Ninety million facebook users data were shared with third parties without their knowledge zuckerberg admitted it was my mistake and im sorry breach of privacy hate speech fake news election manipulation are such abuse is an inevitable result of facebooks Business Model is really prepared to take responsibility or is it time for regulators to step in facebooks the Anti Social Network thats our topic today im quite sure you get and these are our guests its a pleasure to welcome grace a dope bush she is editor at how global and she says facebook is too big to regulate but if we dont regulate it it will regulate us its a pleasure to have multilevel on the show once again he is Senior Editor at the berlin daily the target and he says facebook is a business and businesses want to make money. And. Were very pleased to have with us our colleague carl now he is editor at de w. And he says facebooks problems are a wake up call about our lack of privacy on the internet. Let me start by asking you grace did you think that the hearings that we have just seen taking place in congress will they really change anything i think of the hearings showed us one thing and that is that Mark Zuckerberg has the real power here he was so well prepared for any question they threw at him any apologies that he gave were. Concessions to the power of the u. S. Congress but when it comes down to it they have a constituency of three hundred million he has a constituency of two billion people. And whats facebook is the biggest second Biggest Country or Something Like that in the world right just facebook users and its seems to me from watching those hearings at first of all many of the lawmakers were almost deferential asking for autographs and some points but the other thing that i noticed was it wasnt just that zuckerberg kind of had the power but the lawmakers just didnt really understand facebook that its such a complicated Business Model of a complicated company that he had the power now as well that no one really knew what questions that might have let me i know that you have visited facebooks campus from what you saw there and from watching these hearings take place this week where do you take Mark Zuckerberg at his word when he says yes facebook is going to change its ways he did say when facebook got it to billionth monthly use there that the network definitely would need to take expanding responsibility do you think well see it do that two billion most of the uses is the Biggest Country in the world not just a second it is the Biggest Country in the world so. Yes what i saw when i was there there was still these huge signs move fast and break things dont be afraid if you have a working class of like twenty twenty five thirty years old sneakers t. Shirts and this and the mood was just so we are hip were cool were the new society we can change the world its the hippie culture mixing with the a lot of money so i take him by his word when he says im sorry because i dont think that he really wanted to to to be a part of the pro trumbo projects of course he is i think a liberal in the sense that facebook was misused by russians or others i dont take him by his word when hes saying we will change. Think this has to be the moves of the public good you have to have to wait and see i dont think that i dont think that congress will do a lot to to really regulate facebook groups to which lets me let me ask you this is a business journalist Facebook Stock value has definitely taken a hit some users have cancelled their accounts how serious and widespread do you think the loss of trust is. Im not sure that the loss of trust is going to have an immediate effect effect on the stock price the stock was briefly up during the congressional hearings. I have a feeling that the reaction in europe is a quite a bit more strong than in the United States in the United States we almost dont have an excess expectation of privacy on the level that europeans do to some extent i assume that my data has been compromised many times over at this point what is there to protect i dont know that theres anything to protect but at the same time. You mentioned Mark Zuckerberg hes a his apology was perhaps and see whether he will change who knows but the road to this facebook crisis is paved with good intentions but they thought that they were my making something great for the world they thought that they could change the world and that type of optimism its really a new digital colonialism in a way we have seen one thing and thats that facebook likes to make its own rules but that may not be the best procedure for the future of humanity speaking of wanting to change the world we do have a short report on facebooks origin so lets take a quick look at that. It all started small the funding of the tech sector founded his social network for students while studying at harvard but Mark Zuckerberg had a big vision connect grew rapidly along with criticism of it. For years the companys been accused of poor transparency and Privacy Protection as well as letting the data be used for propaganda purposes critics are also disturbed by the fact that facebook and its founder stubbornly refuse to accept responsibility for the misuse of data and attempts at manipulation the shia tech pioneer briefly withdrew from the public eye which just made the situation worse. Now hes finally changed tack sucker bergen his company promised improvements saying that facebook wants to again be what he calls an optimistic company but is that still possible. So as we have now discovered through the revelations of the past weeks months away i mean what looks free really isnt it we simply pay with our data the big question that still i think is a very open question after those hearings is can face or book really transform its Business Model or is it not actually simply based on sharing these data it is based on certainty i mean they can i would say they can change this Business Model that Business Model is give me your data and i try to elaborate a personalized advertisement out of it. And thats this where the profit comes from i dont think that can change that they Mark Zuckerberg hinted at one thing he says ok we can talk about if you dont want to give me your data you can pay for the service so they are discussing this because it is a Business Model and it gives the consumer might even give the consumer in the future the choice to say no you dont another value to to use my dollar for any purpose at all but im willing to pay for the Service Gross you out. And carl as well both said that you think in fact many users are essentially complicit either they dont care or theyve become fatalistic and just assume this is how things work but is it not possible that attitudes are changing and that more and more users perhaps are now becoming aware of the ramifications of this Business Model and will demand changes absolutely i think this is the first time that the United States has really had a discussion about what Online Privacy needs what sovereignty as a person on the internet means these. Everything that we know about the internet currently is funded through this attention economy were paying with our eyeballs were paying with our data. Whether theres another way forward im not sure. Certainly the scandal doesnt seem to have hurt facebooks ad business very much weve heard from Sheryl Sandberg that a few advertisers apparently are pausing as she said right but in general the ads are still coming in what does that tell us demi i think facebook controls you know around a third of the ad market theres two point two billion monthly users so this is not something that advertisers want to give up i mean its such a great tool for them and facebooks Business Model is very sophisticated it is one of the few places where an advertiser can go advertise something and then know for sure if it actually worked they can track their users all the way to an online store and see if they actually bought the product that they were advertising so this isnt something that that advertisers are going to give up very easily i dont think but i think it is true that consumers and people that use facebook are starting to think a little bit more about the privacy implications about this its hard not to when all the headlines this week of been about Mark Zuckerberg testifying in front of congress when they become a bit of privacy is the way of the abstract term i mean you dont feel the violation or thought of privacy except your personally touched by it i mean for example if your employer says lawyer i have some knowledge that you googled for two years disease then. Why does he knows then do you really feel what privacy means but as long as this doesnt happen in just a term let me ask all three of you. Have you changed anything about your own habits given what youve learned about facebook. I over the last few years im using facebook less than i was in the early years i joined facebook in two thousand and five when it was first available to my university in the United States ive been with it a long time. I find myself sharing less at the same time i run some Small Businesses and as a Small Business owner facebook and other social media have been so essential in making it possible for. Biker businesses to see success and so i cant really extricate myself from facebook at all i think a lot of people in the same position have been using facebook for so long its not something that you can just give up or delete facebook as weve seen that hashtag kind of trending online me personally i actually deleted the facebook app and the messenger app from my phone same because of privacy concerns that you see how these apps kind of follow you around and the big privacy concessions you have to give to these apps so ive deleted that and well see where that takes me but im not one not ready to give up on facebook at. Anything because of the been part of Facebook Facebook all have a twitter account which i use quite frequently but but no facebook its the. The great honor and luck sure to look through to to publish my opinion whenever i want so i can stay in contact with my friends in the terms but i think the delete Facebook Movement if you could call it that is a bit short sighted people maybe have the privilege to delete facebook but for underprivileged populations or oppressed populations especially say refugee populations populations facebook and other social media are an essential tool to connecting to communities that you may not be geographically close to and so we cant like its a death sentence for some communities i want and i want to come back to that point in just a moment but one question to you this picks up essentially on what we heard in those hearings again Mark Zuckerberg was asked explicitly what exactly is facebook the the questioner said is it more like advertising is it more like publishing or is it perhaps even more like a Telecom Utility what would be your answer to that question i think its funny that what fourteen fifteen years later were still asking what is it mean we havent figured out yet i think it keeps evolving just like most. Tech companies and social Media Companies it started off as a way for University Students to connect with people now you know there are so many things integrated you can send payments you can do shopping you can wash t. V. Series now so its a little bit of everything i think Mark Zuckerberg doesnt want to call it a Media Company that opens it up for regulation but its becoming a Media Company its a little bit of journalism its a little bit of commerce i think its a bit of everything and that is what makes it so difficult i think for many u. S. Lawmakers to grasp what facebook is so much a living secretaries answer was i consider us to be a Technology Company im quoting here the primary thing we do is have engineers that write code and build services for other people is that a satisfactory answer at least i think i mean they dont they dont produce content. So theyre different to a Media Company or a Publishing House so they basically distribute content that others are producing and they they do it with a certain kind of algorithm they invented but but but do they really are the media host i would be very hesitant to call it like that i would argue that its more of a telecom to be honest its a method of communication for many people it distributes content sure but. Its. Its maybe a new type of a new type of category altogether but on the other hand like a media house or Publishing House it is influencing the perception of reality because of the algorithm that puts some topics on the top or not and where the party is a move but people are talking about they decide upon what kind of topic is the hottest topic right now so this is influencing the perception of reality so in the way they are more than just distributing other people called thats lets take a brief look at the direction of that influence picking up on what you said earlier about facebooks role in creating bonds within communities last year as facebook hit that two billion user mark Mark Zuckerberg said that he saw a new mission for his company to bring the world closer together but as we have discovered that is a two edged sword. Social networks such as twitter and facebook are platforms facilitating communication between people individuals can connect virtually to groups for the purpose of following common goals. That has often resulted in protest movements gathering strength or even in revolutions like the twenty ten arab spring many gyptian zte took to the streets demanding freedom and human rights protests on the scale of this one at Tahrir Square could only be organized through social media. But there is a flipside what happens when a social media hive mind develops a mob mentality or when people use social networks to break the law. Like the terrorist organisation i. A. S. Which recruits new members through these networks unobserved. So what prevails the good parts or the bad ones. Remember what that crap question right to you grace is facebook a boon or a baying for democracy. Its certainly a change in the way that we interact with each other and with the wider world. I do not know whether or how history will shake out. Carl interesting lee enough after all the revelations about what was happening in terms of hate speech on facebook and so on germany told facebook you know what you are at least to some degree a Media Company with a gatekeeper responsibility and we expect you now to start hiring editors to keep watch over the content on your site hundreds of people have been hired here in germany to do what facebook claimed it wasnt in a position to do it content so what does that tell us is it not possible for regulators to take action and compel facebook to take the kind of responsibility mark supper keeps promising i think it is possible i think Europe Germany is kind of leading the way in terms of showing that Large Tech Company term and what hate speech is i think is just a matter of moving some of those billions of dollars of facebook makes and putting that into an actual effort to try to crack down on this stuff and i think its very very difficult and im very critical about all these that i mean facebook should should be a marketplace and what are the criteria is do content have to be reasonable or trust worth the or not or how do you value that we have criteria in terms of constitutional protections we right here in germany the germany you violence military of Human Dignity is that not a sufficient credit is ideal and we have to get on an International TechnologyBusiness Model so we in germany have the denial of the holocaust for example the turks of the denial of the meaning and all the coast the french have the opposite the if you if you deny the denial of the armenian the locales and so so every country is liberating its own standards how come how come face book deal and and do you really want to give the power of what is allowed to private people working with facebook or an algorithm. The i think its very very difficult the fact is europe has taken this some very concrete steps now its new Data Protection law is coming into effect in just about a month and during these hearings Mark Zuckerberg seemed to indicate some willingness to look at that as a possible model for what facebook could do internationally would that be a solution grace for facebook and the u. S. Perhaps to take a leaf from europe space age i think that thats just a stopgap solution honestly i dont. Im im skeptical whether they will be able to implement all of those changes in time but also that it begs the question why does europe get to decide what these privacy standards will be and likewise why should facebook then decide whether or how much it complies with these standards i think there needs to be a wider discussion about personal Digital Identity around the world. I dont want any. Our digital identities right now are going through the gate keeper of facebook or the gate keeper of twitter we dont really own our digital identities theres a wider discussion happening now in tech circles especially when it comes to data privacy about the idea of an autonomous Digital Identity no idea what that looks like it it is that are you telling us theres a technical solution for this we dont need regulation im saying that it cannot be regulated by a government because we can see we see what governments can do with the wrong type of power it can also be regulated by any private company and used to be a larger nongovernmental solution. Karl would you agree with that or would you say that the kind of initiatives were seeing here in europe potentially also in the u. S. There is a snowballing movement now even in the u. S. To say you know what its time to start thinking about regulation do you still see all of that is ineffectual i think regulation can be effective i think there has to be some sort of government regulation you cant just let facebook regulate itself weve been letting facebook do that for more than a decade it hasnt worked clearly and i think as soon as what we saw in terms of a potentially affecting the two thousand and sixteen election as soon as weve weve seen data being leaked to Shady Companies that is kind of what had to happen to wake people up in the u. S. And maybe even lawmakers the problem is i dont i dont think that congress and the u. S. Really wants to do anything they havent been very affectionate so its interesting to see the e. U. And i think its a good thing theres this new g. D. P. Protection regulation here in the e. U. Theyre doing basically what the american politicians dont want to do theyre finally putting some some real regulations on its not going to be a perfect regulation you not sure that there is one but its a first step and that needed to happen the need to tell facebook hey look you know you need to start to play to play ball with us i think thats why zucker given went to congress in the first place he knows that there is legislation and regulation on the way so hes there to kind of shape it and he wants to be on capitol hill to have his voice or as well as mt it has to be the right kind of regulation and he also said very very expressly that he thinks if regulation goes too far it will create a competitive disadvantage because if he china particularly in regard to our to phil show intelligence would you buy that argument china is very far in office with and so far hes right but i would say what kind of regulation do we need i think its completely wrong to put all the blame on the consumer he has to be more informed informed self and read through all these two. Twenty pages in advance and if you sign yes or no you have to give them clear choices are you agreeing that your is used for personal those efforts yes or no do you agree that your dollars used for political effort has been a lawyer yes or no do you agree bubblegum options clear yes or no questions nothing else dont put the blame dont put all the blame for the consumer put it to the to facebook saying this is what it would were talking about still push there is also some discussion now about whether facebook and the other big titans of tech Amazon Google have gotten too big for their britches whether we have seen a cartel ization of the Digital Economy on the basis of whats called Network Effects that in fact these companies become much more attractive the more users that they have a question would be will we see antitrust measures coming in future even the economist has warned that they could be on the way i think that thats a real possibility my i was going to ask the question if facebook is getting regulated why not Google Google has more than two billion users of its android platform billions using g. Mail google maps chrome browser. All of these companies have gotten larger than any companies the world has seen before at the same time were focusing so much on these American Companies when ten cents in china is. Nearly nearly as large as some of these companies. I think that we cant ignore the worldwide implications of this type of regulation at the same time i dont know that piecemeal regulation of these types of Large Companies is going to be enough reminded a little bit of the brandenburg airport you know its so big we spent so much time on it we keep on patching up the Little Things we fix the escalator but when it comes down to it maybe we just need to tear it all down and start from the beginning secondly how that would be the question is facebook in essence. Too big to fail and too big to regulate. I dont i dont know i just seems so fatalistic to me i think its a big company but look its not just facebook as you mention you have google and i think even the next big company on the way is amazon where they are putting a lot of devices in everyones living room so its not about regulating facebook its about regulating our privacy and regulating Tech Companies in general so whatever we regulate with facebook has to then apply to all these other companies as well thats really important thank you very much to all of you for being with us and thanks to all of you out there for tuning in and think you sound. Cool. It enhanced human perception and changed the world. I had a wonderful experience but i have no idea where it came from it with yellow steel and a chemist about toast monday to katies discovery to medicine but it quickly spun out of control as a party drove. The substance albert holds months of l. S. D. In fifteen minutes on t. W. Tricky. To fasten your seat belts. To go. Look at the length. Of the. Travel going to g. W. This is you get news coming tonight from above and lets go right to our correspondent he is in central istanbul and by the shellac up there do you know what it will correspond to lets bring in a full check out here from our poland at desk is going to be bots help us a correspondent frank for more on those stories in just a minute but first this news just in and its all about the prospective. D w c s i. Learn german with w. Any time any place. With or with jo jo and her friends. Colleagues discuss it in the next billion letters spritzes its virtually a ghost. Work with friends all over the world. Online and interactive. Get german to go. Learn german for free meet with g. W. And pick up. The dangerous battlefront images. Five women. Five exceptional stories. Case. I want to look at it. In a way that may be nothing more easy one calling more photography dramatic pictures from the front lines capturing street film moments in time and even risking death. She gave her life to tell the stories of people who ended up killing their. Women war photographers starting may third on t w. U. S. President donald trump has today promised there will be a decision on possible military action fairly soon in a tweet he apparently wrote back on previous threats to retaliate swiftly for an alleged poison gas attack in syria johnson has said he will not join any military response. Look this is former f. B. I. Chief james comey he was fired by u. S. President donald trump last year will release his highly anticipated