[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 2, Scene 6 (Continued)

 [Scenes of Massive Facebook size]

VO: Our scrappy little start up grew up.  Now it has 2.93 BILLION (that’s Billion with a B) users, or in a planet of 8 billion people, almost half have facebook.  Odds are, if you have an internet access; you have a facebook account or at least an account with Instagram, Whatsapp or one of Mark’s other companies.   In 2022, it earned over 140 BILLION and since it started in 2011, its earned over half a TRILLION dollars.  (Trillion with a T).   It is the most used source of news, the biggest source of advertisement, and the go to place to socialize for many people and groups in nearly every nation on Earth.  So what makes it so evil?

[Images of Mark in a Top Hat and Montebank Cape]

VO: Is it because they tied some poor lady and her dog to the railroad tracks? Is it because they made a volcano lair and wanted to hold the earth ransom with nuclear missiles? Maybe establish Orbital Supremecy so they could ransom the Earth to build a giant statue of him?  No.  Far far worse.

[Images of Random people]

VO: The crimes of Facebook are far too many to mention but we’re going to do three big ones.  We’ll start with little evil ‘e.’  If you use the logic of the show the Good Place, and assigned people good points for good things and bad points for bad things; nobody beats Mark.  The first crime is breaking up friends and family.  And it isnt deliberate, not really; but apathy can still be a form of evil, and in this case the worst evil.

[Image of a complex rube goldberg machine]

VO: The heart of Facebook is the Algorhythm.  That’s basically a complex mathematical formula to decide what it is you see.  All the big guys use them, but Facebook does it better.  Since it knows more about you than anyone else (except maybe Google), it takes all of the things you like, you want, you are or that you click or watch and feeds it back into the algorithm  Sounds harmless, right?  I mean, its ok if you know its addictive…right? Well…we’ll get back to that.  But the point is, it IS addictive.  And Facebook knows it is.  And advertisers do too.  The problem comes from the fact that, as a faceless amoral corporation, they act ammoral.  Which means, except for things they think will cost them prestige and money (porn, suicide, and sometimes violence), Facebook will show you what people watch and clicks.  Which means

[Image of Soviet Agents and Bad Bomb Throwing Bolshiviks]

VO: When bad guys figure that out and wanna lie and cheat and steal, they can put out lies specifically designed to get clicks.  And so those clicks get more clicks, and people believe their lies, and those lies are picked up by the bad guys and made worse, which feeds on itself.  And Facebook doesnt care.  And that makes people argue.  

[Images of Fighting, and cracks between friends and family]

VO: And that means real people argue about the lies.  So friendships and family are shattered.  The lies are bad enough (and we’ll get back to that) but the greatest crime Facebook ever committed was to break up families, break up friends and even whole communities as they argue about the lies while Facebook sits back and counts the money, laughing all the way to the bank.  Who doesnt have a facebook friend that they lost? A family member that doesnt talk to them anymore because of something they said or did on facebook? Even when those relationships are damaged, sometimes the wound is still there, festering.   

[Image of Mark shrugging]

VO: And all so Mark could make a buck.  And remember, he controls it utterly….so the blame is literally all on him.  He could change this, any time he wants, and he doesnt; except the minimum he can get away with.