The deadly consequences of social media | Four Corners

[Music] if you were to choose three words that sum up social media what would they be unnecessarily tragically harmful after 20 years of unfettered growth a realization is Dawning about the true cost of social media I don't think Instagram wants to kill kids I think Instagram wants to make a ton of money and they don't care if they happen to kill some kids along the way this social experiment has had the most profound consequences for young people we let a stranger into our house every night that does the most horrific things and can manipulate a

child's mind this is an urgent crisis millions of teens are having their mental health compromised I think Mark is responsible for what happened to these kids would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people people fix it your algorithms are targeting the mentally unwell and children those algorithms are also spreading disinformation as the world focuses on us politics democracy is under threat insiders are sounding the alarm it's a feeling like you are in a car hurling toward a brick wall or some danger that you know is coming online anger is spilling

onto the streets these were our first social media rights inside these vast soulless business parks of Silicon Valley they're shaping the way the rest of us live but it's not all likes and Cat videos around the world momentum is building to finally hold social media companies to account in this episode of Four Corners we speak to some of the key players in the fight to make that [Music] [Applause] [Music] happen it's early morning at a mosque in the merys side town of Southport in England's Northwest don't attack other people for no reason don't harm the

community that you're living in don't harm we've come to visit this community as it recovers from a frightening attack [Applause] Fu [ __ ] in July Southport Imam Ibrahim Hussein was here with seven other worshippers when a mob descended [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] we we are no match to them we're feeling intimidated frightened [Music] and then of course they got vocal they got louder the Imam and his men barricaded themselves inside we went to watch the CCTV and then very soon we discover that the smoke and the fire is being thrown at the window and all

the smoke is coming inside if we didn't die in the hands of the mob definitely going to suff a cage with the smoke there is Young Lads that were here that have got young families and they think you're not going to see them again they thought they were going to die yeah outside the chaos escalated it looks like we were in a war zone because of a lie on social media because of a lie is social media to blame for what happened at your mosque most definitely the attack on the Southport mosque was the culmination

of a concerted disinformation campaign it began after three little girls were stabbed in Southport at a Taylor Swift dance class three children who were just dancing and now they're gone the Home Secretary had earlier warned about disinformation linked to the [Music] attack social media didn't create the racial tensions in Britain but it's given extremists a powerful tool to spread hate nazia AEL is a former Chief prosecutor for Northwest England he brought to Justice the perpetrators of violent protests in the past but he's seen nothing like this there was an enormous amount of um comment on

social media as to the identification of the perpetrator this person's a Muslim this person's uh an asylum Seeker um language of that nature which was wrong in all respects you disinformation is not freedom of speech it's lying uh and openly lying in order to uh encourage people to do something nefarious in fact the alleged perpetrator who was ultimately arrested was born in Britain to a Christian family everybody forgot three little girls that had been murdered you know it really shocks me that was their motivation uh allegedly but they didn't care it literally was simply an

attack on black and brown people uh in this country because they are black and brown what I do know is something is going horribly wrong in our once beautiful country it was the worst civil unrest in the UK in more than a decade you don't protect our children against us we are com for your families on your street these were our first social media rights people were using social media to create fear the disinformation about the attacker's identity had spread after a series of posts on X formerly known as Twitter the posts were Amplified by

notorious influences linked to the far right people like Andrew tight so an undocumented migrant decided to go into a Taylor Swift dance class today that's right somebody arrived in the UK on a boat shadowy extremist accounts on Telegram and others on X with hundreds of thousands of followers pushed the narrative further X owner Elon Musk weighed in responding directly to the anti-immigration account Europe Invasion the idea that musk would allow an account like that on the platform is a major problem in and of itself musk the owner of the platform was amplifying a voice that

was an extremely dangerous voice that contributed to the violence we saw in the streets over the coming days things really just started in Southport but it Joe malhal monitors the extreme right for anti-racism advocacy group hope not hate so you'd get some people putting it on X like this but you'd also get live streaming happening on Tik Tok he was a gas to see Elon Musk post during the riots to his more than 200 million followers at Civil War is inevitable what happened in the days following that attack in Southport had disastrous effects on our

streets and in our communities and it wasn't musk putting his hands up and saying this is free speech he was engaging it in it himself some of the biggest players spreading misinformation disinformation and hatred in the period running up to and during the riots were individuals that had previously been removed from Twitter but Elon Musk allowed back onto the platform as a social media Riot we're going to have to look back at this and see what we can learn from this a platforms themselves social media platforms have a responsibility and we didn't see it being

exercised you say these were the first social media riots will they be the last I have no doubt that there will be other social media riots to understand why Britain erupted in this way it's instructive to meet a farri figure like patriotic Alternatives Mark collet Mr collet uses social media to disseminate his xenophobic agenda his anti-immigration rhetoric has seen him ban and from Facebook and X but he supports where Elon Musk is taking social media I think social media is important it does give you a greater reach and since Elon Musk has taken over on

Twitter there have been smaller accounts that have grown very large and they are saying things that under the old Twitter establishment they wouldn't have been allowed to say and I think that's something that the British government is very scared about because they want to do something to cail Elon musk's drive for free [Music] speech as the Southport riots broke out Mark collet took to social media he linked the attacks on the little girls to immigration telling his followers the migrant murderer who attacked British children with a knife will now be protected that was a false

claim he also wrote We the white British are the victims of an anti-white Multicultural tyranny so you stand by those words oh of course I mean I'm not blaming the Immigrant Community here people are saying we've had enough we've had enough we've had enough another thing that you've said in the past is diversity is a hate crime against white people did I specifically say that you were quoted as saying that D but I mean it's it's a reasonable quote I me I'll take it if you want um diversity is something that is bad for white

people because every time somebody somebody says this has become more diverse it means fewer white people this is a predominantly white country uh with predominantly white institutions with enormous amounts of institutional racism uh in our system so the idea that somehow this is against him and his people is um it's just nonsense at Southport there was someone there wearing a show that was very clearly linked to patriotic Alternatives so that's a a dead giveaway hope not hate discovered patriotic alternative figures attended the Southport riots so we've proved by analyzing footage of the riots that individuals

linked to patriotic alternative that have been active with patriotic alternative engaged in the violence on those days that were present at those riots um and that comes as no surprise Mark collet paints himself as an advocate for as he puts it the indigenous white people of Britain but his views are far more Sinister so you still think that Hitler wasn't such a bad guy I don't know him I never met him uh so I I don't have firsthand experience he did order the extermination of 6 million Jews did he you don't think he did I

don't know I mean I think it's an interesting question to ask Holocaust denial is not just historically inaccurate it's deeply hurtful we've grappled with whether to include these comments at all Joe malhal believes it's important to never sanitize the darkest beliefs of these farri [Music] figures Mark colet is a long-standing holocaust denier he has done for many years he's an extraordinarily extreme figure he might present himself sometimes as a moderate figure but there is so much evidence about just how extreme and how pro-nazi he actually is this anti-immigration rhetoric has had serious consequences for families

like Navid mkar I never imagined in my life that that day will come when I will have to leave my home Mr mkar is a migration lawyer and he runs his business out of his family home during the riots his business was named on a list shared on the social media platform telegram forcing the family to leave their home those racist people what do you know about racism that um then the not respecting um other people's religions and faith and how do you feel about that offended and angry do you feel safe when you go

outside and you able to go outside now not much I still have the fear that something is going to happen because these people can just do anything they have so many people with them the family lives in Stoke on Trent just over an hour from Southport Mr MTAR says since the riots the already simmering racial tensions in this area have worsened since these rots started in the country racism has increased multiple times we can't leave our home thinking that we are safe and I reported to the police many times and to the local city council

but unfortunately have hasn't haven't received any help at all my children cannot go and play in the street anymore we are just living in a cage that hate which has been spread in the whole country is affecting families like us who just want to work so what would you say to social media Proprietors you know the likes of Elon Musk if you want to make profits take more responsibility the social media are fundamentally culpable for what's happening these are vast International companies with huge resources and as yet they refuse to or they are doing it

too slowly to deal with the issues on these platforms that are having real world effects on people on our streets Andrew Kong saw this up close when he worked as a planning analyst for the social media company talk so I've have seen so many videos people dying people you know committing suicide people getting beheaded on the platform that is targeted toward younger generation and younger people is is horrible we are far too soft Tik Tok says it has strict controls for those under 18 we set up an account for an adult male Tik Tok user

and entered the search term immigration UK to see where the algorithm took us they make all these MOS and within minutes the suggested content turned xenophobic and dark do Muslims have to pay council tax Congress are going to be Muslims soon England won't be England it will be Islam the more time you spend on it you're going to go down further into the rabbit hole you know that's kind of how they keep you addicted you know [Music] entertained thousands of kilometers across the North Atlantic the United States is on the cusp of an election where

social media is more pivotal than ever [Music] before one of the biggest challenges that I face is missing disinformation Joe taught me rule number one carefully hide your total [Music] inconfidence we Tracked Down the tech company insiders once responsible for managing this mine field and they believe social media disinformation is tearing at the very heart of American democracy my name is Edward Perez most people call me Eddie I used to be the director of product management for information integrity at Twitter I don't think it's an exaggeration at all to say that this is potentially the

most important election in the US uh certainly since our civil war last century it's a feeling like you are in a car hurdling toward a brick wall or some danger that you know is coming and there's not a lot that can be done to stop [Music] it at Twitter Eddie Perez led the team task with tackling false information on politics and public health and monitoring extremism he left in 2022 just before Elon Musk took over and slashed thousands of jobs this is now a company that instead of having roughly 8,000 people it has approximately 2,000

I think so there's a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge that has been lost in terms of infastructure and elections in particular even the attempt to try to achieve accuracy of information those standards are now gone the attempt to balance freedom of speech with quality of information and reduction of harm was a very very serious part of our mission and in its place Twitter today is the most generous thing you can say is a wild wild west they know they do far too little about it the concerns about democracy aren't confined to eggs Facebook is a

company that has paid for its immense profits with our safety Francis howan was a product manager at what's now M after the chaos of the 2020 election and its violent aftermath she leaked thousands of pages of company documents so at Facebook there was one area of the company Civic Integrity that was responsible for trying to make sure that Facebook was a positive force in the world when they dissolved that team right after the election less than 30 days after people voted in the United States I knew that Facebook wasn't going to be able to heal

itself on its own the woman was talking about the change going on on Instagram Francis Haan says social media companies like meta are taking Elon musk's lead in slashing staff hired to stop disinformation from being disseminated seeing that you could fire huge numbers of people and not face really any meaningful consequences Mark Zuckerberg followed and fired 20,000 employees they closed the only mechanism for transparency that existed for either Facebook or in stagram during the US election season there will be no tool available from Facebook to be able to see what's going on on the platform

even in a moderate way so I would say musk has done a very dangerous thing in terms of establishing a precedent MAA told us it now has 40,000 people working in Safety and Security more than it did in 2020 where where is he come on up here Elon we had one president who couldn't climb a flight of stairs and another who was fist pumping after getting shot fight fight fight one of the things that has most turned Eddie Paris off the platform he once worked for is how X has been politically weaponized by its new

owner Elon Musk Mr musk's posts have become ardently supportive of Donald Trump and sometimes disturbing in tone I made a joke which I realized I deleted um which is like nobody's even bothering to try to kill Cala CU it's pointless what do you achieve nothing no it's tot another puppet Elon Musk thank you very much would the posts of Elon Musk violate the sort of rules that you and your colleagues were putting in place certainly some of them definitely would it disturbs me the most because to me what it is actually illustrating are the really

really pernicious ends that come with tremendous wealth and with tremendous power and with influence and when it is paired with absolute recklessness X has a very harmful place in the current media ecosystem whether people are actively participating in it or not the Ripple effects from that will be felt unverified claims about Haitian immigrants killing and eating people's pets Eddie perz says one of the most powerful illustrations of this was the false claim whipped up on social media posted by Elon Musk that migrants in Springfield Ohio were eating pets see I'm a different a false claim

that was repeated in the presidential debate by Republican candidate Donald Trump in Springfield they're eating the dogs the people that came in they're eating the cats they're eating they're eating the pets they're eating the dogs they're eating it flooded social media with AI generated Trump cat memes eating the dogs I mean it would be laughable if it weren't so harmful talk about extreme X is fundamentally operating like a amplifier and disinformation machine almost like a factory for these inflammatory right-wing messages the bottom line here is that there is very real human harm what happened to

that small town of Ohio was terrible they ended up with bomb threats they ended up having to evacuate schools it was absolute chaos for those those poor people that frankly were used as political pawns I think absolutely the United States has gone backwards and in its response to disinformation the US Department of Homeland Security recently tried to create an Advisory Board what it called a disinformation governance board but that board quickly collapsed in 20122 Nina jankovitz was appointed executive director of a new disinformation governance board but this government attempt to re in the lies on

social media was a disastrously short-lived experiment so today to Herald the coming of the new Soviet America the administration announced its own Ministry of Truth right-wing influencers started calling it a Ministry of Truth and within 24 hours the board and I were the subject of many Fox News panels and reports saying that I was going to be censoring Americans um Tucker Carlson said that I would have the power to send men with guns to the homes of Americans with whom I disagreed which absolutely was not true this lady is clearly totally unfit for the Tas

my hairing we talk about the ministry of Truth here we talk about Orwell's 1984 because it sounds an awful like that to me flooded with threats and the most toxic of online hate she's wildly inadequate for Nina jankovitz resigned from her position after 3 weeks no NADA NAA the worst part was that they went after me and my family it led people to doxs me so to release my home address and phone number and that of my my close family uh to threaten me credibly I you know had to consult with the Federal Protective Service

and at the time I was pregnant I was just a couple weeks away from becoming a mom and they were threatening me and my unborn child in America children are now at the center of the battle against big [Music] Tech American lawmakers Educators and parents are fighting back against the social media companies with a huge legal case where 37 State Attorneys General are joining together with school districts and thousands of families across the country to say that these platforms are causing profound harm to young people prevan Warren is one of the lawyers running the case

against the social media companies five other State Attorneys General are running their own cases a lot of these parents have lost their kids and they've lost their kids needlessly through the absolute wanting negligence of these platforms Mr Warren was at Harvard when Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook and was one of its first users what was face mash and is it still up and running Facebook's Forerunner was a website called face Mash pictures of two women and decide which one was the better more attractive of the two is that right Congressman that is an accurate description of

the prank website that I made when I was that's the origin story of Mr Zuckerberg's entire Empire and fast forward to where we are now and fast forwarding to where we are now what is the impact on teenage girls it's algorithm is designed to push content at young girls that they will find engage enging and it sucks them down a rabbit hole of dieting tips Beauty content we should not be living in a society where young women are made to feel by powerful Rich tech companies that they're not good [Music] enough many of prevan Warren's

clients are parents of teenage users of these platforms who allege social media contributed to their children children's deaths I don't think Instagram wants to kill kids I think Instagram wants to make a ton of money and they don't care if they happen to kill some kids along the way and what does that say about the people running that organization I think they don't care I think at the end of the day they think that they're Above the Law and if they don't have to change their design in a way that maximizes safety they won't they

will put their profits first that is an incredibly dangerous thing for our [Music] society we went to a Tiny Town in rural Colorado to hear just how dangerous it can be it's Corn Harvest Time in Marino population [Music] 281 one of the young people from this town is not here to tell her story but her mother Lori shot wants the world to know it her name was arnal shot everyone called her Anna she was an adorable little country girl she was about 5 foot tall she weighed 100 lb she was my shadow all growing up

Lorie sha is one of the thousands of parents Across America suing the social media companies why are you speaking out Lor sorry I've never felt such a passion to make a wrong a right um losing our daughter at the age of 18 knowing that it was preventable I had a choice you know either to curl up in my own sorrow and pity or after what I found out about social media to share on a story to be her voice Anna's best friend was Faith Murphy she was kind like undoubtedly kind always Jesus Christ to anybody

and everybody all the time faith says they would spend about 10 hours a day on Instagram Snapchat Tik Tok tell me about her use of social media it was gnarly it was bad gnarly non-stop continuous she was so desperate to be on those platforms if you take a phone she'd find an iPad then I tried to figure out if she was on her school computer or her private computer she would doing her chores the phone was in her hand she would be riding in the arena with her horse her phone would be in her pocket

and it was her constant companion and she said she needed it for schoolwork well I don't think that was what was going on she needed it because she was on these social media platforms and did not want to give it up because she was addicted because she was addicted to it yeah I think everyone that at that age is addicted to social media [Music] Anna's friends and family began to notice that by age 16 she was losing her spark she was depressed social media made it worse journal entries show her comparing herself to images she

saw online writing nobody will love someone as ugly and broken as me like she would go through phases where she was like hey I'm just text me like I'm deleting Snapchat I'm deleting Instagram and it would last like a month Max and then it was redownloaded and why was she wanting to delete these platforms cuz it was toxic if you could see her social media it destroyed her with constant feeds about how she looked who she was anxiety depression she wasn't sleeping because you know when we let her have her phone she was constantly on

it I think she was sleeping 4 hours a night but Instagram fed her the worst content I feel like it is is a heat detecting missile that finds these weaknesses in these children and just Zone in on it so they knew that Anna's weakness was you know a little anxiety or depression I'm going to a counselor looking these things up and it just magnified it and it did not stop and as a parent you say you don't think it's going to happen to you in your family it does those algorithms change so quickly and no

parent can outsmart the algorithms the Tik Tok algorithm pushed deeply disturbing videos on Anna's for you feed it curated content that constantly referenced death and suicide Lorie shot only discovered this after Anna died she found a page in Anna's Journal J headed Tik toks with the handwritten words technically if I kill myself the problem would be [Music] gone it brought me to my knees it crippled me I mean I to this day I can't unsee what I saw how does that make you feel towards the social media companies I think it's disgusting fix it your

algorithms are targeting the mentally unwell and children and worsen all the [ __ ] they're already dealing with Tik talk says it has strict Community guidelines and doesn't allow content depicting extreme violence self harm or promoting Eating Disorders to find out what the Tech Giants knew about the dangers to young people like Anna shot we've traveled here to San Francisco to meet Silicon Valley insiders who were alarmed at what they saw when advising the social media companies on trust and safety my name is aruro be for me I mean the reason I'm here talking with

you right is it shouldn't be happening and every parent should know how bad it is in October 2021 aruro beer emailed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to warn him of the dangers to young people he raised internal company research he'd worked on that show showed 51% of Instagram's users say yes to having a bad or harmful experience in the last 7 days more than a quarter of 13 to 15 year- olds surveyed said they'd received unwanted sexual advances don't we run the risk of normalizing bad behavior Mr Beer asked his boss on many of the measures

examined by his Team 13 to 15y olds were the most likely to encounter dangerous content including posts about self harm on Instagram and to this day I mean it's insane there's no way for a kid to press a button to let know Instagram that that happened why because they don't want to know why don't they want to know because I I think that if they knew they might be they might think they're liable I think if they knew they they might feel they have a responsibility to deal with it I mean I think that the

the company cares more about protecting its reputation and the risk of a leak than they do to understand actual harm and reduce it you brought your concerns to the highest levels of meta right up to Mark Zuckerberg and what was his response um he didn't even write back aturo beer worked at Facebook for 6 years until 2015 when he returned to the company in 2019 he was horrified to see most of the safety measures to protect young people that his team had put in place had been removed from the platform he also wrote To The

Head of Instagram Adam maseri about his concerns and I had my meeting with him and he understood everything I was talking about he didn't he didn't disagree with any of it so that was 2021 what did he do nothing how does that make you feel well that's why I Whistle Blow right how many kids right what what what is what is his legacy what is Mark's Legacy when it comes to teenagers right what is his legacy Eating Disorders he committing suicide because of bulli and harassment so much harm to the people that deserve to be

protected the most well they're here you're on National Television Mark Zuckerberg testified before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people apologizing for the harms his company had caused to young people aturo beer was there with the parents of teenagers who had died I think Mark is responsible for what happened to these kids because if Mark woke up tomorrow morning and said we no longer are going to show anything that has remotely to do with self harm to 13year olds it would take a few

months for the company to be able to do that they have the infrastructure and the capacity to do that I've seen what the company can do when Mark deems it a priority and I've seen how hard it is for a company to do something if Mark doesn't deem it a priority so I think he has such responsibility when it comes to everything we're talking about meta disputes uro be's assertion that no action was taken it says it's implemented safety features such as comment warnings and kindness reminders the company has also introduced used teen accounts which

it says provides teens with built-in protections and gives parents more oversight including seeing who their teens are chatting with and setting time limits whistleblowers question whether these measures go far enough if you were to choose three words that sum up social media what would they be unnecessarily tragically harmful [Music] [Music] this tiny community in Colorado is coming to terms with the unnecessary tragic loss of a country teenager she was a beautiful little Rider I still remember her back into the box she just loved it I felt like social media just stried her confidence but when

she was on a horse with these guys in this environment she just blossomed what's that these people were her cheering Squad so it just crippled everybody and to come back to the arena without her here is hard [Music] court documents revealed that in the months before Anna shot's death Mark Zuckerberg was warned by his own staff that photo filters used in Instagram were actively encouraging young girls into body dysmorphia Mr Zuckerberg dismissed the concerns as [Music] paternalistic they knew what was happening if you follow my daughter's journals 2019 she was harmed for the exact same

things they warned Mr Zuckerberg about and they knew it how could this happen and they're not accountable to this day it hurts me every single day because my daughter would be alive I really think she'd be alive today sorry if he would have taken action how do you feel towards Mark Zuckerberg in light of these he's responsible I want him held accountable so he needs to be held legally liable for what have happen what's happened to these children and that's a hill I'm willing to die on if I have to tell honest story 10,000 times

because he had the ability stop it change it make it for the good of the kids let's make this a better place let's get to a better yes you can have your billions of dollars I guess but trying to improve it was not on his agenda and he's going to have to live with that for the rest of his life he does he has blood on his hands meta says when all the evidence comes out it will demonstrate that neither the company nor any of its Executives will have any liability and it has strict rules

against content that's graphic or glorifies suicide or self harm arm Anna shot died by suicide in her own home she's buried on the family ranch it is like a slow drip of pain that it has totally altered our family but I want some good to come out of this each day as the light Fades across these planes Lori shot looks out to see Anna's Memorial cross light up you know for us it's not about the money we just want our daughter back but if the lawsuits make social media stand up and take responsibility and change

that's where I'm pushing make the world a better place Mark Zuckerberg make the world a better place Tick Tock every harm every single harm I can see a child's face you know we let a stranger into our house every night that does the most horrific things and can manipulate a child's mind to that extent that we need to say enough is enough e [Music] [Applause] [Music] if this program has raised concerns for you you can contact one of these services