All language subtitles for BBC.Storyville.2019.The.Internets.Dirtiest.Secrets.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org

This programme contains
strong language

and scenes which some viewers
may find disturbing from the start.

Delete. Ignore.

Ignore.

Delete.

Ignore.

We stand for connecting
every person,

for a global community,

for giving everyone in the world
the power to share anything

they want with anyone.

Mark Zuckerberg is now the front
page editor

for every newspaper
in the world effectively.

Delete.

Social media platforms, they need
and want to maintain

complete control over what goes on.

Facebook has a bigger population
than any state in the world

and so when it acts as censor,
it is as powerful as a state.

Ignore.

Ignore.

If I didn't have social media,
I wouldn't be able to get the word

out. I probably wouldn't be standing
here, right?

I probably wouldn't be
standing here right now.

Delete.

There are tens of thousands of
people who are doing this work.

All of it's done in secret.

It's done by unknown people
and they're actually taking

major editorial decisions.

Delete.

Ignore.

Delete.

Ignore.

Delete.

The reason why I speak to you
because the world should know

that we are here.

There is somebody who's
checking the social media.

We are doing our best to make this
platform safe for all of them.

COMPUTER MOUSE CLICKS

HE CHUCKLES

PEOPLE SCREAM AND CRY IN VIDEO

I started at Google in 2004.

It has been a privilege to be part
of building the infrastructure

of the world we're now living in.

To be part of something
that so clearly is powerful

with the potential to really change
lives for the good,

that's an amazing thing
and a privilege to be a part of.

You start with the question,

"What's the vision for what
should be on your platform?

"What isn't appropriate?

"What don't you want in your
community?"

And there are choices in that.

There is a choice to say,

"I'm going to not let anything go
up before I review it."

That's a choice.

Or, "I'm going to permit most things
and only review the things

"that are complained about."

That's also a choice.

When your value is around allowing
more expression,

allowing the democratised
platform to really live,

then I think you go with the more...

..liberal policies.

Do you solemnly swear that the
testimony you're about to give

is the truth, whole truth
and nothing but the truth?

I do.

Thank you very much.

Nicole Wong, who is the associate
general counsel and chief policy

officer for Google.

Ms Wong, our staff went on the
internet and they put in

"Pre-teen" plus "sex" plus "video".

If you just look at the Google
sites,

I mean, it looks like hardcore
pornography.

I mean, there's sex games and
pre-teen sex and teen porn.

Mr Chairman, we have multiple
layers to review.

It's terrible that these sites
are there and we should...

I think we all agree, but it looks
like your company's doing the least

to try to block it or to stop it.

That's, I guess, what I'm trying to
get at.

Yeah, and I think in addition
to the levels of review

that we try to do to take it out,

we also have the biggest search
engine on the internet.

We have... So, it should be easier
to find it then...

..many billions of pages.

..so I would think you'd have more
ways to block it than the others

if you're the biggest search
engine.

We have the biggest search engine
with many more pages to review

and we have our own search quality
engineers, who are trained to look

for and remove these types of sites.

We do the best we can. OK.

When we started training,
I didn't know what kind

of material there was.

I had no idea and that was the first
time I heard about it.

They explained to us what we were
going to see, the tools

that we were going to use
and what we should expect

in this job.

I remember feeling that I wanted to
quit already.

The most shocking thing that I saw
was a kid sucking a dick

inside a cubicle and the kid was
really naked.

It was a girl, around six years
of age, and she was sucking a dick.

And another picture taken, the child
was actually on the bed

and she has a cum shot in here,
which is really,

I don't know, unforgivable for me to
see.

I went straight to my team leader
and told him that I can't do this.

I really can't do this. I can't look
at the child.

But then he told me that I should do
it because this is my job

and I signed the contract for it.

When you open the floodgates
and you ask the entire world

to broadcast yourself, upload
your life, share everything

that you can think of to share,
people respond.

People with all sorts of motivations
and interests and desires respond.

When Facebook or Google claim that
they don't have any employees

in Manila, they can legitimately do
that by using the labour

of a third party outsourcing firm.

It's true that the pay cheques don't
come from Google or Facebook.

They come from an outsourcing firm
based in the Philippines.

Commercial content moderators labour
in the shadows of social media

platforms, out of sight and out of
mind.

Actually unknown to the millions of
users of the platforms

who've never given it much of a
thought,

who does the clean-up
work on their platforms.

HEAVY BREATHING

THEY FIRE SHOTS

Phew!

Oh, my God.

Delete.

Ignore. Delete.

Hm.

Hmm.

Safe to delete. Delete. Ignore.

It's delete. Delete. Delete.

Hm.

January 2016.

I painted the piece of Donald Trump
with a small penis called

Make America Great Again.

And it went viral,

and millions of people shared it
over across many social platforms.

And a few days later, he mentioned
his penis size on a debate.

And I remember my friend saying...
She called me,

and she was like, "Did you just
make Donald Trump talk about

"his penis size on a debate?"

And he referred to my hands -

if they're small, something else
must be small.

I guarantee you there's no problem.
I guarantee it.

LAUGHTER

I posted it on my Facebook page.

And within three days, it had
something like 50 million shares

over so many social platforms.

It just went crazy, and I had
no idea it would go that far.

CHOIR SINGING

My Facebook page was shut down,
and everything I had -

every account I had - was shut down.

So all I had is my social account,
and I can't tell anyone

what's going on, what's happening.

Facebook says fine art is OK.

Sure, you could consider it porn,
but when it comes to art,

it's a representation of that.

It's not actually real,
it's not a photograph.

It's not someone
who hasn't consented,

it's just a fictional piece.

Again, it's not violent,
it's not sexual,

it's just a naked human body
with Trump's face on it.

I just don't understand why
people think someone naked

is so disgusting.

MOANING ON COMPUTER

Mr Colin Stretch,
general counsel for Facebook,

Mr Sean Edgett,
acting general counsel for Twitter,

and Mr Richard Salgado, the director
of law enforcement

and information security at Google.

Millions of Americans use your
technology to share the first step

of a grandchild, to talk about
good and bad things in our lives,

and I would like to say to all
of you - you've enriched America.

But the bottom line...

..is these technologies also can be
used to undermine our democracy

and put our nation at risk.

Do you all agree it's bad for
business if the American public

perceives you as being able to
have your platforms hijacked

by terrorists to
radicalise Americans?

It's all bad for business, right?

It's beyond bad for business.

Senator, there's no place
for terrorism on Facebook.

We would agree with that.

I agree with that proposition.

I'd like to ask some questions.

It would seem to me that there's
a pretty big distinction

between potentially jihadi accounts.

There's a whole range of
theological interpretation

about people who don't quite believe
in violence in the name of religion

and people who do.

The intricacies of jihadi theology
is not something

that an engineer is
exactly trained to do,

so who are your content experts
by domain?

How do you do it?
How do you hire for that?

So we have thousands of people
who, as part of their job,

on a regular basis are attempting
to keep terrorism off of Facebook.

We have 150 people
who do nothing else.

How many people do you have,
Mr Edgett, at Twitter?

Well, we harness the power of both

technology - algorithms,
machine learning - to help us,

and also a large team of people that
we call our Trust And Safety team

and our User Services team.
It's hundreds of people.

What about you?

Internally, we'll have thousands
of people working on them.

We also get a good deal
of leads on content

that come from outside the company.

So in view of that, Mr Stretch,

do you think 150 people
is enough people?

Senator, to be clear, we have about
10,000 people who are working on

safety and security generally and
we're committing to investing more

and doubling that number
by the end of 2018.

Hm.

Delete.

Ignore.

Delete.

Delete.

Yeah.

EXPLOSIONS ON COMPUTER

ARABIC SPEAKING IN VIDEO

Whenever we see a photo or
a video on social media,

we archive it immediately because we
know later, it might be taken down.

It's very important for us
to document these photos,

because we might not
have this photo again.

Pretty much everyone in Syria
has a cellphone now,

and pretty much everyone
is an activist.

They will document every
alleged air strike,

the aftermath of the air strikes,

victims, destruction,

whether this is by done by
the Coalition, by Russia,

the Syrian regime.

They would collect all these videos

and they would upload them
on their account.

After we have collected the data,
we try to geolocate it.

We'll try to find out the exact
place and we publish it online.

We help paint a picture
of the war in Syria.

So this is the school...

Yeah. ..and the air strike
was in the school area.

So, the neighbourhoods around it...

Without our work,
the armies would have -

or the governments would have -

a straight pass without
anybody challenging them.

There would be, I think,
more civilians getting killed.

There would be less closure.

We would not be able to know
what's going on.

These videos are needed.

These videos are part of the war.

They provide information.

They provide evidence
for the future.

But the problem is these videos
are quite often classified

as ISIS videos.

It's been seen
that this is very graphic,

so they get deleted.

Now the censorship that's
taken place on YouTube,

it's affecting a lot of
organisations with a lot of videos

about Syria and air strikes
and destruction.

And they had their account
suspended.

Our life is different from here.

We have war.

That's a very important reason
why the content is different.

The war and air strikes and
killing, that's what we would focus
on,

that's what we're going to report
about.

We would prefer about football

activities or, yeah, let's go
to this place for brunch.

No, unfortunately not.

A decision about what constitutes
terrorist content

is a really context-based

decision. It may
show up on one platform

as a true threat,

and it may show up on another
platform as news or as a satire,

right? Or criticism
commenting on a piece of content.

And so I think that so much is taken
about the context around a piece

of content, it's hard to know
whether something

should be removed or not.

There were always hard questions
when Saddam Hussein was executed.

Someone had snuck a camera
and uploaded

the execution onto YouTube.

And so there were actually two
videos that were uploaded the day

after his execution.

One was of him being hanged,
hung and the other was

of his body after, so both
of those were extreme violence

and very graphic and we had to make
a decision about whether we would

keep them up or take them down,

so we made a decision to keep
the video of the hanging

up because we felt like
for historical purposes

it was an important video.

The execution of a former dictator.

But the imagery of his body...

..we decided it was gratuitous,

that there wasn't a historical
need to see that,

and so we took it down.

I have no idea whether we actually
have made the right decision

and history will tell us.

But that's the call

that you're asked to make

for every one of these videos.

You know, think about that global
workforce, right?

And they may be reviewing
content coming from a country

they have never been to, with no
historical grounding

in what they're seeing.

It's really, really hard

for some of these difficult
pieces of content.

It's weird to be here physically
in Berlin, while emotionally

and mentally

completely there in Syria...

..just watching the war
from a distance.

I have this guilt feeling
of being the survivor.

I decide to post these photos

on my Facebook wall
and then Facebook

took it down after three days.

There was no explanation.

I try to, like, in every possible
way to be in touch,

but it wasn't possible.

And then to be able to show
these photos,

I decided to work out and peel out
the skin of the photo where I take

the victim out of the picture,

so you can actually show
these photos

without using this excuse
that it's not proper to show.

Sometimes I try to think
about it. Who decides

what is the policy of Facebook.

I would love to meet these people.
I would love to talk,

like, know who they are,

because by logic their background,

who they are, it affects
how they think.

That child didn't die
out of a normal situation.

It was caused by the whole
international game,

so giving them a very loud voice
is our aim.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

We should keep disturbing
the world

in a way, in a good way.

The companies have more and more
power to decide what can stay up

and what must be taken down.

They take advantage of our desire
for ease,

our resistance to effort,

our resistance to challenge,
and I think over time...

..if we're not already there, it
will interfere with our ability

to have critical thinking.

It interferes potentially
with our ability to be challenged.

To the extent that we're limiting
expression,

we're also limiting challenge.

We're limiting effort.

People shouldn't be surprised
if in the future there's

less information available to them,
less edgy, less provocative

information available online.

And I think that we'll be a poorer
society. We'll be poorer

societies for it.

SIRENS WAIL

DANCE MUSIC PLAYS

Have you seen her pictures?

You've seen her pictures online,

her sexy pictures?

Before, her Facebook page
was full of these things,

before she became political.

Now one time during... This was
during a time when the president

still had this media blackout -
he'd refuse to give interviews

to the media.

He gave Mocha Uson an interview.

And in that interview Mocha Uson
was fawning

all over the president, expressing
her support for the president,

and calling for a boycott of media,

so I wrote the post on my Facebook
and I said that it's fascinating

that now a meeting between
a president and an avid supporter

is branded as journalism.

I've had people tell me
to buy a bulletproof vest.

I've had people tell me
that they would blow my head off.

I've had people tell me
that they would bury me alive.

I've been called corrupt.

I've been called biased.

I've been called a prostitute.

The danger with Facebook is that...

..it's so much easier to fall
to the trap of taking sides

because it's so easy to publish,

just post and click.

People can be very emotional

and people can be easily
carried away

with quick snippets of information
that makes you think

that you understand.

This is why, for example,
we have a Trump or this is why

we have a Duterte or this is why
we have Mocha Uson.

The danger is that we might lose
democracy because we're willing

to give it up.

There's this code of silence
in the Silicon Valley.

Everything is always presented

in a very varnished,
manicured way.

Everyone's killing it.

Everything's going great.

Every plot is up and to the right.

Negatives in general
are just not talked about.

At least when I was there, the
workforce I faced was very young.

And if you're young, you don't

really have draws on your time.

You don't have a wife, you don't
have kids, whatever, right?

And so there's a lot of people

who kind of semi lived at
Facebook.

You were encouraged to hack the
world, however possible.

Facebook is fundamentally
a tech company, right?

It's run by engineers.

It thinks about product,
it thinks about infrastructures,

it thinks about scale, it thinks
about the user experience.

It's not a media company.
It doesn't think about content

or content creation or content
editing or curatorship.

It is just not part of its DNA.

Whenever Facebook
has been confronted with,

"Hey, you have a responsibility
to this thing,"

the response is, "We just do math.

"We have this algorithm
and we give you what you want.

"And we edit almost nothing."

But, you know, the political reality
is after Trump, after Brexit,

that answer kind of isn't
quite good enough any more.

And yet I think we're reaching
the point where the public

won't accept that as a reality.

And at some point, the government
will step in,

and I think they understand that.

There have been press reports
that Facebook may have potentially

developed software to suppress posts
from appearing in people's news

feeds in specific geographic areas.

Is that accurate?

Has Facebook developed software
to suppress posts from appearing

in people's news feeds in specific
geographic areas?

We do have many instances where
we have content reported to us

from foreign governments
that is illegal under the laws

of those governments,

so we deploy what we call
geoblocking or IP blocking

so that the content will not
be visible in that country,

but remains available...

So, for example,
criticising a government is illegal

in that country, you have the
capability to block them

from criticising the government
and thereby gaining entry

into that country and being allowed
to operate.

So, in...

..in the vast majority of cases...

..where we are on notice of
locally illegal content,

it has nothing to do
with political expression.

SIRENS WAIL

Facebook removes everything
and anything

from their social media platform

when Turkish authorities
ask them to do so.

Political speech
or content of a political nature

is, in most cases, the main subject
for these removals.

I'll show you some examples
in terms of what is being subject

to blocking or removal.

Photos burning the Turkish flag,

a Kurdistan map, caricatures
or cartoons mocking Erdogan.

Whichever platform you look,
whether it's YouTube,

whether it's Facebook,
whether it's Twitter,

Turkey is the country which
restricts more than anyone else

across the globe.

Turkey has always been a country
of censorship.

The traditional media is
increasingly controlled

by the government.

So, Turkish people have been turning
to social media platforms.

But now they're constantly pressured
by the Turkish authorities

These companies started to do deals
with the government authorities...

..because none of these platforms
want to be blocked completely

from Turkey, because then
they would be losing

users and business.

Delete.

Delete.

Delete.

Delete.

YouTube was so visual
and was able to cross boundaries,

so around 2007 we started to
experience a lot of blockages.

So when a government doesn't know
how to reach you,

they just turn you off
in their country.

It took us a while to figure out
what it was they were upset about.

We finally managed to get
ahold of the specific videos

that they were unhappy with,
some of which were about Ataturk,

some which they claimed were
terrorist videos

that, again, violated
Turkish law.

And so, I remember being up at
two o'clock in the morning one night

reviewing 67 videos
that the government was upset with,

and then make decisions
from there about what to remove

and what to keep up.

There was a point at which
for some videos,

which weren't going to get removed
from the service generally

because they didn't violate
our community guidelines

but were illegal in Turkey,
that we decided to block

by the IP address for Turkish users
so that users in Turkey would not

be able to see those videos.

I did not love that resolution,
but that's where we got to.

These are really backroom deals
that the public doesn't have a lot

of information about.

When these governments...

..in a kind of back channel way go
to the companies and say,

"We want you to restrict
this expression on your platform,"

it will push companies over time
to make these decisions

on their own, and they have to make
decisions

about what the law means
so that the companies are deciding

what's lawful and what's not,

what's illegal
and what's legitimate.

And that outsourcing to companies,
I think, should be really quite

disturbing to people
in democratic societies.

The nature of the job itself,

you are not allowed
to commit one mistake.

If you commit one mistake,

you could ruin one,
more than one life.

It could trigger war.

It could trigger bullying.

It could trigger killing one's life.

So...

the opinions or the thinking
of the users of the app

depends upon the content moderators.

Our job is not easy.
That's what I think.

When people say hate speech
isn't free speech,

or free speech isn't hate speech,

they are completely wrong

because the First Amendment
is specifically designed

for the things that you don't
want to hear.

I've been an upstart forever, man.

I've been, like, the shit kicker
for a long time

and I'm going to be the shit kicker
until I die.

Platforms like Facebook, it's
available, it's accessible.

You just need to be crafty
with social networking,

like YouTube or Facebook
or whatever.

You just have to have the
skills enough to shoot something

and upload it.

I believe the whole refugee thing...

You just don't open the gate
and just let a bunch of people in,

because it's like you find out
that a lot of them have diseases,

a lot of them are criminals,
a lot of them are rapists.

The minute a Sharia police walks up
to my wife and says, "Excuse me,"

whatever, I'm going to
knock the shit out of him.

It's like, "Fuck you, man.
Carry your goat-fucking ass back

"to whatever fifth-world shithole
you came from."

MAN SHOUTING

This is Sabo. I'm signing out
from Berkeley.

It's good seeing all the patriots
and all the people on the right

that I saw here.

There's a huge crowd of
amazing people down the street.

There's still a pretty big
police presence here.

I'm kind of curious how long
they're going to be around

because I know as soon as they go,

it wouldn't surprise me
if people start fighting.

Cower behind the camera! Shut up!

The United States is so politically
polarised that...

I mean, someone from the sort of
blue end of the spectrum can't even

have a conversation with someone
from the red end of the spectrum.

I mean, there's lots of
reasons for that.
I don't think Facebook created this,

but I think Facebook definitely
amplifies it and makes it worse.

You know, it used to be the case
that every citizen had a right

to an opinion, and now every citizen
has a right to their own reality -

right to their own truth,
to their own set of facts.

And, you know, Facebook
very intentionally flatters

those sets of facts by showing you,
you know, what you want to hear,

and effectively filtering out
what you don't want to hear,

by and large.
And so I think, to the degree...

You know, democracy requires that
we actually have a common set

of both rules of behaviour
and also ground truth

that we sort of
debate around, right?

And if you don't have rules of
behaviour - due to whatever reason -

and you don't have
a basic ground truth,

then I think democracy becomes
a little impossible.

But can you...? What did he say?

Why did I come here to speak?

I have absolutely no idea
why I even came to speak.

No, I have a question...
No! No, no, that's not...

He's... Feed back to him
what he said. I don't remember!

OK. Tell him what you understand
about what he was saying.

Do I look white? Hold on, hold on!

Hold on! Hold on!

Listen! OK, listen!

Why are you yelling at me?

You're preaching to me.
You are talking.

No. Tell me what I'm saying to you.

You're saying it.... Tell me
what I'm saying to you.

I think you're frustrated.

We need a man who... Yes.

And what did I say to you?
What did I say to you?

You're yelling at me! What did I...?
What am I saying to you? Hey!

Standing up against
white supremacy and...

Some leftist thinks you're being
politically incorrect.

We're the ones with the guns,
the bullets and the training.

And as soon as we can start
shooting, believe me,

all that shit's going to
go away really fast.

GUNSHOT, SHOUTING

SHOUTING

I don't know that we can place

all of the blame and responsibility
for hatred in our world

on the social media platforms.

But where I think that the...

..new tech companies
need to really reflect...

..is whether they promote...

..that type of engagement,
whether they have built systems

that encourage and accelerate

the most outrageous and offensive
statements rather than the ones

that will create more understanding.

SHOUTING

Well, one of the misconceptions is
that human nature is human nature,

and then technology
is just this neutral tool.

It's not amplifying anything.

But this is not true, because
technology does have a bias,

and that bias that it's...
It has a goal.

It's actually seeking a goal,
and it's the goal it's seeking is

"What will get the most number
of people's attention?

"What tends to work on billions
of people at successfully

"extracting their attention
out of them and keeping it?"

And not just getting the attention,
but then getting them
to share things.

And so it turns out that outrage
is really good at doing that.

Whether Facebook wants to or not,
they actually benefit at getting

more attention when they show feeds
that are filled with outrage

versus if they said,
"Let's not show those things."

It amplifies that
which is most divisive,

that which is most outrageous,
that which is most fearful.

A whole environment tuned to
offer us the worst of ourselves.

I'll start with you, Mr Stretch.

Facebook's fastest growing markets
are in the developing world.

For example, Facebook is being used
today as a breeding ground

for hate speech against
Rohingya refugees in Myanmar.

These are especially
vulnerable people.

They're being
violently persecuted.

The leadership in that country
is not doing a darn thing.

What are you doing to make sure
it's not used to undermine

nascent democracies, especially
in the undermining...

It's not losing votes,
it's losing lives.

Senator, thank you for the question.

We do have an obligation to
make sure that it is not misused

in the way... Understand,
we're talking about lives. I...

Senator, I don't disagree, and we do
believe we have a role to play

in raising visibility, but at the
same time not be used as a tool to,

for example, foment hatred or
glorify violence in any way.

SHOUTING IN VIDEO

SOBBING

SHOUTING IN VIDEO

SHOUTING CONTINUES

What's happening with the Rohingya
genocide in Burma is obviously...

This is just one of so many social
externalities that are being created

by a few platforms that are made
right here in California

by a handful of people
who look kind of like me -

you know, young white guy engineers
- whose decisions, no matter

how thoughtful or conscious
or less conscious they are,

will impact what two billion people
are thinking.

You know, the people in Burma
have no accountability.

They can't say, "There's a pothole
on the street called

'This fake news that's leading
to this genocide'".

They're inhabiting this environment,
living in Facebook every day,

and they're spotting this pothole
called Fake News,

which is feeding genocide,
and they have no way to report that

and get it actually taken care of.

We ought to be really careful
about the thing that we've built.

Please don't tell me he's gone!

SIRENS
Please, Jesus, no!

Please, no!

Please, no!
Don't let him be gone, no!

During my time there was the case
of the one who committed suicide.

I was responsible in conducting
and diagnosing

anything that was something
to do with mental health.

This guy who committed suicide
has been in the company

since the very start.

I saw in his eyes at the time
that I was talking to him

that he is very sad.

I asked him if I can help him
but he never really admitted

that he has a problem.

He hanged himself in his house
at the front of his laptop.

With a rope.

On his neck.

And with the laptop at his front.

My disappointment is that I was not
able to help him.

Three times he already informed
the boss, the operations manager

to please transfer him
and if he complained already

that he wanted to be transferred

the management should do
something about it.

Maybe this is a cry for help
already.

I'm different from what I am

before.

It's just like a virus in me,
wherein

it's slowly

penetrating in my brain,
and the reaction of my body

is like I'm working as a moderator

day to day and then I quit.

I need to stop.

There's something wrong happening.

I suddenly ask myself,
why am I doing this?

Just for the people to think
that it's safe to go online.

When in fact in your everyday job

it's not safe for you.

We are slaving ourselves.

We should wake up in being OK
with that because it's not OK.

We should wake up to the reality.

It takes courage to choose
hope over fear.

To say that we can build
something and make it better

than it has ever been before.

You have to be optimistic to think
that you can change the world.

We do it

one connection at a time.

One innovation at a time.

Day after day after day.

And that's why I think the work
that we're all doing together

is more important now
than it's ever been before.

APPLAUSE

Ignore.

Delete.

Ignore.