World Happiness Report and Social Media

It's time for Twit this week in Tech Ian Thompson is here. Abr Al Hidi, Patrick Beja h, uh will talk about Outlook crashing in space. They did manage to fix it. OpenAI buys a podcast for hundreds of millions of dollars, not ours, I'm sorry to say, and the end and maybe rebirth of Zombo.com. Twit is next. Podcasts you love from people you trust this is twit ch this is Twit, Thisek We in Tech, episode 1078, recorded Sunday, April 5th, 2026. The Great British Marmalade Scandal . It's time for Twit this week in Tech, the show where we cover the week's tech news. Let me introduce our esteemed panel this week from Scenehead, ladies and gentlemen, Abrara Alhiti. She's a senior technology reporter there. And we finally figured it out because it always seemed like you were on Tech News Weekly and then on Twitch the following Sunday. Yeah. And we wanted to separate it. But Benia said, well, we let them choose what day, and everybody who's on tech news weekly figures well I'm gonna have a tech news a twit week. Yeah, why not? So why not do it all at once? So you're getting it out of the way, I guess is no, I'm what are you talking about? Just teasing you. Great to see you, Abra . It's nice to see you. Ian Thompson is also here. Professor Thompson. Because look at his library. It's just jam packed with goodies. Oh, this is just a couple of bookcases. We've got another five in the house. Oh I love it. I love it. I had to give up your books. Yeah, I mean I had to give up half my library when I moved over here and it broke my heart. But um I took a a very simple rule. If I could get it on an e book, then I 'd do that. Something which I've regretted because they started changing ebooks. Uh or if I hadn't read it in five years, then uh it went to the charity shop or to the book shop or whatever. That's smart. Yeah. Also here joining us from Paris, former NATO nation. Wait, no. No, you're still in NATO. We're the former NATO nation. It's us. You're you're the former almost former NATO nation. PatrickBeja , not Patrick.com. Staying up late for us. I appreciate it. Thank you. Happy too. Patrick. We had actually uh one thing to celebrate this week, which was the launch of Artemis II , uh the integrity cap sule is uh now on its way. There this is a uh a NASA thing built in Unity, actually, which is kind of cool. On its way to the moon. It's actually uh closer to the moon by far. It's only fifty-four thous milesand away from the moon. It's almost a quarter of a million miles from the Earth. And what's uh what's cool uh is that they have now seen a part of the moon you don't normally see, part of the dark side of the moon. Ah so that's far side of the moon. They call it the dark side. They do, and then I start singing the Mulan song in my head. Yeah. But it's not dark to the moon. It's only dark. Yeah, far side's a much better way of saying it, isn't it, Ian? It's it's sorry, this is it's one it's the mound of regolith that I will die on because you know it's it's it's it it's it's one of those things. I was speaking to a NASA engineer and I used the dark side of the moon phrase and he's like Actually I'm glad that they got that shot because you can see clearly that there is no secret military base Well Arthur C. Clarke had a wonderful story about this because he spoke with the Apollo al uh uh Apollo eight astronauts who were the first be humans to actually see it. And they'd just been to sea two thousand and one before the flight. And one of the astronauts said, Look, we did consider radioing back to NASA saying that we'd seen a large black monoliths sitting outside of it. But we decided we'd never fly again if we did that. Yeah. That's awesome. Towards a rendezvous point. You see, it's right now it's kind of far off. Towards a rendezvous with point with uh Orion, which will then slingshot around it. So it's kind of an amazing target practice thing. Um It's almost like they do math before they send out the capsule. It's funny because I've heard interviews with various NASA spokespeople. NASA has started using, I'm sorry to say, you know, camera ready people instead of engineers. Yeah. I really hate it. And they talk like this. And I saw a CNN anchor say, well explain the orbital dynamics. And the poor woman said, well, uh no, I I can't. Oh no. But but you know, you saw that movie uh with the people and the on the big blackboard? That's how they do it. So uh anyway, that was a that was a nice thing. There is uh a couple of real-time Orion trackers. I was just showing you NASA's. There's one kind of uh third party from ISS info.net that is also uh showing uh the the the rendezvous and some beautiful uh shots, by the way, uh, of the moon, or sorry, the earth from Orion um with the sun behind the earth, some really gorgeous shots. So um they brought their iPhones up there. I was gonna say it's a great, great iPhone ad. They also, I'm sad to say, uh brought Microsoft Surface Tablets. Yeah. And just take a wild guess. What app do you think they had trouble with? With both versions of it. Yeah. Outlook. So m NASA had to reinstall Outlook remotely. Because are we sure it's not are we sure it's not because they have like special equipment or some kind of weird network and like it's it's the uh it's not like if they had another app or program it uh they would be certain it would have worked perfectly. I mean I w I don't know why. I know. Yeah. So uh Artemis flight director uh Judd Freeling said that quote This is not uncommon. We have this on station all the time. You know, sometimes Outlook has issues getting configured, especially when you don't have a network that's directly connected. Of course, Orion is not connected to the internet, obviously. It's a quarter million miles away. So essentially we just had to reload his files on Outlook to get it working. But it might, you know, you might then say, well, why did they send them out with surface tablets and Outlook if they had these problems at home? Yeah. Well I mean it's easily fixable probably, you know, it's not and it's probably not mission critical. Like they're not gonna get uh flight path instructions throughout the god I hope not. So it seems like but still, I mean it is a very bad ad for uh or it you know, it continues the the image of Microsoft and and Outlook and all of the everything they do. And it is simultaneously a fantastic ad for Apple and the iPhone because they have iPh They did but also the iPhones are are modified so that they can't really do much except take pictures. Uh they're like they're not simply what are you gonna take? You know, y you're gonna take those devices that are compact and that have everything you need. Um and you're not gonna build your own phone or or and it's easier to get an iPhone than an actual camera probably although I'm sure they have those too. But I'm not surprised they're using consumer tech. I love it that our uh Well no, it's good. And I think it's part you know, this is the SLS, which was uh cleverly contrived by Congress to be made in all fifty states. So this is probably something that doesn't happen in France. I hope it doesn't happen in France. And I imagine there's also that kind of corporate backsheesh where well we gotta give Microsoft a little something something and Apple something. Yeah. It doesn't make any wonder. Can we can it is I mean, you talked about it last week, but it is amazing that for this once I'm gonna use a we like human ity uh is going back to space. It doesn't matter, it's the US. it's On this one it',s not just the US. It's everyone. And we're going back to not just to space, but to the moon. And it's working. And NASA is managing under uh you know um what's the name of the new director who everyone 's actually been in space, which is kind of a ma you know kinda cool. He ended up being confirmed and uh he rejiggered a few things and it seems like it might actually be happening. Now of course there's you know this base on the moon thing which China and the US are gonna have. But at this point let's just be amazed. I actually No it is I I d don't get me wrong. I celebrate this this. I think is very cool. We watched the launch on Wednesday on Intelligent Machines. I think it's super cool. I completely with you. Even though I also know in my heart it's just a silly exercise that there we don't need to spend the money to go to the moon. We're never going to go to Mars because that is just impossible. But it makes it inspiring. It's not impossible. No, but and and there is a value to that. Uh and also the kind of research you need to do does, you know, in the case of the uh uh moon race, did trickle down to uh technologies that we're using every day. Um it you know I mean we got hook and we got Velcro, we got Tang, for example. And we got Fisher Space Pens. So I I tried to show the the launch. Well I did show the launch to my kids. They're eight and five. That's exciting. Um it was really exciting to me , and they were like, Oh, okay. I mean, it's a rocket going to space, we see that all the time. And I had because not just because it's happened before, but there's just so much fake imagery everywhere. I'm I'm not talking about the AI, I'm talking about movies and you know, CGI and fantastical things and every and they weren't getting the reaction I was hoping. They weren't amazed and you know . Um, so I mean, hopefully when they actually walk on the moon in a few years, it will have more of an impact. But I was kind of a little bit disappointed that kids today they have, you know, family and science fiction up the wazoo and they don't understand that the real uh people going to the moon is actually amazing. Did you see the CNN interview with a kid who's now become a meme? Uh he turned up to the mo And the CNN journalists said, you know, so why are you so excited excited about this? And he just looked at her and went, We're going to the effing moon. I I I gotta say I want to meet What do you mean? We're going to the moon. Uh I love it. You you know, I don't know if if any of you are old enough to remember uh the last time. I was in high school the last time people went to the moon and I'm old. I literally born. Yeah, nineteen seventy two. I I literally wet myself when Apollo eleven landed on the moon, but I was only fourteen days old at the time. So I remember my dad getting me up uh to watch that and I'll n and I will never forget Yeah. And it was a global event which we kinda need these days, a place a a chance for us all to celebrate something as humanity as opposed to And it also gave us a great headline from The Guardian when the toilet malfunctioned. Um and the headline was Relief for Astronauts as Artemis Two toilet repaired. And I just thought the the the headline writer there was sitting with a huge grin on their face just like Yes, uh now I read something this morning they're smelling something burning in the toilet, so that's not good. Ooh . I don't know. Sacrifice is being made for the thing. You know what? They can pee in the suit, honestly. They're okay. They'll be all right. Um and and now that Outlook's looking, they can write home about it. So I guess they get spam emails like hot women in your area or sub zero outside I d as long as we're piling on Microsoft, I do have to show this one uh blog post from a guy named Tabe Bannerman . Um how many products does Microsoft have named copilot. We know there's a few, right? Turns out there's 75 different Microsoft copilots, and even this count is down. He says since I pu published this, I've received uh emails from there are two more missing, gaming copilot and Microsoft Dragon Copilot. So now the total is eighty It's like I guess all the good names are taken. I don't know. There are a lot of copilots, copilot and Viva insights, copilot and shareport, copilot and planner, copilot and one note, co pilot and on and on and on and on. That doesn't cause any confusion. It's like taking a page out of Google's book. Like let's just name things like a bunch of random things. Google's naming is terrible. Yeah, it's all over the place. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good thing. But the the thing that makes it weird is that the name is not just copil ot, it's like something with co-pilot at the at the end of the name, which you know I can understand. It's like Nadella getting uh an old hands meeting and going like we're gonna go big on AI and our AI is co-pilot. So go do things, make AI, integrate AI in your products, and call it co-pilot. Because we have to have a big AI strategy. And yeah, there's no like there's not even time to decide on an actual uh uh uh brand strategy. It's just Apple being like three years late might have time to have development There you go. We're g well they're just gonna use Siri. They already got a name. So um actually I think this is a little bit of a problem for Microsoft. They've actually retrenched a little bit because people don't want copilots shoved in their faces. And uh it's giving in you know, I'm an AI fan, by the way. I'm a huge accelerationist, but it's getting giving AI a bad name. I mean very similar to to once again bring up Google Gemini being in everything. You're like, why is Gemini summarizing my two ones. It's not necessary. There's that little little glowy Gemini button all over begging you to use it. Yeah. Yeah. It is more aggravating in in uh Windows though I have to admit because having the co pilot button in like notepad and paint. Yeah and like it is it does feel like it's been crammed in places that you really don't need it to be. Yeah. Even though it might be useful in , you know, notepad. It could be useful, like it's text-related stuff, but it feels bad. It feels like it's being shoved in your face. So I think there's a at least a communications issue there because most people, myself included, don't know what it's for. We don't I don't I have no idea what to use it for. I just see the button and I I get annoyed. See it and ignore it. Yeah, basically. I ignore Gemini too, so I'm an equal ignorist opportunity. I did find a good use for Gemini the other day, um, if anyone ever like needs to do any type of video editing and you have like a like an interview, it'll if you ask when somebody said something in that video and you need to pull like a sound bite, it'll tell you exactly when they said it and write out the quote. So if you're ever using that in drive, that's like my one thing where I'm like, I don't have to dig for that quote or that sound bite. Um so that's kind of nice if you ever I think that's maybe a little bit of the plan is if you just find one thing, they they want you to find that one thing that's useful and then you will go, oh, and maybe expand your horizons. Google did do uh one good thing in AI this week. They released a a a very compact version of uh Gemma , which is their smaller version of Gemini. It's mini Gem mini mini Gemini Gemini. Yeah. And they released it uh as open weights. And uh they also released it with the Apache license, which uh a lot of people are very excited about, saying, Hey, I think that's gonna make it possible for us to use this in new and exciting ways. I so um for instance, corporations which are hesitant to use other licenses, Apache is such a forgiving license that uh they're more likely to use it. So uh praise to Google for because I believe in the long run, you know, we don't want to be forced to use these corporate models, these models from the fr you know, the big AI companies, this the so-called uh hyperscalers. Google's one of them. Uh if it means they lock in AI. And I think a lot of us are really hoping that open AI, open weight AI with with relaxed licenses, uh something we can even run on our own machines, which Gemma is small enough to do, um, that's our hope for the future. Then then it will be a much more egalitarian future with AI. You'll get to do it, use it the way you want it. Um, so uh I I will give Google uh some credit for doing that. This is a uh from all I tried it a little bit. Uh there is a version for the Macintosh, which is nice that you can use using that the Apple's native uh MLX um extensions instead of NVIDIA's CUDA. Another good thing, so competition is a good thing in any of these spaces. So we'll cover that more on our AI show, Intelligent Machines. It's kind of an inside baseball story, but I did want to give them some credit. Thank you for doing that, Google. That's the right thing. Let's take a little break. And when we come back, Patrick had some thoughts about the big tobacco moment for social media. That's what some people are calling it. We talked about it last week with Kathy Ellis. You heard it, and Patrick said I he steam was coming out of his ears. So we're gonna give Patrick his his uh chance to reb ut uh think that whole story. I think it's very interesting and of course it is an ongoing uh story in the tech community. So we will cover it. Patrick Bejah here, not Patrick dot com , uh longtime tech podcaster. And uh and he worked in the industry too. You worked at Blizzard and so you can't. Yeah, on the gaming side of things. That counts. I finally got a Nintendo Switch 2 and I'm I have to say I'm loving it. It's really, really good. Oh, just before the price hike. That is motivation. Exactly. Exactly. Uh Abra Al Hita here from CNET. Always a pleasure to have you on, Abra. Likewise. And Ian Thompson. And you know, I I want to say there's a trend here. None of you are blurring your background. Oh yeah. That's a first. I would never think to do that on any show. Yeah, I don't like Ian used to do it. Pat Patrick might have done it from time to time. No, I don't I don't like it. It feels like I think we're turning against it, aren't we? Yeah. I did it and people were just like, Can you please turn that off? And you're like, Okay. I like to read the book titles. I like to see the T you know it I'm we're nosy. Yeah. Is it just me or when you're out on a walk, it's at night and you see a window that's lit up and you can see in what kind of TV they have. I do what kind of lamps. Yeah. What kind of furniture? We're no we're it's human. Yeah. I'm taking notes. Like I'm like, oh that's a great design. Yes. Yeah. It's real life interest. I'm not a peeping Tom . I I fully agree. Good. Thank you, Brock. I will always validate that. Yeah. I don't feel guilty anymore. Never. I always felt a little weird about it. But it's like you can't, you can't not. And yeah, I'm always interested. What are they watching? Yeah. Because everybody nowadays has a massive TV in their window, right? Somebody reading a book. No, no, Well no, as you drive into San Francisco over the over the Bay Bridge, they've got all those skyscrapers on the right hand side and one on the left. And yeah, people don't shut their curtains and you're just kind of like, oh, okay. You've got the exercise bike by the window that's a nice design choice that plant is gorgeous yeah okay folks we're looking at you uh we'll have more in just a moment with our fabulous uh panel, our show today brought to you by Thinxed Canary. It is the best invention ever. I was just at RSAC for the first time meeting the Thinxed Canary team, Haroon and Company. They are so great. They started life m many years a ago, more than decade ago, as uh white hat hackers, pen testers. They would teach companies and governments how to break into systems. And one of the things they they really learn is what hackers are looking for when they get into your system. And what you should be thinking about is how would I know if somebody is inside my network, browsing around, stealing stuff, planning time bombs? How would you know that? You assume your your defenses are good and nobody's gonna get in, but that's a bad assumption. That's why you need these thinks canaries. 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Canary.tools slash twit for just seventy five hundred dollars a year. You get five Thinxed Canaries. You get your own hosted console. You get upgrades, you get support, you get maintenance. And if you use the code TWIT in the How Did You Hear About Us box, you'll get 10% off the price for life. You can always return your Thinks Canaries with their two month money back guarantee for a full refund, but I have to tell you that Thinks Canary refund guarantee has never, not once been claimed. Visit Canary.toolslash twit and enter the code twit in the how did you hear about us box canary that tool slash twit we thank them so much for their support of this week in tech well we talked about it last week there were two big court decisions against social media. Uh the state of New Mexico with a big multi hundred million dollar fine against Meta. And then in Los Angeles, a young woman uh sued saying uh I started using Instagram at the age of six and or YouTube at the age of six, Instagram at the age of nine. It caused severe mental health problems. The a case in LA was interesting because they went after Meta by the way, Snapchat and TikTok were also named in the suit, uh settled out before the case went to jury, went to trial. But YouTube and Meta fought the case and lost . It was really a product defect case . The claim from the plaintiff was these products were poorly designed, encouraging me, addicting me, and as a result, they're liable. It wasn't a big it was only a few million dollar uh penalty. Um the jury said we didn't the point was we wanted them to fix it. We weren't trying to hurt them. We were trying to get them to fix it. And of course, we're all waiting now for the other shoe to drop because there are literally, literally thousands of other cases like this that will now proceed forward with this as it's not a precedent, the technical term I guess is bellwether, but they will certainly be brought up in future cases. Now uh Kathy Gallis argued against the decision uh last week, saying and I agree saying it's a threat. Um but Pat Patrick you you said you didn't like that idea. Yeah well I mean I certainly understand and you know Kathy unfortunately she she's she's not here so uh I will fully acknowledge she understands all of this a lot better than me, um and the legal aspects of it. But I do have a feeling that first of all I need to say as a preamble, I'm not against big tech. Like I I love a lot of the things that, you know the magnificent seven and others do. So this is not like Patrick is French and hates everything tech related. But it does feel to me like there's a knee-jerk reaction to this uh uh to this judgment to this trial um which involves section two thirty and a general fear that if you try to condemn or decide that these companies have been doing something wrong, then all of a sudden it's an attack on Section 230 and really they should be protected because uh if not, then all of a sudden moderation uh is not possible anymore. And I I strongly disagree with that interpretation because Section two thirty indeed protects uh publ you know website publishers for uh moderation purposes, but this is not that. Um Yeah, I agree with you. It should not be a get out of jail free card. Exactly. Because if you go the way that section two thirty protects everything, including this, which is not again moderation, like you're not uh rem oving a certain uh a certain piece of you designed your sites to be super attractive. Exactly. But Patrick in the it does give us it does give other super attractive products like this fine podcast doesn't put them at risk also? I mean I don't understand why they haven't gone after for instance uh DraftKings, the the online gambling talk about designing a product that's addictive and showing definitely it's gambling, so to begin with, there's an issue. But if it is uh uh proven slash decided by a jury, which is how we set societal norms by the way. Especially in a country that is governed by common law and not by like up on high uh uh government decided deciding how things are done like it is mostly in France . If you don't allow for uh juries to say, well, this product was designed a certain way, and by the way, discovery showed that uh studies did put into the hands of Zuckerberg and other executives of these companies. Yeah, they knew that there was a serious risk, not just anecdotal, but a serious risk that these products were designed in a way that would affect their users' mental health, especially young users, especially young women, young girls. If you say, well, okay, fine, whatever, but section two thirty, so you can't change the product. This is the algorithm, the way the apps have infinite scrolling. Um and when they design these products, they are far removed from a website publisher who moderates comments or uh blog posts. They design the way the algorithm is going to serve the content to you. I feel like this goes not one but two or three steps beyond just moderating one or two pieces of content. This is a product that is designed a specific way, and if we can't find that this product is designed in a way that is uh detrimental to society , then what are we doing? Like if we can't find that it's a problem the way it's designed, then they have no um incentive to design it differently. Now if the argument is oh no, this is not a product that is intentionally designed to be addictive. And just to make it clear, I'm fully ready to admit that maybe they didn't realize the effect would be so bad in the beginning because they were just making a good product that would um that would encourage people to come back and to spend time on the app and to hopefully have a good time using their product. I understand. But now we're like 10-15 years removed from that time and we're s looking at and seeing the results on people. And I think we need to be allowed to look at these things and say, all right, you know what? This is having an effect we didn't anticipate, and it's an issue, and we should maybe change the way it works. And I don't first of all I think uh uh the legal uh proceedings is how you should do that. And second of and there's gonna be, you know, uh appeals and all of this. It's not settled now. And second of all, I honestly don't see how Section two thirty should protect the product design. No, and I don't think people are saying that. I think but there is some fear that it would undermine Section two thirty Section two thirty protects these companies against what uh its user's post and gives them the right to moderate it, the right to delete it. This is was really about a product defect. And I thought that was smart of the plaintiff's attorneys to focus it as a defective product. I don't understand why I mean you could also do this about alcohol. You could for sure it see this is the thing. Well it is the connection between social media and mental illness is not a proven connection at by any But you could definitely say that about alcohol, you could definitely say about a gambling. Those are demonstrably addictive products. Why are we letting that much more so than social ? It does seem to me like there's a growing consensus that social media has some effect on its users, especially younger users. People should we should continue. Yeah, and I don't mind even laws against young people using it. I don't know what do you guys think? Uh Brarar, what do you think? That's the problem. There's no good way to do that. Yeah yeah it's I'm very curious kind of observing how Australia is handling that and how more nations continue to potentially do the same but i in the US at least kind of feels like it's that the ship has sailed and young people are already on this thing, how do you pull them away from it? Maybe you get the next generation to not, you know, be on these platforms. That's where you start. But it's really hard to get a teenager away from a platform where they've built so many connections and they are potentially addicted to it. I think it it it it can be addictive for children and for adults. Children is really where there can be very detrimental effects. But even as adults, you know, like it's so hard. I I try to set screen time limits for Instagram an hour a day, and I blow past them almost every single day. And I'm like, I'm not even enjoying being on this app. Like it's like it's addictive. It's addictive. We know it's addictive. So but I yeah, I just don't know what what the answer is in terms of allowing people to have the free will to be on something if they want to be on it. It's kind of I mean I I'm not a libertarian, but I feel like that there should be some responsibility on the user. Yeah. If you're having a problem with it, it's kind of on you to stop using it. Look at this phone free bars and restaurants are on the rise across the U.S. Yeah. People are recognizing that yeah, we don't really want this to be the way we live. Well I mean I don't think we should go to laws immediately as you know, we don't have to. I think the very important thing that's happening now, and not just with this case in court, but in general in in the entire world, kind of as we're realizing what's happening, is a change of perception and a change of societal view on these things. You know, everyone knows sugar is not great for you. We don't have laws against consuming sugar. We have you know, in France for example, we have great things like labels on on uh uh food items on processed foods with with like a score from A to F and how good this thing is compared to the one next that that's great. But we don't have laws that said you you that say you don't have to eat sugar. But we all know like because society has put an emphasis on this, that maybe you shouldn't abuse it. And that's not the look uh the outlook we have on social media right now, because we didn't know. And it doesn't, you know, I think cigarettes either, but we've come around cigarettes. Uh the cigarette societally we're we're discouraging their use. Because when the tobacco lobby first when these trials first kicked off, uh in fact when the tobacco uh company's own research showed that yes, nicotine was addictive, their response wasn't to, okay, let's reduce the amount of nicotine and advise people what to do. They bred new strains of tobacco with more nicotine in to make them more addictive. And I think this is what the social media companies have done. They discovered that this stuff was really addictive and said, right, how can we make it more more addictive? Because that way we get more screen time per user. But see, here's my problem with this is for first of all, there's this uh perception, and I think this happened in the jury that there's something magical about technology companies and they're magically threaten ing to us and they're using some sort of hypnosis to get kids to use their product. And I think that that's basically fundamentally an anti technology point of view. We don't ban cigarettes. We don't ban alcohol. We don't ban gambling in most cases. Um every state now has a lottery, so there's state sanctioned gambling as addictive as it is. My fear is that this is going to be used it already is being used to ban social media for young people without acknowledging that there is value to social media as well, right? All of the examples you just gave are also banned for young people. So you know, young people is one thing. Okay, you're right. That's a good point. And I don't think we need to necessarily maybe we need to products our design. But we expand into a huge anti-tech movement where we do in fact say I think we should be very aware of this. But we also shouldn't, as an overreaction to that possibility, decide that there is nothing that can be done , and these companies can just design the products the way they you know there's an example I I like to give because I lived through it. Um video games. In the 80s and 90s, when Mortal Kombat was released , it created an outrage, and everyone was like, oh, video games are bad for kids, and like we shouldn't. And us as kids were like, no, video games are awesome. And like they're all trying to to uh to to to outlaw and to ban video games and oh but look in the end video games stayed and this was moral panic and blah blah blah. It wasn't. I just realized this recently actually that is the reason that the um you know Peggy and uh and oh my god, what's the rating system for video games in the US? Um the name escapes me. Yes, that is when they were created. Thank you, Benito. The SRB was created. And it's it's not banning games, but it's just putting a label on games that are inappropriate for certain ages to inform the parents. And that is an important societal reaction to these things because you know I have to point out that it was the same kind of pseudo sciencey opinion that well it's just everybody can tell that video games are bad for you and are gonna make you violent . Everybody can tell that social media and spending too much time on your phone is bad for you without any scientific background backing. And there are some scientific saying that and there And there isn't any real science saying that any more than there was about video games. But because I think there's more and more studies I think there's more and more maybe we're not there yet and maybe we should I'm not, you know, objecting to uh I'm not saying we should do all of this now. I'm just objecting to the idea that it's impossible and that we shouldn't. No, no, I agree. with it You know? We can do something about it. I agree. And I just don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There's real value to it too. Me neither. I think especially with a platform like YouTube. Like I, you know, we talk a lot about meta and Instagram and how terrible it is. YouTube is there's incredible. I watch it every morning. Great. I learn like there's educational content. There's a I learn so much from YouTube . I love it. I'm on YouTube all the time. Yeah. And there's a reason there's a YouTube kids. Like there, there are things that are trying to be done, not but there are also terrible things on there. So that's a really tricky example of like the breadth of content that you could access on. Perfect. To completely remove access to YouTube, I think is detrimental. I think that is a bridge too far. But finding that middle ground. I know. That that really blew my mind. I was like taking away Instagram is one thing, but YouTube is a lot of people. I think it I think YouTube you can't be logged in to YouTube. Um but you can still share, for example, videos on Discord or WhatsApp with your friends, right? I think you can still watch it. Australia you're talking about? I believe so, yes, yes. I'm talking about Australia. Well, you're just not logged in. You're allowed to use it without a big threat? Or you just can't have an account? No, you can't have an account. I think that's that's the restriction. That's meaningless. That's you have to see all the ads. No, because the algorithm is the issue there. Because they're worried about how that and you know, maybe I'm just gonna throw something random here. Maybe we don't need the infinite scroll feed. Maybe we need don't it. Maybe should the courts be deciding that? Maybe yes. That's the whole point. Maybe there's no way the social media companies are gonna get rid of it. So you know, it's like what other choice is there? And there should be scientific consensus behind it before we this none Leo. And I think it's very paternalistic to say, well, you people just can't be trusted with an algorithmic feed, so a brar, no ad There is also the potential that this backfires. I mean do you remember in the eighties when I think it was Al Gore's wife behind the thing too to put you know They wanted to put a chip on your TV. Yeah I I didn't say algorithmic field uh feed Leo. I said the infinite scrolling thing. Because that's been named a few times as a a cause. And you're saying there's no science. I don't think that's true. I think there is, you know, uh a growing corpus of scientific studies that show that it does affect uh i there is not a consensus yet, but I don't think it's very hard thing to prove. And uh uh I I think the problem is it seems right, but it's an impossible thing to prove because human beings are very complex and then what are you gonna do? You're gonna have a control how do you have a control group? Well you get the algorithmic feed, you don't uh and let's watch for twenty years and see if you go crazy. That's how is that how is that happen? Why not? Because you can't this is this is why uh uh nutritional science is messed up. It's very hard to do this kind of in vitro test, in vivo testing with humans. I mean maybe we're taking the comparison too far, but if you're saying nutrition you nutritional science is difficult, there are still things you can take away from you know what is good and bad and stuff. But how do you measure this this uh Well you know ? I got depressed because I was spending a lot of time on Insta gram. I think you're belittling uh a a whole field of science that is, you know, psychology and and and I think you should look at the results. I think experts in the field are in agreement that there is no scientific basis. I don't think that's the case. All right, we'll have to disagree about it. Take a break. I'll try to find a couple of studies that I've seen go under the code there. But I but you know, when Jonathan Heid'ts book came out , uh there was uh and I'll I'll find the article, a very w respected person who's studied this for years, this is her field, who said, no, there's no consensus on this at all. That this is something that people feel is right makes sense. But see, I always think when science makes sense that and you say, well, that just seems sensible, that's when you're in trouble. So are you saying there's no issue and we should change nothing? No. No, I think it's okay to change things, and I think there are ways to do it. I think there's a great risk because of people's antipathy to technology, and that's what I want to defend, uh there's a great risk that we will overdo it and that we will do real harm. I think that the uh long-term evidence in Australia is going to be that real harm happened, that there's a whole bunch of marginalized kids who have no social who now are, you know, completely cut off from the support groups that they had. There are many examples of things like this. And distance is such a big issue in Australia. And I think they'll have access to tiny numbers. YouTube, they have access to Discord, they have access to WhatsApp. And they c have access to all of these sites without being logged in. I don't think they're like being a good thing But is that was that an intentional thing? Well we want to make sure that they have something or is it we just forgot to make that No, I think it's impossible you'd need to block YouTube in the country if you want to do it. Because age verification has no way of being you know you can't do that in a private fashion. In a secure private fashion. That's true. It's another it's another issue, but I I will uh uh admit that it's true. Yeah. You know you have consistently every time you're on have argued this and I and I I respect your position. I think your position is actually completely uh sensible and logical. I just think it's very we have it's a challenge to solve this. And I agree with you. And I think we shouldn't go too far. And there is a danger of going too far. It's just that we are, you know, among friends here. This is a safe space. And we can admit. Don't tell the other ones. Don't tell the legislators. But maybe there are some things we could change. I don't have TikTok. I don't have Instagram on my phone. I have taken all of that stuff off. I don't have Facebook on my phone. Yeah. The only reason I have X still on my phone is because it is the last place where I can really get up-to-date AI news. And so what I do is there X now, thank goodness has a filter where you can say I only want to see AI news or I only want to see A. Go to Blue Sky and talk about AI. You will get shouted have an account on all these things, but I don't use A I will say one last thing. There's a report called the World Happiness Report Happiness Report that's done every year that, ranks countries on many different uh you know criteria, uh that decides which is the happiest country in the world. That should be to measure, shouldn't it? I'm sure we're not up there. Yeah. Well, it's uh it it relies on things like uh unemployment benefits and uh wages and social security, all of those things. Finland number one consistently for years. But there is a section about Is it a happy place? It's really interesting because they have a high alcoholism and suicide rate in Finland? Well that's due to certain things that happen. But it is the happiest place on earth. It's happy in the sense that uh well pe Finns are weirdly . Not but you know, if you take those criteria, you know, uh you're not gonna die if you get sick, you're not gonna uh uh g be thrown out of your house if you lose your job, these kinds of things. Yes. But there is a section about um social media. And the really interesting thing, if you're talking about science, you can go check it out. The really interesting thing is that they're saying um social media seems to affect people's uh uh enjoyment in general if you consume too much of it. But if you consume uh like an hour a day, which is not ridiculous, you are better off than if you consume none of it. Oh that's interesting. And there are some social media that actually improve your uh well-being. You too. The ones that connect you to people you don't know, like you know, X uh reels, like the the ones that are uh heavily algorithmic, are worse than WhatsApp. Okay, that's understandable. You talk to people you know, and Facebo ok. Facebook is actually because they put the emphasis on people from your family and from I don't really use Facebook, but I was very surprised because of course I'm like, ah, meta, Zuckerbergs, hang him from a tree, bring out the guillotine. Of course I'm exaggerating. That's not what I say. But you see Facebook there, and you have to think, okay, I understand the logic behind it. Maybe there's some something. So that report is saying some social media, specifically some uh apps, can uh make you happier and I'll stop monopolized. Wait, can I present a quick counterargument to that? I actually don't like seeing people I know on social media because when I compare my life to them and I'm like, ooh, they're doing better than I am. But if I somebody I don't know, then I'm like, oh, they made me laugh. It's but it's all subjective, right? It's all like what do you enjoy seeing? Yeah, TikTok is an entertainment. It's like TV. It's like watching TV. It's entertainment. So it makes sense. I watch a lot of TikTok. It's fantastic. It's so creative. And you know, I really don't want to give the impression that I'm anti . There's so much cool stuff. Like I watch theoretical physics videos on YouTube all the time. I watch Tik Tok way too much. Like I love it. I'm just you know, I was watch the the uh chess the c chess uh candidates tournament is going on right now. You're never gonna see coverage of this on ESPN . But YouTube has excellent coverage of it. This is this is the road to the world championship. The winner of this gets to take on the world champion. It's very important to people play chess, but it's a very narrow slice of the popul