Katherine Druckman (11s):
Welcome back to reality. 2.0, I am Katherine Druckman and joining Today is doc Searls, who is always joining us, which is awesome. I know we're lucky enough to have him show up every single week. It's great. And today we're actually on our own. We don't have a guest, which is kind of fun. So we get to talk about whatever we want,

Doc Searls (32s):
Whoever we want, because we, because they're not here. They're not, how do we go from

Katherine Druckman (40s):
No, I'm just kidding. So before we get started, though, I feel like I need to plug the newsletter yet. Again, you can find that on our website, which is reality to cast.com every week we send out a pretty short email. Actually I try to not take up too much of everyone's time, but we like to send you out a few links and something to think about when you're leaving, listening to the podcast episodes. So you can sign up for that there. And Oh yeah, we have a swag store. So I actually just bought myself a mug that I designed and I'm pretty excited.

Doc Searls (1m 17s):
Do you know, for a while there was a, there was actually a choice between whether to call it swag or schwag and schwag, which was like, sounded Yiddish sort of like the schmatta business. And, but it's, and actually I remember looking it up. I maybe even put it in an LJ index a long time ago of how many results for both in schwag, actually outproduced swag for a long time, but then it, but then it faded and it became just swag. So there you go.

Katherine Druckman (1m 51s):
I prefer swag. It's easier to pronounce for sure. Yeah. So, you know, so there's a lot going on this week. So, you know, I don't don't think we have any shortage of topics here. The, the big one of course is the, is the, the congressional hearings where they've, they've brought forward representatives and Facebook and Twitter and Google to ask specifically, that sounded like I just said pacifically. I feel like I have to say that over again, because I don't want to be that person who says pacifically anyway, to specifically ask these representatives about their responsibility in disseminating misinformation and various disinformation campaigns.

Katherine Druckman (2m 36s):
So that's, that's a big one. That's interesting. And then we have a few other things going on. Like I feel like we, can't not talk about that boat and the Suez canal.

Doc Searls (2m 46s):
Yeah. That's a, that's too interesting and right.

Katherine Druckman (2m 48s):
No, I mean, we're not going to get any evergreen content evergreen content because apparently

Doc Searls (2m 53s):
Well, evergreen is the company side of the boat it's ever given, ever given is the name of

Katherine Druckman (3m 1s):
No. Yeah, yeah, no, but I mean, evergreen content and that never gets old. Like I can constantly, yeah. I mean, it knows when it will ever get out of the

Doc Searls (3m 13s):
S stuck boat is much more interesting as a topic than container cargo. As soon as you say container cargo, you have two words. So, yeah. That's not interesting though, since you brought it up, you want us to go to that one first to me, when I look at it, I mean, I think anybody that knows anything about boats and actually when you look at that canal, it, the channel is very, very narrow in the middle of it. And it looks like it's just kind of a beach on each side and, and is barely wider than a boat to begin with. And so, you know, you get the nose that thing's stuck and the whole rest of it, you know, pitches sideways kind of pivot sideways.

Doc Searls (3m 54s):
But the, the interesting thing to me about it is the only obvious way in terms of the physics involved is to, is to get the cargo off the boat, you know, float the boat. I mean, you know, get the boat to nuts. It's so deep in the water and it'll be easier to dislodge. And I can, when I look all around that, I, I go on Google maps and I, and, and, and, or Google earth is you actually better. And you kinda look around and see, would it even be possible to get a crane in there to take the cargo off that boat when you've got what looks like farmland or residential stuff on both sides and no way, or, or, or sand on one side, just pure desert, but it looks pretty soft to me.

Doc Searls (4m 36s):
Like, how do you, how would you get anything in there that could have an angled offload containers and then load them back on again, it's a lot of containers on that boat. So I think it's, I hope it, I really do hope they get it out, but it really looks a lot of boats supposedly are like, I guess, gassing up and then going around the horn of Africa, which is the long way around, which is gotta be,

Katherine Druckman (5m 4s):
Yes, they are. They're going around the Cape of good hope, you know, old school, you know, 17th or sorry, it's 18th, early, early 19th century style or 17th as well.

Doc Searls (5m 16s):
It was, I got an email from somebody who sort of knows their stuff. Who said, you know, start looking for, you know, stuff that you're not gonna, that's not going to be in stores, look for gas prices to go up, look for a lot of stuff like that. That gas prices, especially you guys, gas prices will suddenly be $5 a gallon in a, in a few weeks. I don't know if that's going to be the case or not. I suspect not.

Katherine Druckman (5m 41s):
I think, I think that there are always unforeseen consequences. I think, I think a small, well, relatively, I, I, maybe it's not actually a small thing. It's a pretty big thing that's happening, but these things can have a ripple that you would not necessarily expect. You know, it's when you back up that much of that much shipping is, you know, it's, it's gonna affect a lot of stuff. Like I'm thinking about product, new product launches, where you're, you're shipping massive amounts of product from one side of the globe to the other, and suddenly up, we don't have our inventory. We can't launch that new thing. So then who does that affect? And, you know, anyway.

Katherine Druckman (6m 22s):
Yeah,

Doc Searls (6m 23s):
Yeah. That's all the stuff that's behind there. I mean, all this stuff that's made in India and Bangladesh and you know, and Vietnam and you know, other places like that, that might be on that boat. They're not going anywhere. I suppose. I think it's coming from China, but I suspect it's not purely Chinese goods. It doesn't matter because the rest of what's backed up behind it is from everywhere. Yeah. It's gotta be it's bad. It is bad. Yeah.

Katherine Druckman (6m 53s):
Yeah. So have you seen the site? So what is it called? Let me see. Oh, I just had it up. Is the ship still stuck.com? I know. I have found it quite, quite helpful. Yes. Is that sh and it's the big heading at the top. Is that ship still stuck? Yes. It's been like this for three days, 12 hours and 47 minutes. It has cost us 34 billion so far, according to that site. And it's apparently pulling data from the New York times.

Doc Searls (7m 19s):
Is this just so stuck? It's interesting. When we speak to the first person, plural, you know, are we still this? Are we still that? W who are we? It's blown up.

Katherine Druckman (7m 32s):
Who's 34 billion. Is it exactly? It's probably a little,

Doc Searls (7m 36s):
Sorry, what I look up is this shit still stuck? What I get is what do you do when you have impacted stool? I'm not kidding. Every it's, it's the, it's the number four item is, is the cargo ship blocking. We could take weeks to move. Okay. There you go. Company working to dislodge says it could take weeks. So there's one company working on that. Oh, I see. They've got, they've got cables hooked up to it. That's a smart thing. I guess they're there. They want to, they want to pull it with cables that are hooked up to whatever the anchor is. It comes down from, in the front of the, from the, in the front of the boat,

Katherine Druckman (8m 21s):
Europe and the UK, more than an impact. So that's, I would think, but, but still, I mean, you know, if you're waiting. Yeah. I, I'm imagining there's a, a lot of trade happening between, for example, India and Europe, India, and the UK, China, and the UK, China and Europe. And it's just, it's just sitting there.

Doc Searls (8m 41s):
Yeah. It's yeah. It's interesting. The thing is 13

Katherine Druckman (8m 45s):
Going around the Cape of good hope.

Doc Searls (8m 47s):
It's 1300 feet long of, of a good friend of mine who works, who worked in container cargo. He was the treasurer or a treasurer for American president lines, APL. And he, he wrote to tell me that they, he, he worked on financing. What was at the time, the biggest boat in the world. And this was that long ago. This is like in the nineties or something like that. He says, this is four times bigger than that one. So it's, it's a, it's a big ass boat. It's also too big for the, I think this one is 59 meters wide. Whereas the new, new Neil Panamax Panamax was the word for the label of four boats made to go through the pen, the maximum size for the Panama canal, which I think was 110 feet across something like that.

Doc Searls (9m 41s):
So all the cruise boats, no matter how big they got, couldn't be wider than like 110 feet, whatever the number was. But the Neil Panamax is bigger than that. I think it's like 55 meters across, but this one's 59. Something like that.

Katherine Druckman (9m 56s):
Well, I guess my wonder if they going forward, they change, you know, how the size of the maximum size that they allow through the canal. You've got to do something.

Doc Searls (10m 5s):
Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, part of the, obviously part of the idea with the Panama canal is just to allow through bigger boats, but the Suez is, you know, a wider canal, so, so longer it's 110 miles, something like that. Yeah. So, and you've been to Israel many times. I've only been once, but that's the closest I ever came. I've never been to Egypt.

Katherine Druckman (10m 26s):
I think I've finally been to Israel enough times that I've lost count. It's been so many times that I've lost count. So it's yeah,

Doc Searls (10m 36s):
Yeah. I can, I can count one. So that's pretty easy.

Katherine Druckman (10m 40s):
I like Israel. That's a nice, mostly because of the food really, really good food, good technology too. I happened to be there once when there was a technology event that brought young inventors out onto the main Boulevard in Tel Aviv to show all their stuff. And it was so cool. It was, I can't remember the name of the event to be honest, but it was, I think it was a pretty big deal in, in Israel as a whole. It was cabins

Doc Searls (11m 6s):
And no, it wasn't

Katherine Druckman (11m 8s):
That I would remember that. But anyway, it was really cool. I mean, they were working on all kinds of really cool robotics and, and even like medical technology, like somebody was demoing a, a test kit, portable test kit for, at food allergens, which is actually just, you know, really cool. Anyway, a lot of 3d printing, this was, this was several years ago. So it's at the top. What was very exciting at the time may not be any more, but anyway, it was it's, you know, here's a cool sort of technical, innovative vibe happening there most of the time. Anyhow, meanwhile, over on this side of the globe, we have our own, our own blocked waterway, metaphorical waterway, and we're trying to block them.

Katherine Druckman (11m 57s):
I don't really know how to construct that metaphor. So I think I'm going to skip it.

Doc Searls (12m 2s):
Well, you could, you could go with a rectal one, I suppose.

Katherine Druckman (12m 8s):
Yes. I could tell you about the hearings that the constipation reference seems appropriate. I don't really know why it's yeah.

Doc Searls (12m 17s):
It's, it's still fellowship one, which

Katherine Druckman (12m 19s):
Is very, very full of shit.

Doc Searls (12m 22s):
Yeah. So, so we're, we're, we're all, we're all three CEO's. There was that

Katherine Druckman (12m 29s):
I believe so. Yes. All three CEOs. So we've got Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey was there for Twitter. The guy from Google can't remember his name. That's terrible. Everyone, you know, we always go to sacrifice two guys. It's that guy. Yes. Yeah. Apologies to the CEO of Google. Yeah. But that's remember your name because you're not Mark Zuckerberg,

Doc Searls (12m 57s):
Sundar, Pichai. I think it's pronounced that cinder a paycheck. Yeah. I, I, so I, I, I have to just bring up something that's sort of related maybe, which is that I don't think CEOs know what's going on. I think you need to get lower level people in the, the ones that could get fired and all that. I, I, I, I think CEOs are overrated as, as interesting people. I, I think they're, I mean, I go to S I've been to so many conferences where as the CEO of all these different things are going to be there. And often, you know, I know people who are underlings in the same company who are much more interesting and it will have more interesting things to say they may not stay at on stage and all that, but w w would I rather talk to a Jeff Bezos or, or to Werner Vogels, you know, he's the guy that thought up Amazon web services and the cloud and all that stuff and, and administered that.

Doc Searls (13m 60s):
And he's still involved with it. I, I know him a little bit better than I know visa, meaning that I've seen him at work conferences and talk to him more. I mean, my, all my conversation with Bezos is back before it mattered fully. I mean, he was big, but he wasn't as big as he is now by a long shot. I was like in the nineties and the early on books. Yeah. About books. I think the last time I saw him was 2010 at a thing. And when he kind of scowled at some idea, I had, but he was friendly, but, but where is a really interesting dude and he's, and, you know, he invented something that the world really does depend on now. And I think he's got problems too, which are actually, you know, close to what these guys were called on the carpet for, which is, are you responsible?

Doc Searls (14m 46s):
You know, are you actually responsible for something that you may not actually be able to act on? Because, you know, you've, you've absorbed a lot of the way the world works socially and, and people lie all the time and people try to make trouble all the time. And how can you possibly begin to control all of that while simply enabling conversation? How do you do that?

Katherine Druckman (15m 10s):
Yeah. So, so, so what you just say though, that's, that's the question. I mean, I think what's more interesting than even the, the outcome of the hearing or hearings was the, the, the reason for them in the first place. And that is like, really, who is, who's responsible for disinformation. Who's responsible for it, who should be held accountable? You know, if anyone, and I think that's an interesting question. Like, I think that, you know, we talked about this earlier, but we, a lot of us, and I don't ask me any, I don't know, humans, humans with opinions. We we've been getting bogged down in section two 30 for months. And frankly, I'm just going to say it. We were talking about it before. It was cool a long time ago now, but it, but it's like, it's a constant, constant topic of conversation right now, but I, I think, I think we're missing the point.

Katherine Druckman (15m 58s):
And, and I think you've got a lot of people that aren't well enough informed. And I, you know, I'm one of those people spouting off about, you know, section two 30 and, and regulation and all of this stuff, when really the, the, the question is just, is just, you know, who do we point fingers out and why, you know, like, I mean, and do, do we have a collective responsibility to just not be stupid and, or do stupid things? Like if a bunch of, like, I think, you know, I I've seen it written a few places like this hearing was the first time that representatives from these tech companies have sort of been questioned or spoken out after the January raid on the capital.

Katherine Druckman (16m 45s):
But, you know, so if a bunch of crazy people on Twitter are tell you to go right, the capital, isn't it really up to you to like, not do it? Is it, is it Twitter's fault? You know, I'm not sure that, that, that, that I, you know, I have a little bit of a trouble with that. And something else we were talking about just as a kind of a conversation starter was, so I'm a huge fan of Evan Greer who we've had on the podcast, highly recommend checking out that episode. I can't remember the number, but I will definitely link to it anyway. So Evan tweeted, most of the Capitol writers had smartphones were Apple and at, and T partially responsible for the violence. Please answer yes or no, which I thought it was hysterical because, I mean, obviously the, the point of that is just the absurdity of answering your question.

Katherine Druckman (17m 28s):
Like that, number one with a yes or no answer, and to like really, like, is it, is it apples? Is it apples full that a bunch of writers care, you know, because of underwriters carried out iPhones, I mean, obviously I'm sure yes. They were coordinating a lot of facets of the attack via an iPhone or possibly over 18 T's signal. Or how do you decide who is responsible?

Doc Searls (17m 53s):
Well, it, it actually, the answers to that are kind of interesting because, you know, you know, one person says, no, I would have just said, no, I didn't even bother because it was obvious. But I mean, the first person to reply well, does either have, does a company have a written policy aimed at preventing offline harm and it's nuanced. And the other one, the next one says, I think, no, it's, you know, no, but it doesn't mean they couldn't have done more. Come on. I mean,

Katherine Druckman (18m 23s):
Oh, look an Apple dude, really the kids, your phones are personal. And if you use them for use of, for personal purposes,

Doc Searls (18m 30s):
I don't want my phone to be a tentacle of Apple or of, or of, or of Amazon, or frankly, of any of the apps that are on it. It's mine. If I commit a crime with it, then it's, I'm responsible for that. And they are not. But, but, but going back to, to section two 30, I mean, here is all of section two 30, no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher or a speaker of any information provided by another information content provider, which you're kind of bored by the reading, the end of that. But the, the interesting thing about it was that in the beginning, it was possible for individuals to really easily have a platform of their own.

Doc Searls (19m 20s):
The blogs were in the beginning because certainly you could blog at the beginning. I, I did it didn't work called blogs back then, but, but I wrote on the internet starting in 95 or 96 and in effect the fish, the first thing I wrote was this something called reality 2.0, actually it was, my little collection was reality, 2.0, and, but I could be sued, but what this did, what it didn't anticipate was that 99.9 X percent of all personal expression on the internet will happen on a, on an interactive computer service. And that's, you know, that's what both, you know, as Cory Doctorow pointed out, you know, people on both the right and the left are wanting to alter that, to say, these guys actually can be responsible in some ways, you know?

Doc Searls (20m 8s):
And I think it's, I think Twitter section two 30 is just fine as it is it actually, it, because it did protect the thing on which most of us actually do write online. We're able to express ourselves if you, and, and here's an important thing. I mean, you know, what is disinformation? I mean, we talked about it too. You have to check that one out and react. A lot of people are checking it out and it's good, but it it's. I mean, the disinformation is just, how many is a disinformation is a five syllable way of saying a lie. Okay, you're lying, you're lying on purpose.

Doc Searls (20m 51s):
There is an, there's a commandment for this, you know, don't bear false witness against your neighbor, right. It's not what it says, roughly. I have to go and check my Moses, but I mean, I'm pretty sure, you know, that that's what was carved on the tablet, right. That, you know, don't, don't lie, I'm basically don't lie. And yet everybody does, you know, it, we all, we all do. And it's part of the way that we get along in the world. And some, some of is to mislead people, some of it's to protect people. Some of it's malicious. Some of it's not, it's really hard to say you can't make a two by two out of it. It there's, there are too many dimensions to what it can be.

Doc Searls (21m 31s):
So, you know, I, I obviously, you know, these outfits do bear some responsibility, but I, and I don't know what these people said. You know, what, what the three CEOs said to said to Congress, I'm sure it was beyond careful. And I'm sure it was nothing. I sure basically came down to nothing.

Katherine Druckman (21m 52s):
I think the essential part is that Jack Dorsey basically said, yes, they bear some responsibility and the others didn't, that was, I think the main takeaway and which, which is interesting too, because, you know, you can kind of figure out why that might be, but

Doc Searls (22m 6s):
Well, and, and, and I think that's one reason why it, it's interesting. Cause I mean, he's the first one to have actually, you know, kicked some kicked Trump off, kicked off is, you know, the biggest one. And I mean, the biggest, the biggest Twitter he had, I suppose, as you, at least in terms of influence and interest, and he did take responsibility. I mean, he says, guy lies a lot and I'm going to kick them off. Right. And you know, and Trump and his friends are saying no free speech. We need to be able to speak freely. Well, you know, he was doing a lot of, you know, yelling, fire in a crowded theater as it were and, and making worse trouble than that

Katherine Druckman (22m 44s):
Speech is in fact, the ability of Czech towards the, to kick him off of his body

Doc Searls (22m 47s):
Is that too. I mean, it's certainly, you know, it's his, it's his right. I suppose, as a, as a business to choose, he, he's going to do business with, and who is not, who is going to kick out of the store and who he's not, you know, I mean, every business kind of has that right as well. If you feel one of your customers or somebody who was working in the back as being disruptive, you can tell them to get out. But I mean, that's, I mean, that's simplistic in a way, but it's, I don't think it's a very nuanced thing. I think that there's, I mean, Twitter is, Twitter is a much simpler service than either a simpler business than either a Facebook or Google.

Doc Searls (23m 31s):
And it's a significantly smaller than both of them as well. The interesting thing to me about Facebook and of citizen, number of times, I have not been proven right at all. And I may never be proven, right. But I think they're fatally flawed. They have to dive to prove my point, but we'll see what happens. But all tech companies have, you know, they, they kind of have the life expectancy of a rocket, you know, I mean, it kind of launch up into space and then some parts follow earth when, when it's over, you know, nothing lasts forever. And, and I think that the fatal flaw for Facebook is that what they are designed for, which is to drive engagement is going to drive everything.

Doc Searls (24m 14s):
That's both good and bad about human behavior and, and the tendency we have to gossip and the tendency we have to, you know, to say bad things and do bad things is given, is given away is not only given a place in a way to do it, but, but has an algorithm to, to drive up emotion because that's for engagement goes, engagement goes to emotion. I get angry at that. That makes me happy. I can put a like on there, I can crap on it. All of those things are, are emotional and there would get us engaged. And, and a lot of us are activated by politics or activated by partisan ships of a less harmful kinds, like sports affiliations and so forth.

Doc Searls (25m 0s):
But, you know, they have, they have algorithms are driving up engagement and, and, and it's not just to push advertising at people. They are, they are trying to make people more social. That's what Facebook is doing and they're successful at it. And you know, most of it, I think is harmless. If you're, I mean, I, I may have said this before, but all of the groups that I'm a member of are, are, are the most off the wall and mundane things. I mean, the one I'm most active on is called. I take pictures of transmitter sites. That's, you know, cause I do that. And, and there are like 14,000 members of that there, most of them are just broadcast engineers and the guy who runs, it says no politics.

Doc Searls (25m 46s):
And so politics never comes in there. And, and I know a number of people there that are very political, but they're not political they're and it's a harmless group. And, and, and you could create a very easily there countless high school, you know, reunions and college reunions that are, that are organized on Facebook that are, are, are positive things. They're not harmful at all. But the thing that drives up engagement, the algorithms that drive up engagement, drive up, everything is wrong. I can't, I don't know how to fix that. I, and, and I think if they suddenly become responsible for it fully responsible for everything that anybody could object to, you know, if they're, if they are, if they are vulnerable to cancel culture, they are canceled.

Doc Searls (26m 31s):
That that was that's what happens to them as a, as an organization. And I don't see that happening actually, but they're vulnerable to that.

3 (26m 40s):
Yeah. So there are so many places I want to go with this. Okay. So, yeah. So I think, you

Katherine Druckman (26m 44s):
Know, a couple of episodes ago, our episode, or our discussion about disinformation, I th I think we determined that definitely some can be quite harmful. So you, I, I think it's worth considering the scale of the disinformation. For example, I have a pretty small audience, you know, I don't, I'm sure some people listen to me, you have a bigger one. Neither of us are Trump. We do not have that level of a following. And, but, you know, so if I say something that is potentially harmful or misleading, you know, it probably doesn't do that much harm. And if you, if you do, I, I suspect the same is true. It's not going to harm a lot of people for you to say something, but, but at some level, you know, when does the responsibility to actually act or restrict or something kick in.

Katherine Druckman (27m 30s):
So there's that, and then there's, there are other dynamics too, and that's the source of the disinformation. So, you know, for the most part, we're not even, you know, so some of it may be the work of an organized effort. Some of it is just perpetuation of nonsense, for whatever reason, you know, either political affiliation or whatnot. But I think there's another thing. And that's, that's, you know, actual like state actors, which is, again, something that we talked about a couple episodes ago, but you see a lot, I feel like I'm seeing a lot more of what I would classify as disinformation bots. There it's automated content by, by an account that's pretty new.

Katherine Druckman (28m 11s):
Doesn't have probably every single thing that is posted. There's a lot of anti-vax, anti-vaccination disinformation, that's being perpetuated that way. I happened to notice something, something today, and the problem is people, you know, the people that are actually like prominent, intelligent people will get riled up with this BS. That's perpetuating by perpetuated by these accounts that are probably not real people, but then, and then they'll respond and then it'll get a lot of attention. And then that whatever was initially posted by a bot, you know, gets widely disseminated because of a person with a larger audience that has responded to it, even if they're responding to it, you know, critically and hyper critically the fact that it's then out there and being perpetuated even more, provide some social proof to people on the fringe that will then latch onto whatever the extreme idea is.

Katherine Druckman (29m 11s):
And then it, you know, it snowballs from there. So, so that's a thing. And then the other thing that, that I'm thinking about based on everything that you just said was advertising revenue. Because again, like, even our last episode, it was all about, you know, surveillance, marketing, basically privacy initiatives related to it, but ultimately about, you know, the fact that our hands, you know, our privacy in the hands of many times of a bunch of marketers and Aaron chairs, I believe was a Don Martin.

Doc Searls (29m 43s):
I love it.

Katherine Druckman (29m 45s):
But yeah, so, so, so who bears the responsibility there? I mean, that's really, what's driving all of this engagement, right? It's it's ad money. Why, you know, what's in it for Facebook to, you know, play off a piece of what people's emotions and encourages engagement. Well, it's, it's ad dollars an eyeball. So, so to that end, are, are the advertisers responsible? You know, like who's responsible then

Doc Searls (30m 9s):
I would say no personally, because there, you know, if it were in almost all cases, I mean, they talk about brand safety. What brand safety is about as, not as not being responsible for that stuff, they don't want to be on an objectionable page or

Katherine Druckman (30m 25s):
Unless you sell pillows. Can I go there? I don't know I'm going to go there

Doc Searls (30m 31s):
That, so consider this, for example, as having, if let's say that Facebook tomorrow said, we're actually dropping the advertising model, we're going to go all subscription. Now they're not going to do this, but let's say they do. Let's say, they say, we've worked the numbers. And geez, you know, you're spending all this time on Facebook. You're spending more time on Facebook than you're spending, watching Netflix. We're going to charge the same amount. And if we end up with just 200 million or 300 million subscribers at five bucks a month or 10 bucks a month, that'd be great. And we're not going to, we're not going to do advertising anymore. Are they gonna stop doing the algorithm nudging?

Doc Searls (31m 12s):
No, they're going to continue doing the algorithmic nudging because that's what makes them social. They're just going to answer, they're going to continue doing that right.

Katherine Druckman (31m 20s):
More subscribers instead of more advertisers.

Doc Searls (31m 22s):
Yeah. And, and, and it's, it's, you know, so, so that'll still be there and it, and basically they're, they're going to be about, they're going to be about human beings, doing human beings do, and it's not just being a social with your friends from high school. It's going to be people saying all kinds of crap. That's not true because that's what gets them going. Like the anti-vaxxers for example, you know, I mean, it's with the vaccines around, for a long time, the anti-vax movement was nothing for a very long time. And now it's this big thing, you know, right. At a time when we really need people to take the damn vaccine, which is amazing, you know, but I'll say by the way, I've had both shots and they did nothing to me that I could tell it was anything bad at all at all.

Doc Searls (32m 14s):
Nothing.

Katherine Druckman (32m 15s):
I actually have two, I've had both shots. Yeah. I actually, you know, I never, I didn't talk about him at the time because I am, well, I'm a private person. I don't like, I like to talk about anything medical. I, it's never something that I'm going to talk about, but in this case, you know, it's, it's something that, you know, I think everybody should do. And, and I did it and I have, I've had them, both, my arm was sore. I felt a little tired.

Doc Searls (32m 35s):
Yeah. My wife's arm was sore and I had trouble remembering which it was cause I did, you know, I did both arms actually,

Katherine Druckman (32m 48s):
That reminds me, you know, so we were talking about the Suez canal earlier and Israel a little bit, and that's actually something that's really interesting. So since because I have family there, I have followed, you know, the, their vaccine rollout very closely and, and, and probably everyone in the world has, because they're, they've, they've literally been the world's Guinea pigs. They're so far ahead. And it's very interesting.

Doc Searls (33m 12s):
Yeah. Well, they've, they're behaving normally within the borders, right? They're a little bit like New Zealand and in Australia where they've isolated a great deal. Isn't that what they're done?

Katherine Druckman (33m 22s):
Yes and no. I mean, they've had some pretty severe, severe spikes in cases. I mean, before it even, just as they started rolling out the vaccines, they were in the middle of a massive, massive uptick in cases that's come way, way down now. And, and, but, but any, any sign of, even a little bit of a, of, of a crisis and they shut everything down. I mean, they just shut it down. I think, I think I could be wrong, but I think that their death rate has been lower. I'm not sure. I mean, they, you know, they have pretty solid medical facilities there, but yeah. Anyway, it's been very interesting to watch that. And just to kind of see, you know, we're, hopefully I guess where the rest of us will be and to see the information that's coming out of Israel, just because so much of their population is already done with, with the vaccine.

Doc Searls (34m 16s):
Yeah. I w w we have an out of control kind of controlled leg study going on with so many countries approaching it differently. So many States approaching it differently. So many healthcare systems approaching it differently. So many different sources of, of wisdom and experience. One of my favorite writers on this, and she is by far the best Zeynep to Fetcher. And she had a piece yesterday and she's probably written more coherently on this than anybody else who has a newsletter out there. Anyway, Laurie Garrett is also very good. She's been on TV a lot, and she's written books about pandemic.

Doc Searls (34m 59s):
Ed Zeynep is not, but she said, here are 10 questions that, that should have been asked at, at, at Biden's press conference about what the plans are, but feds, and, and she said one or two of them got asked, the rest of them were not, but they were all, basically these are more variables in, within our potential knowledge of what this thing is about. I mean, I was listening to something yesterday saying, well, you know, you've had the vaccine. That means if you get it, you will not get as sick. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. No, it's about happens after you get it. I don't even know if that's true.

Doc Searls (35m 40s):
Does it mean I don't get it? Does it mean that I could have it, I'm supposed to be traveling shortly and for the first time in, well, over a year and, and I have to have a test is going to go to Hawaii and I have to have a test from, you know, and within a certain period of time, I've already paid for it. It was not cheap in order to do this flying. And it's pretty, you know, and, but even there it's like, you know, I, I just, I had an exchange with somebody who said he had a friend who went to Hawaii and he had the test from the wrong party and they put them on a plane and flew him right back to Texas or someplace.

Katherine Druckman (36m 26s):
I saw that that was on Twitter. It was it on Twitter, Facebook. I feel like I saw this story. Yeah. And I think it's funny how they show you, Oh, what you see on Twitter and what you don't,

Doc Searls (36m 36s):
But it turns out there's nothing from ho I couldn't find anything from the state of Hawaii about this. I could find stuff from Hawaiian airlines, from other airlines. And there was a lot of information that was from private parties of one kind or another, including the healthcare provider that will provide me with this thing. Right. But none of the, but there was not a string I could pull through all those pearls. None of nowhere though. Could I find that only four were permitted that are there? I mean, that's what the tweet said, that there were only four possible testing organizations that were allowed. So, you know, but it reminds me of one of my old friend, Craig Burton said that, you know, that you can trust firsthand information.

Doc Searls (37m 26s):
He said, he said he gave 50% trust to firsthand information, which is you tell me something. And like, no trust is second and information. Right. And that was second information right there. Third hand is like less than zero, like just fully suspect it.

Katherine Druckman (37m 43s):
Yeah. So you should definitely not trust this, but I did read an Israeli study suggesting based on that, the data that they have had at that point, which is pretty recent, that does suggest that it prevents infection, not just symptomatic disease, that it was, you know, they're finding that there are symptomatic disease. Numbers are roughly the same as the, as Pfizer trials. So these are those all Pfizer, but they've also found that it's almost, I want to say, so the, the, the big number is in the nineties, the nine 90 something percent, it's 90 something percent effective at preventing a symptomatic disease, but they're also finding, or they did at that point for 90

Doc Searls (38m 24s):
People out of a hundred. Is that what that means? Right.

Katherine Druckman (38m 26s):
I mean, 90 people out of a hundred won't show symptoms, 90 people out of a hundred that got the vaccine, which were symptoms

Doc Searls (38m 37s):
And that's different than not getting the disease. Right. So,

Katherine Druckman (38m 40s):
Right. So, but, but they're based on whatever data set they had at the time, and I don't know the sample size or, you know, any of that stuff, or I can't recall it off the top of my head anyway. But if the number was in the eighties for preventing actual infection, so there, you know, 80% of the time people who got vaccinated did not 80% of the pot, the vaccinated population did not.

Doc Searls (39m 6s):
So they made the distinction. That's good. Yeah. That makes sense.

Katherine Druckman (39m 10s):
Yeah. Interesting. That makes me feel a little bit better about all of this, but, you know, I don't know. I mean, I, you know, what do I know? I'm certainly not a scientist. I'm not qualified to make these judgments, but you know, what can we all do other than decide whether we want to be optimistic or not, and decide what our own risk tolerance is. And it's, it's, it's difficult, you know, it's, it's different.

Doc Searls (39m 34s):
Yeah. Do it. Do you want to call it a show or a, yeah, we could call it a show where you could call it a we'd really love to have people suggest guests suggest topics, ask questions, provide answers to questions that may have come up. We'd like engagement.

Katherine Druckman (39m 52s):
Yep. And we've gotten some and, and thank you for the people who have written to us. And if we haven't written you back yet, I apologize. And I will get on that. We'll get right on that. So thanks if you've made it this far. Thanks for joining us again.

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