from your
perspective like personally
um you must have known that you know
your life
you had a pretty good life you know
working for google and
um and you must have known that your
life was going to change getting
involved so
what made you feel you know it was
worthwhile to put your personal
well-being at risk to lead something
like this because when an individual
and i know it was a group but you know
they eventually found you they find the
individuals that are
you know helping to spark it when an
individual goes against a government
that's a bold thing to do so i'm curious
what what um
if you even made a calculation and what
calculation went through your head when
you decided to make this happen
yeah i think um it's a combination of uh
recklessness and um
[Music]
basically immaturity uh combined with
lack of knowledge as well as a lot of
bravery
and uh drive to feel something like in
throughout my career uh like with the
you know i remember the last few months
at google i was not really happy at all
like
i just felt something is going on wrong
you know i i don't i
i did not come to life uh to live a
boxed life in a way like you know i just
operate out of my
own resources and we are here to just
live life whatever that is i feel like
there is something uh
i always feel that that there is
something stronger about the bonds
between people
and uh there has to be a price to try
and bring those bonds together
so some people have to stand up and and
and pay that price
my naivety protects me somehow because
you know if
if one sometimes really understand the
consequences of their actions like of
course i
while i was doing what i was doing i
thought there was a lot of
security risks on myself and i thought i
might be arrested but at the same time i
always reminded myself even inside the
prison
um you know does it really matter how
how long do you live
or what kind of work do you do during
your life
and and of course that question of
mattering uh is important to
uh you know even on whether you're a
believer of a god or a divine power that
is
that wants us in a certain way or even
if you are an unbeliever
that just want to do things that matter
in your own experience of life because i
just believe that life is all about
feelings it's not about words it's not
about actions
it's really about feelings the words and
actions are just
uh our way to to feel whatever we feel
and some many people who do actions uh
uh who are addicted to certain actions
they are just addicted to it because of
the feel that it gives them
so in that sense i kind of value my
feelings a lot
and whenever i felt like i was not happy
i did not just keep moving on in the
same direction
so i i felt an internal urge all the
time to do something
while at the same time it's i strive to
balance it
i don't wanna you know i i was an
anonymous admin i was hiding my identity
i did not stay at my mom's place on 25th
of january
um because you know i was living in
dubai so i would
stay with with my family but i didn't i
stayed in one of my friends offices
i changed my phones i broke one of my
sim cards because i don't want the
government to trace me if they are
so i kind of played despite my naivety i
kind of played the game as much as i can
but i can tell you
that when they captured me i was not
ready for it
so i knew that a lot of it was also
naivety
how did they find you because you were
an anonymous admin
of the page and they ended up finding
out who you were and then
what was it by chance what happened
yeah uh i i basically there was a
an ex google at the time he uh i think
he's still at google google i
uh google ideas or jigsaw the ceo of
google checkzo was visiting cairo and it
was
merely a coincidence i swear because the
his plan
to visit was many months before uh it
was settled many months before
and his name is jared kohen so he
was working for the department of state
before
the before google
so when he came he was coming to egypt
for a project about
extremism and he was in contact with the
government like he was working
through normal channels but because of
his background i believe the government
somehow
followed him because he came he arrived
on 26th or 27th i can't remember
and again you know because i know from
inside the company that this
and what's the trip what's the
significance of the 25th
25th the significance of the 25th was
the first day uh the protest
started so when he arrived he arrived at
a at the time where the government was
kind of like
looking around what's happening why
where what's happening
yeah where are all these people coming
from and who drives them and who's
motivating them
and they were kind of and it was a
facebook page
yeah they were kind of bought into a big
conspiracy about
that whatever that's happening cannot be
just uh um
coincidence it must be a series of
events or mass organized and
orchestrated by
foreign powers and they were trying to
figure that out so they kind of followed
him and i just had dinner with him
on 27th because 28th was going to be one
of the days where
we don't know what's gonna happen next
so i just wanted to see him before i
just disappear from the scene so i
agreed with him to
meet him for hookah house i'll smoke
hookah
and dinner in one of the cafes and as
soon as i finished
uh my dinner with him
as i was walking in in the dark street
it was like around
midnight and you know just four people
uh surround me with
they have machine guns and stuff and
they push me on the ground they hit me
and then
you know they um basically uh
handcuff me put a head
like something to cover my eyes uh an
eye cover so that i can't see what's
going it's like a movie scene you know
i kept trying to scream uh but
you know even people who would see you
they would not engage because these
look like they don't they were not
fearing they're not wearing like
official
outfits but they they had guns and they
clearly looked like
they know what they were doing that
they're not gonna stop so
you get a sense that okay that's
security so i uh
they they found me in that way which uh
which i i think the eavesdrop with your
conversation with jared is that what
happened no no no they were
they were following him they were
finding who is everyone who is he
meeting
and they found me to be a very like they
have to arrest me
they have to know what's my story why i
meet this guy what's happening and they
that was part of the investigation the
big part of it was
um asking me about my connections with
google my connections with
the cia i mean i had no connections with
the cia my connect you know what what is
driving
they just can't understand how they
couldn't understand at the time my
motivations for doing what i'm doing
they thought
it must be that i'm just uh recruited
and paid to believe in the certain way
uh i believe in to do whatever right uh
under foreign agents but i was trying
yeah and i kind of tried to argue with
them uh back and forth using logic and
emotions
the uh uh this is this is not what it's
it's not what you think and i i do think
that
uh they did uh like at least the ones i
i talked to um they did have a different
uh way of treating me as we go which
gives me a bit of a signal i don't i
don't
necessarily security people don't give
you the real impression
uh they're trained to do so they don't
give you the reality right they don't
need to
uh they always they actually prefer that
you don't know what you think of them
so in that sense i i kind of i kind of
feel like i
i was able to kind of deliver my message
but uh
overall most of the government even
until today they just treat me with a
lot of suspicion
right what was it like being detained
for those 11 days
um it was a very hard experience because
on one hand you
don't know when are you going to get out
you don't know what's going on like i
was completely disconnected and isolated
from the scene
uh just imagine me in a very small tiny
room
um uh that's not even well painted it
has like all these bad things that i'm
smelling and i kept coughing for hours
because of it
and i'm blindfolded and handcuffed even
when i go to uh
to the bathroom the whole time yeah the
whole time
um and it was such a tough experience i
have to say
um that i um probably is
still still trying to um
kind of pass in a in the most positive
way but uh there are
certain things in my head you know i
before i leave
i just hugged everybody they allowed me
to see some of their faces which is
also uncommon like you have to they they
don't unfold you until you're out
because they don't want you to recognize
any of the faces
of those who either interrogated you or
beating you up or whatever that is
uh i i i don't know if i'm uh if i'm
i guess like many years past no problem
you know a couple of the officers
actually liked me and they wanted me to
see everybody and i saw everybody
including
um those who were beating me up and i
hugged them and i told them inside in
front of them that i wish them the best
and i actually wish it uh and you know i
get very irritated uh
when uh people call that stockholm
syndrome
i like to call it amsterdam syndrome uh
because it's all about making
making love you know we're just here to
love each other
and um and and at the end of the day
uh um the fact that someone oppresses me
uh does not automatically make them
oppressor for good and the fact that one
is oppressing me does not make them
um the evil the evil people i mean even
if they torture me that does not make
them the evil people
because i'm not in the game of a sign of
course the act of torture is an evil act
and of course it's unethical and i
oppose it with all what i can because
i've actually experienced it
so i kind of know how horrible it is you
know you just go into your own
terror room inside your head where you
know all things are dull
you don't you are no longer in control
in control of your destiny
you just don't know nothing you know so
even the food someone is throwing uh
giving it to you throwing it at you and
you have to accept whatever you're
eating
uh and the food was okay um uh so thanks
to the chips and the
in the uh security you know at least
but i mean it was okay it was okay
you know because i'm just i learned from
my own experience in life and in the
streets just live with the
with with whatever that's uh in front of
you you know if i'm complaining about
the food i'll be beating up there
but the food was something i could eat
uh
uh the torture did not go into uh crazy
limits
uh i i did not i did not get electrified
i was not you know i was not lift
there was no mark in my body from the
beating you know all the beating was
okay
i could i could have taken it uh the
humiliation um
of course all of that as as i say is is
bad and horrible and
it's not something that i am i'm
defending or justifying in any way
but at the end of the day i believe it's
part of my responsibilities since i'm
working on trying to change reality in
my own country to kind of understand
reality for what it is
and deal with it and accept it so when i
when i leave
while uh doing that to all of them
i believe that i'm working on my own um
i'm working according to my own value
system in which uh i believe the whole
thing about
you know if i alienate them and they
alienate me they have power and they
will win
uh if we communicate then it's a
different story so i don't want to cut
the communication i don't want to
play the game of polarization i don't do
acab i was tortured by police but i
don't i don't believe acab at all
i believe that all cups are important to
have in the society so that we can
actually have a manageable society
all cops are
are bad bastards
that's a that's a common oh it's a lingo
it's a
yeah i mean and it's not it's not right
course not all the
activists have the same common view but
it's kind of like this idea
that you are mad at the uh
regime for um for being exclusive and so
on but then
inside of you actually build up that
kind of same exclusive idea that you
just don't accept them at all and you
just treat them as
completely alienated from as if as if
like they're just dictators and so on
like
in my own view now about things i i
question
uh the general generally speaking a
western narrative to
the events in my own country like this
whole idea that their problem is that
they don't have democracy and if
democracy exists then their problems
will be solved
and the lack of freedom of speech is the
prior like i just think this whole
and i call it western agenda because it
is an agenda it's not an ethical
uh it's not an ethical position ethical
positions don't change
uh based on interests so since it's an
agenda i
i do think that at the end of the day
this agenda
is a naive one and it's uh and and
you know i don't need much to prove its
naivety because at the end of the day
even the the democratic solution in the
west is being
kind of like in a mess right now it's
not where it need to be
at all like uh you see at the type of
the way
how uh politicians are dealing with each
other in the us
or the whole thing about brexit in the
in the uk and one
uh could step back and ask is this the
real democracy is this the kind of idea
of
a ruling of the we we are just all
enslaved by a process
that is not necessarily optimum and at
the same time a bunch of us want to
force it on and i was one of them uh on
on collapsing systems or old
old-fashioned systems instead of
collapsing old-fashioned systems
just like it's a batch things don't work
like that that's uh
it was a naive moment of uh when i did
that
and i still think uh that there is a lot
of naivety that's surrounding us
and you can see its impact in the in the
global and the global scale
yeah i mean we've had moments over the
past couple of years
where it's been like what would we say
if we were looking on from outside and
what was happening in the us was
happening elsewhere
and how would we characterize it i mean
look at the storming of the capital as
the tip of the spear but it's also
just like this was a it should have been
a wake-up moment for a lot of folks
about
you know let's let's make sure that uh
we're buttoned up at home before we
start to try to
organize others to be understood in
context you cannot just uh
create isolation events uh focus on one
event and call it as the whole reason
why you don't
learn things you know and that's
that's what basically i think a lot
about right now
um uh we are so invested in
certain kind of problems that look good
and bring us more attention
and the way we deal with these problems
is not
deep enough to uh to fix the actual
problem so for example
if um if me and you are good in math 7
billion people
they live 24 hours a day 18 hours
they're up
and their kind of awareness of who they
are and what what they are
is um driven from all the sum of all the
experiences they
are experiencing right so if the
experiences are
good generally their awareness and view
is going to be more good if
they are bad it's going to be more
challenging and so on and so forth so
if we have that like holistic view and
then we
look at uh big social media companies
that occupy a large percentage of the
market share
and and by design occupy a large number
of hours
of uh the consciousness of
their users and you look at the kind uh
of philosophy that they operate in order
to distribute the content to their
users and we're talking here about you
know billions of users receiving
billions of information pieces on daily
basis these infrastructure networks
these like kind of like highways
of information that is being designed
have not been designed with safety in
mind
they have not they actually have have
been designed with recklessness in mind
with growth in mind with speed in mind
but not safety in mind
and you know safety gets
gets prioritized as according to the
experiences and
limited experiences of the people who
are operating the company
from their um headquartered you know the
design of tech problems
it's just basically you are in a
headquarters somewhere in california
where things are amazing
but you're operating your software where
millions of people in myanmar are using
it
and if you do not prioritize yeah
you know looking after the health of the
network not just the growth of the
network how healthy the network is
by looking at the type of engagements
that people are having with each other
if you're not looking at that and you're
just keeping it to a in a chaotic system
and whoever can have engagement twins
then you are basically facilitating uh
hacking consciousness um and without
knowing
i'm not by the way questioning the
intentions of the people
um and uh i i have met a lot of people
in these companies and i've
worked in these companies so it's not a
matter of questioning intentions it's
just
a matter of questioning maturity because
a lot of the people in the tech
companies do not admit to themselves
that they have been immature
about their understanding of the impact
of their systems on
the global scene and they continue to be
immature by just thinking
that actually these you know they're in
working on like batches
batch of fixes rather than thinking
philosophically that there is actually a
huge problem that we are facing as uh
for the collective human consciousness
that you know it does not make sense
that all these polarizing content all
these stupid uh uh
funny crazy videos uh just makes us
occupy most of our times and guess what
what happens when you do that
people start slowly losing reason and
using humor to advocate reality and you
just
lose the overall sense of balance inside
of you to see things for what they are
and then you can have a leader that
claims whatever they can claim that it's
always the biggest it's always the best
it's always
and whatever these claims are true or
not it does not matter
if it's true or not because he can say
and they can believe it
and the same by the way just just to be
clear
i i consider myself to be kind of a
liberal
um uh more than a conservative but at
the same time i'm actually
more frustrated by the liberals than the
conservatives in general because i think
that
the liberals claim that they always have
solutions that they are more open-minded
that blah blah blah
and i say claim because what i
experienced was actually just a claim
like i've been in two
too many of these like settings where we
get like top
top people from silicon valley and we're
sitting down to discuss how can we fix
democracy
and you know make sure that social media
does not ruin um
the the democratic scene and
every one of these sittings i was i was
invited to
almost had zero people who are from the
conservative
uh site so i always ask those people you
know how can you think that you can fix
a problem in which one of the wings is
not available
i mean you can't fix it i mean even even
if they are the problem
just alienating them doesn't make it
happen you know you can't come up with a
solution
driven by liberal values and um
and enforce it on people who have
conservative values uh things don't work
like that and i also
tend to uh just uh last point um
i tend to think that you know i i think
that
right wing and left wing it's like kind
of a bird you can't really
travel with one of the wings on its own
why if you look at the
patterns of liberalism and you know how
individual characteristics of the people
who are leading
that kind of wave of progress and
liberalism and so on
you would find one very common they are
recklessly optimistic
they push in directions where they don't
know the
where it's going they get fascinated by
short-term results and
they discount long-term impacts it has
happened all the time
and the people who are conservative as a
result kind of balance that view
on on on one hand they are pretty stuck
to many things that they don't want to
change although it might be better for
them to change
but they are very skeptical towards a
lot of the things they see in the
liberal side of things and the progress
side of things
and their skepticism saves us all their
skepticism saves us all because if you
allow
um if you allow the liberals to push gas
on stop
uh they are actually gonna take the
society into into the wrong places
because simply um we are here because we
have been connected to our roots we are
here because we are
uh thousands of years worth of evolution
and we can't just
uh discount human behavior human nature
um nature of environments
you know complicated state of
transitions you know if you want to
transition any society from one state to
another there has to be
a very complicated we can't just
disconnect all that and just be excited
about banners and movements and trends
and hashtags
uh and uh and hypes and everyone is like
uh uh creating a certain kind of hype
and
and pushing it and that's why i kind of
feel it is
one of the things i kind of understand
now that we're all wrong
and we will not be able to figure things
out until we all stop and say we are all
wrong
if we are in the game of polarization if
you are making
more people polarizing in this world no
matter what the polarization is for it's
wrong because
at the end of the day you can't operate
a society with no trust
and once people are polarized that's
what you know the american
politicians are just becoming to be
honest i mean
i don't want to be offensive but they
are just making jokes of themselves
because you know when you are someone
who is supposed to be a strong leader
and you are running a serious business
one of the biggest
civilizations in the world and your
attitude is
is uh is like uh um you you know
reckless
uh i i you know i don't wanna even call
it a kid because kids are
uh you know kids are amazing kids are
mature you can actually have a mature
kid but
just just kind of reckless behavior and
we all accept it as part
you know that's human behavior oh that's
how the tv runs oh that's how the media
oh that's how the system no that's all
[ __ ] you know that doesn't work that
way
if there is a fundamental problem then
we need to figure out how to solve it
and not to further the polarization
i want to pick up on a few things you
said first of all i agree that we need a
balance of liberal and conservative i
think that's important i don't think
having a one-party system works has
worked well for anyone
and so i do think that's important i
also think it's important for
both parties to approach things in good
faith and
i think too often in recent times we've
probably had
you know the right wing in this country
not really operate in good faith
i mean it exists on the left side too
but but
um it's been sad to see the lack of good
faith action and good faith negotiation
and politics and then finally
um just the idea that certainty is
everyone's so certain i think this is
something you were hitting on
so certain that they have the answers
and the real
possibility of growth is saying i don't
know
or i might be wrong or there's a chance
that this might not be a definitive
solution
why might it not work how could we do
this better what do you think you know
someone who has a different
viewpoint in terms of the way that i in
terms of the way that you see the world
that's so important and it's unfortunate
that everything's become
so flattened into two-dimensional right
now
yeah i think that it's unfortunate but
to be honest um
uh it makes sense as in the design of
the game
makes it this way why because at the end
of the day there are
tools now so for example if if one of
these politicians
um is trolling another one they get much
more attention
and they need that attention because
that's the way they can actually raise
funds because they are a known
politician and people are paying
attention to them
and what i'm trying to say here is like
we all need to kind of stop
and zoom out a little bit and
re-envision how to fix things without
alienating anyone
and without assuming you know you said
that you think that the left
the the you know the conservatives are
kind of more fixated into
their positions but me and you kind of
have to understand that this is
um this is not to oppose the liberals
this is uh this is something in their
character this is something they have
experienced this is the way or they
think and
in order for uh for that way of thinking
to move or advance you have to kind of
respect their own uh value system so
that they can listen to you so for
example
um you you think that the the right side
is is
less risk you know kind of like less
listening and less respectful to the
left side but i can tell you
uh if you are in the right if you are
religious uh a christian religious and
you say
you're gonna feel this yeah you open a
comedy show
making fun of uh your god making
this fun of your religious beliefs
making you are going to feel the same
way
and again this kind of
this kind of phenomena is is what we
need to deal with which is
uh we need to kind of figure out how can
we
build some sort of meta thinking that
absorb
all of us so we can think then to fix
these
these issues but i can't i can't think
that a solution will emerge when uh
comedians are the ones who are running
the philosophy scene
in reality because they are capturing
hundred percent
yeah in a in a way or another with all
due respect i like them i enjoy them
and i can i can name quite a lot that
makes me happy but
at the end of the day uh countries
should not be run by comedians
uh presidents or president nominees uh
in
in a realistic world cannot have their
head being with a comedian because they
crack bunch of jokes hahaha
you know we're talking about a real
world here we're not talking about
your ability to present so for
for us to really start solving the
problems there has to be some
deep questionings of uh the methods we
have been using
um you uh you can't allow people to mock
each other accuse each other with no
like with no limits and then think that
they're not gonna be polarized in a
horrible way they're gonna be polarized
and sometimes they're going to choose
against their own interest as well just
to punish
the other side because we see that in
street fighter well that's become
yeah the whole american political scene
has been punitive that's
recent it starts it starts local and it
keeps growing until it becomes
a global phenomena within the
environment
yeah you know there's one thing that
i've been thinking about like this whole
conversation which i want to bring up
which is that
you know it's been interesting hearing
your perspective on social media
and sort of how it's it's helped to you
had this remarkable
line in one of your ted talks the same
tool that united us to topple
dictators eventually tore us apart and
you know i think that like
um you're someone who's been associated
with one of the most positive uses
of social media an opportunity to rally
you know a population against uh you
know a regime that
you know was uh was unresponsive
and and pushed for change and so what
does it feel like to you
because you you know they were spray
painting things facebook on the walls
in cairo after the revolution so do you
have this sort of like
you know push and pull where you're like
well i'm glad that social media was
available for that but i'm also nervous
about
what it's developed into or like when
when you were
you know pushing those levers back in
2011 did you have a feeling where things
might go
it was not a feeling where things might
go but it was kind of a question in my
head
like i can see in this tool so much
power that it can be abused
by anyone right like yeah
i mean i was personally a victim of the
of uh of uh
i mean not victim but i i was targeted
by the tool uh
uh by you know tons and tons of there
was like a page that has like over a
million people and they would write
things i never said
they say well name is saying that such
and such
and i reported on your page and not on
my page not not on their page
oh different pages yeah they claim that
i made a statement and this statement is
ridiculous and horrible and
extreme but no one's checks who who said
what
and at the time i even sent sent a
message to facebook and they said we
can't remove it you know we're not gonna
be
in the yeah they have to kind of yeah
they can't judge that if i said it or
not
um so uh as i was as i was trying to say
like my relationship i got
i got targeted by the same tools and
i've seen how
at the end of the day being excited
about a tool is no longer something i do
it's naive being excited about a tool
that continuously develop
is even more naive and being excited
about a tool that
that that evolves around
financial principles uh controlled by a
bunch of investors
uh trying to amass a huge number of
audience
and selling advertisement on it you know
that's
that kind of a model in my view it still
exists and it probably will exist for a
little bit
but i think it's doomed to fail i mean
look at
if facebook did everything great and you
know they kind of
made their users happy users would not
flock to social networks as
as they appear because at the end of the
day
reality is humans are actually looking
for a good experience all the time
and if you offer them this good
experience they can stick with you but
the problem is
and as i as i understand that these
companies get so excited about
you know connections mark zuckerberg
have already reviewed a lot of his
positions in that sense and talked about
it
but they get so excited about amassing
large number of people
they get so excited about growing uh the
figures and
advertising and whatever but they don't
ask themselves philosophical questions
they hide behind oh that's you know when
i talk to anyone
that's human behavior well it's not true
because
human behavior is like we all know in
design that if you change a bottom color
things change so in that sense if you
create an environment that is decent
people will be decent
and if you create the right tools uh to
enforce decency
uh and that's fine then then then uh
and as long as they are non-partisan as
long as they are not uh
enforced by a platform on its own and
that's why i think we
you know there there are some
interesting things about clubhouse but
i still think in the same way i'm i'm
just using it as a tool now i don't know
where it's going
i'm not going to be excited about a tool
uh um
i'm not an i'm no longer putting my
emotional capacity on corporates
uh on companies that basically want to
become uh um
you know huge and you know i just think
this whole path is somehow
uh part of the reason why we're and the
problem we are and everybody is kind of
rushing for success all these networks
kind of um shoe more than they can buy
they they just took took more and more
and more because you know they have to
report every three months
here and there and increase their stock
price
uh but but these tools uh are somehow
right now
are not in the service of the people it
claims it is
yeah i want to address that let's take a
quick pause and we'll be right back here
on the big technology podcast with wowgo
name
all right we are back for the second
part of the big technology podcast here
with while go name who helped sparked
the egyptian revolution
using facebook before the break we were
talking a little bit
about um these social networks and sort
of
maybe we can get into the solutions in
this in this last bit of our
conversation
um the one thing i want to ask before we
get into solutions is just again
thinking about the problem
um how do you view the good that
first of all do you view what you did as
good when you started the course
of course and and i still uh i still
benefit from
uh from social media every day there is
a lot of good that comes out of these
networks uh
and and that's by design but one gram of
bad um
is uh is you know remove uh a thousand
grams of good
uh you know kinda if you think about it
if you just
spoil a thousand gram of good with a
gram of bad it can just get all spoiled
eventually and go bad so
it's not that and this is something very
important to people who work in social
media networks you know don't get
defensive when people are just
going after you for the problems you
have because we still think
that there is a version and so we have
not forgot all the good moments all the
great things that have happened
because of social media in our lives
it's just that the current memory is so
occupied with all that
polarization and all that bad stuff
that's happening right now
yeah do you think they're like it's
interesting what you when you mentioned
about one gram versus a thousand grams
it's like
disney has this uh rubric where like you
have good moments which are magic
moments and bad moments which are tragic
moments
and they've like figured out like if you
go into one of their park and you have
one tragic moment it takes 30 magic
moments to make up for it
and thank you
it kind of makes sense you know you know
we humans do that on every day if if
there's someone who is like kind of nice
to you but one time he was really
horrible
what you're going to tag their mind and
you know you're just going to say
they're at least crazy you know they
because they show you a horrible sight
right and and that is
what we all need to understand it's not
about targeting uh these companies and
claiming that they're not doing good
or they we are telling them this so that
they can tell us about their amazing
efforts in the in great directions so
no argument there are good human souls
and i assume that they're trying to do
they're trying to live their own way
without hurting others while making
things better
however the real problem is because of
the defensive nature of humans and
because of the lack of
that kind of experience within the tech
industry um
all these un uh all these consequences
happen
i would call them untended or intended
whatever consequences happen
and they really have no honor to fix and
most of the time
does the solution is kind of like
we sit down and keep talking about it
and it's never the solution the real
solution
is kind of rethink the design
do you think they'll live i mean do you
think so do you think they've become too
defensive
when it comes to criticism to start
rethinking the design
and just a secondary part of that what
would you change
with the design i mean if we're talking
about a
building a product that more that better
reflects the good parts of humanity how
might you do it
so great two questions the first
question i really don't know
um because i'm not inside the companies
so my view is super limited to the
outside perspective so
i'm not comfortable making a judgment
about uh
about their internal efforts yet
i i'm seeing from the outside uh like i
did
not see any um evolving concept that's
uh that came out of facebook that is
changing the nature of dialogue within
the platform
it hasn't happened um so do i think that
a solution like that exists
or or possible i believe um
you know i'm sure the people there have
the experience of understanding
what kind of problems and how to deal
with them so i believe that yeah you can
come up with
uh practical solutions and by the way
people think of
uh solutions in in in a certain big way
i
i think clubhouse for example the the
current version of it
not necessarily the future ones um the
way it is designed
doesn't make you pay attention all the
time to how audience are engaging with
what you're saying
so for example on one hand
that kind of drops engagement in a way
because of course if everybody's
clapping and we count the number of
claps and people know how many are
clapping to this and how many are
clapping to that and
uh it's gonna all be exciting and fun uh
but guess what the game is gonna be
eventually hacked why because the people
who are optimizing to
be recognized and be nice and you know
get all the claps are not necessarily
the ones who have the value
so the design right now somehow just
because it did not
manipulate and tap into that that kind
of human behavior just to increase the
number of audience
is by design making things calmer you
know
so what i'm trying to tell here my
fellow friends
who are thinking too much about how to
come up with holistic solutions to solve
uh the problems of social media networks
um is that sometimes actually
the solutions are way easier than we
think they are
and sometimes the solutions have to do
with the design of the experience rather
than
the algorithms and the machine learning
and whatever that is i remember
just a quick example here you know they
they say to know the difference between
a marketeer and an engineer
they asked both of them to fix the
problem that the escalator is a slow one
and that people get bored as the
escalator keeps going up so
the engineer kept trying to solve the
problem by
um fixing the machine work you know
whatever that's in uh
in the process to increase the speed by
a bit but the you know marketeer put a
mirror
because in his assumption if you put a
mirror people start looking at
themselves in the mirror and they're
going to lose a sense of how much time
have passed as the
elevator goes up and not that i'm
suggesting this over that but what i'm
just saying is like
you can actually think of
easy solutions to improve decency in
environments like
like facebook you can actually reduce
polarization uh by not building
everything just around
uh engagement numbers and uh
you know what to do exactly i don't
think that's the problem the real
problem is that if you do that you make
less money
that's the real problem i mean maybe
there is a way where you can make more
money but unfortunately
i just think that resources on earth are
like uh
in they behave in an interesting way
even if they are resources created by
humans
if you accumulate a lot of them in a
short period of time you are surely
going to lose them
in a short period of time and if you
accumulate
them in a balanced and slow and you you
know
well rooted way of time you are gonna
for sure last for longer
so whatever that's happening because of
technology
is that we kind of rush everything you
know everything happens and you can
you can look at the numbers the
dashboards and everybody have
the investors have higher expectations
of you so this whole ecosystem
when you when i say a solution when i
think of a solution i really on
think that uh one different different
designs within the experiences that can
be tested
uh to see how can you kind of lower the
tens
density the heat you know the
temperature just lower the temperature
you know build things that
you know reward you people for being
decent show more things that are
but you know if you are in the company
thinking ads ads ads all the time
thinking revenue revenue revenue all the
time or
if you are trying to do these changes
while not
taking revenue hits uh initially in
either cases it's not going to work
because uh uh for a change in
amazon and of course here is what i say
it is true that there are losses
uh to doing something like that from a
perspective of any company but
also uh the company is not aware of the
losses it is already taking now now
because of their brand hit
because you know maybe facebook in life
could have lasted for 30 years and it
would only last for 20.
maybe i don't know maybe it would have
lasted for 50 years but it will last for
30.
but then how do you really know all of
that you can't
there is no way for you to know the only
way for you to know is look at the
current moment
are you actually uh being
as good as you can and and by the way
one last part
is um we want improvements and i
personally don't want like a whole
change of the system because if you
change everything everything changes so
uh i'm i'm not naive i'm not looking for
a complete
uh makeover of social media maybe
maybe it happens through another
platform you know just like how
clubhouse is coming in
and changing a bit of the the nature of
communication between individual maybe
it happens that way
but at the same time if it if it's meant
to happen within facebook it will have
to be
gradual but there has to be way more
transparency there has to be
way more commitment towards making sure
that the collective
awareness is not up for grab by human
traffickers
yeah look nothing annoys me more in this
world than when people are like
social media just reflects humanity it's
like
if a mirror is not perfectly constructed
it will distort
and you can see the differences between
the conversations on facebook and the
conversations on twitter and the
conversations on clubhouse
and they each reflect differently and
there's got to be a way to design this
stuff
that makes it not reflect the worst
parts of us but the best we have already
designed a lot of these kind of
experiences in the past it's just that
it was uh pretty local it was tailored
towards small numbers of people so
the kind of uh uh when when
globalization happened and everyone
kind of wanted to operate and open in
huge markets everybody kind of rushed in
their designs
you know the whole design process of
things that are used by billions of
people
does not really look at the consequences
in the right way you know how many uh
people
within these platforms kind of
advocate for unintended consequences
how many people have experiences outside
the experience of the thick environment
also tech has a lot of fundamental
problems that is created around the
industry itself it doesn't have anything
to do with facebook itself
that for example if you're in the oil
industry before you dig a hole
you have to kind of talk to thousands of
people and get like hundreds of paper
and need this and that and lobby with
this and that and then you dig the hole
in tech you know before you even talk to
anyone
you probably could have had 100 million
users already and you are changing the
scene
um because there's like 10 people
and a billion users that's typical scene
yeah sorry
yeah so and and i'm not here to say this
is wrong and we should stop it we should
manage this i'm not an idiot i'm i'm not
naive
uh you know what i'm yeah what i'm
trying to say is like we
since we are trying to understand why
things are where they are
uh somehow we need to kind of understand
what are the general characteristics
of this industry that differentiates it
from other industries
so it's a very high speed industry you
know i i actually
uh think one of the problems of high
tech that it's high tech
you know there's a lot of influence on
tech tech tech you know
we are here to live experiences and feel
feelings and tech is just a tool
and if you just take the the high tech
as your own way you know live around
gadgets and occupy with
yourself with plastic and you know all
these kind of
virtual life experiences then that's not
really high tech
because um it is using the human
intelligence into
very low low quality transactions most
of the time
and it also lowers humans ability to do
cognitive things and
uh there has been a lot of researches
about that right
so uh high tech is supposed to raise our
own
awareness raise our own experiences
improve our you know that's
that's what i would expect from high
tech but unfortunately uh
high tech now means uh let's figure out
a solution
uh to any problem um without really
making sure that this is an an actual
solution and it's not just a way to
create a more
complicated problem
yeah i know the buzzword is disrupt but
like disrupt for disruption sake is that
good
like shouldn't it be improve or
something like that that always
well especially recently struck me as
something that's been
a little bit and by design a lot of the
people who are trying to disrupt it they
don't take time to understand the
existing system
they make a lot of arrogant assumptions
about the reality of things
they rush into conclusions about why bad
things are happening but the reality is
sometimes bad things are happening
because there are
crucial hard design problems that makes
them
happen if you take that path and they
design other paths where they can avoid
the problem
but then fall into huge other problems
in the future you know for example
uh um you know i'm not against like
robin yeah i'm not against multinational
companies i'm not against corporations
but i'm i'm also interested to
understand what does it mean that
individuals within a company that has
not been
uh voted for by public control the
transportation sector across the world
they really understand who is where what
they are it's kind of like
you know just because they can build
this model that can go everywhere in the
world that we rely on and what happens
when these people
turn out to be corrupt or when the model
gets broken
after people have completely relied on
it and you know
and all these kind of things i i just
think actually the the real spirit of
tech
initially started with democratizing
information giving access to everybody
making opportunities to people so one
would imagine then the design
is going to be these kind of islands
that help other islands get formed and
created and we build the whole world of
that
but it ended up uh and we played it the
usual game because of
the negative the dark side of human
nature where everyone
is is playing the game to control and
look good uh and
and i don't blame them because also you
know uh you don't want to question the
system
as well as you see the good things you
are doing as you do like if i'm google
i'm seeing all the great things i'm
doing as i'm building the company so
it kind of slips and it slips in our
heads that we just
start optimizing to become bigger and
bigger and bigger and bigger
and you are operating opposite to the
spirit of the
of the experience of democratizing
access because all those peoples who you
are giving them information want to have
a better
life experience and have a better role
in life and they want to do something so
if things are centralized in small it's
a it's a numbers game if things are
centralized in small
superpowers whatever they are corporates
countries in the certain individuals
within a sector whatever that is
that leaves very small room for others
to grow
and increases level of frustration among
people and
get some kind of those people who want
to interrupt rather than disrupt
you know if you keep disrupting right
and you know
they just want to interrupt you because
your disruption
is not adding value in their own value
system
and here i think one of the very
important solutions
is um somehow um
[Music]
having more conversations uh with the
investors
around this you know we target facebook
we target uh twitter
but the reality is if you really want to
change this environment convince a few
big investors
why talk to their vcs but the vcs don't
seem
yeah they don't seem really willing well
many we've had a few that
on this show that have been receptive
roy bahat one example but
unfortunately it seems more and more
that investors are you know putting up
blinders and crawling into their
you know own reality holes but i'm sure
i i hear you i hear you and i'm sure
that there are some other kinds are
questioning i mean since since they are
in the game they must be
seeing it from different perspectives
and i'm i'm still looking i i've seen
enough people that are not optimizing
for profit you know i'm not against
profit i
i do want to have a nice life and a lot
of money and whatever
so i'm not against profit and i i
appreciate the
the the system but at the same time i'm
not gonna make my life about that profit
i'm not gonna
create a whole uh reason for existence
and call that
well that's how capitalism should work
no i mean let's uh let's say
capitalism is not a religious you know
we can just actually
take things here and there and modify
them and see what happens
we can uh try and uh create different
ways shapes and forms to influence the
the model
and by the way i believe that change
doesn't take a lot of people anyway you
don't have to have a lot of vcs
uh it's probably a couple of vcs who are
disciplined enough
uh and they happen to be well known so
they inspire certain type of
uh founders to help build uh on
on new principles and uh and they will
be okay waiting
uh because that's the biggest problem
with the existing uh
the cycle you know you can't just uh
build something
um right in in that kind of cycle you're
going to build something that grows into
cancer
uh in this cycle of like trying to
search a series b let's say also
what is happening you know we need to
improve this number because the investor
is looking at it and
you know this whole kind of world is not
the environment where you're actually
i mean you can add value of course all
the time but that's not suited for
adding value you know adding value
happens
uh if it's linked with ability to
monetize most of the time
you know look at the teams and how
they're organized and the meetings and
how they're shaped
you will see uh always like some sort of
focus on
making sure that the business is not
impacted you know kind of facebook
youtube did not want to be the ministry
of truth until the advertisers decided
they are not happy and and then the
ministry of truth was launched
you know which is fine i mean i guess i
guess at the end of the day it's their
it's their platform but i'm just saying
their position have changed because of
the pressure of the financial
institutions
and not necessarily because of the
pressure of the public
uh public opinion
yeah and i know there are like some
investors out there that are receptive
to thinking outside of the way that has
been traditionally
uh thought in silicon valley where like
impact on society matters you know as
much as as profit and growth
and i know some of them listen to the
show so i'll take back what i said
earlier that i do think that that there
are
some that are engaging and you're right
you know and and you know
i just also fix what i'm saying there
are a lot of people inside facebook and
google and
and twitter and other companies who who
would actually listen to this and kind
of agree and try and do something
about it so your heart's in the right
place another thing i
i learned in my own experience in the
arab
spring or the egyptian revolution is not
to make assumptions on behalf of
people's intentions and not to make
assumption negative assumptions about
the future how
the future could emerge uh given my
cynicism towards someone it's not my job
i mean
if they don't do it they don't do it
because it's their problem and they're
gonna pay a price for it
but it's not my job to keep saying
they're not going to do it they're not
there's no one that wants to do this
there's
that that kind of uh defeat the the
purpose
of of us trying to fix this in the
spirit of fixing the problem
for real no i think it's important to
look look at things with a little bit of
optimism and realism
versus a sense of resignation which we
see too often so
it's a nice note to to bring our
conversation
to a close on i do want before we go i
want to hear more about
um just quickly what are you up to now
and what's next for you
you live in san francisco you live in
the bay area now too so i live in
california and i haven't been working
for two years and a half right now
um uh mostly working on myself and
trying i i went through a very hard
depression um
because of uh you know all the events
that i've
experienced in egypt and then leaving
the country i haven't visited back home
for
seven years now um i recently got
divorced so i'm kind of like
trying to uh to
stabilize my my life if you uh if if you
would say
uh and bring it into a better place and
as i'm doing that
i i'm enjoying it and i learned to be
very honest with everyone you know i
kind of like
if someone is i found out for a job i
don't mind telling them about my
depression
and i actually would appreciate if they
don't hire me why because if they are
not going to respect me
and my own emotional state and they just
want to
make a use of my mind that has been
under huge
depressive emotional experiences then i
have no respect
or no passion to work for them so i kind
of
in in this time i've been trying to work
on myself and and bring myself up in
that sense
i've been trying to reflect about
what have happened uh what where the
mistakes i have done where what are the
sources of my naivety
i kind of like applied this function in
my head that whenever reality doesn't
meet expectations
i'm gonna like really debug my
expectations because
it is not smart to expect good things
and then find things
bad things happen and then victimize
yourself and sit on the side crying the
right thing is
to understand what did you miss what was
part of the reality that you didn't see
and i hope actually uh this is something
that um
because it has been something that
helped me a lot in my own
uh um i call that active meditation
because i don't know how to meditate by
just
stopping my line of thought i don't try
and stop my life so i know there are
different kind of meditations so i
i meditate in the in the way where um
any idea that comes to mind i just
have to process it and think about why
is it coming what can i do about
balancing it so that when it comes back
later it comes in a more
in a more shaped form so i'm managing my
own subconscious in a way
while um you know kind of preparing
myself for
a startup that i'll be working on um it
has been
years since i wanted to do it and
unfortunately the events have taken me
into
uh undesirable directions but i'm i'm in
a much better
uh place now and i'm kind of um
you know ready to to get back to the
scene in uh
in a in a more useful way hopefully
yeah well i look i think that your voice
is uh extremely important one your
perspective
uh you know giving your life experience
and just the way that you think about
these things
is valuable to any company here so um
and it's impressive i thank you and uh
you know i appreciate that you were
saying this and it has not matched my
experience just for your information i
don't think you would be surprised
yeah oh look i i i think that for all
the silicon valley companies talking a
big game about how to be responsible and
how to think differently
um you know if they didn't want to bring
you on or find a way to work
together then then i don't think there's
much meaning to their words
so i appreciate i
i appreciate your the strength of your
uh of your backing i
i just think that you know sometimes uh
people don't listen to you because you
don't have the right narrative for them
uh i i kind of always think of my own
personal responsibility
and i i definitely still lack the right
narrative because the right narrative
would get things done
uh we are unlike what we like to think
unlike what we like to think we're very
logical creatures
if i know how to show you my logic in a
way that becomes logical to you
you're gonna adopt it because why not
you know at the end of the day it's not
really
we're not here uh uh here and that's a
good way to
to end this we're not really here to
ruin each other experiences or point at
each other or judge each other that's
kind of a
very bad way to waste our life
experiences i've done that for a while
and i'm done with it it's like
it's the worst kind of addiction to just
get yourself in these negative cycles
we're here
to try and add value so i i strive to
kind of uh uh you know fix my own
shortcomings and hopefully you know it
will eventually be appreciated
yeah well we we here on big technology
podcast definitely appreciate it i'll
tell you that much
uh people who want to get in touch with
you is there a good way for them to do
it
well my email is my last name at
gmail.com g-h-o-n-i-m
gmail.com and uh on twitter i'm at go
name but i
uh write mostly in arabic so i i yeah
i've been thinking about creating an
english account but maybe
if as as things go if enough if i feel
like there's
an enough audience that can relate to
what i say and
would like to uh hear me i'm happy to do
that
well i i i encourage you always happy to
be in your podcast as well
thank you i i hope you come back again i
really do uh i got to
about 25 of the stuff i wanted to talk
about so
um not a commentary on you just because
it was so interesting in terms of the
directions that we went so i hope we do
it again
this will also definitely be the longest
episode that we've had and i'm proud of
it
um for sure
and then we'll have a clubhouse
discussion at some point uh
i would love to have a cub house
discussion with you
right and uh i've been experimenting
with the platform a bit and as i said
like yeah it's a nice start yeah they
sound very lively
yeah so i can't understand anything but
they seem a lot of fun
so um but let's do one in english
sometime soon i'll put the details on
that on uh
on the newsletter the big technology
newsletter i'll just drop it when this
thing drops um
uh you know within the day or two sort
of when that's
uh gonna happen so we can work out a
time and make that
make that work but it's it's really
always uh great to chat i love catching
up with uyl
and uh and i hope we do it again soon
same here all right thank you thank you
and thanks everybody for listening we do
these shows
every week new episode every wednesday
join us next week
for a conversation with k von baker who
is the head of product at twitter that
should be an interesting conversation
they're trying to
copy clubhouse which we've talked a lot
about today they also recently banned
donald trump so i'm sure we'll touch on
both of those things
thank you nate guateny for editing thank
you for the folks at red circle for
hosting and selling ads on the show
and thanks always to you the listeners
for coming each week and joining us here
if this is your first time please hit
subscribe
again new episodes every wednesday and
if you've been here for a while
and could rate us on apple uh podcast
that would go a long way
all right everybody until next week we
will see you then on the big technology
podcast
take care and have a good one