#10 Two SU Presidents Talk | with Simon Milner & Eemil Moisio

Wadham alumnus, Simon Milner (History & Politics, 1985; SU President, 1987) is the APAC VP of Public Policy with Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc) and joins us for our first 'Notable alumni in conversation with Wadham students' exchange of 2023. We are very honoured that he gave us his time for this insightful exchange, conducted by another former Wadham SU President, Eemil Moisio (PPE, 2020).

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Transcript

Intro: You're listening to Wadcast, a podcast from Wadham College, University of Oxford, bringing you interviews, seminars and stories from our community.

Emile: As far as introductions goes, I'm Emile I'm a final year student at autumn.

I'll also introduce Simon. So Simon is a graduate from Wadham in history and economics. And during his time at Wadham, he worked as the student union president. And he. So you oversaw the start of the Free Nelson Mandela tradition that actually still goes on to today.

And Wadstock, which is happening today, will also include free Nelson Mandela at the end. He went to LSE for industrial relations where he got his PhD afterwards. And since then he's worked across a wide range of influential roles in various media related contexts, such as the Secretary of the BBC, the Director of Group Industrial Policy at British Telecoms, and now as the Vice President of public policy for APAC at Meta.

So that's going to give a lot of range for different topics we can discuss. But I suggest we take more of a chronological approach and begin with Wadham. So to begin, how come did you you know, how did you come to choose specifically your course at Wadham?

Simon: Yeah, well, actually this specific course is quite a story because I didn't I didn't choose history economics originally.

00:01:41:13 - 00:02:13:08
Unknown
I chose history. And I those are the days where in history prelims or at the end of the first term and you had to do two foreign language papers, in my case, Latin and French. And I think it's fair to say that I rather enjoyed myself over the time before I came to Wadham, so I was not particularly well prepared for this full on onslaught of eight weeks before the exams and as a result, I actually abandoned the of five days.

00:02:13:10 - 00:02:32:18
Unknown
I ran away and and I ran away thinking I was going to spend my grant money. And those are the days of using grant money and traveling around the UK and saying new fossils and eventually figuring out what to do with my life. Thank you. But I did come back obviously, because otherwise I wouldn't be on this call now.

00:02:32:18 - 00:02:53:02
Unknown
And actually when I got back, I was informed by my tutor Kurt Davidson, and also this other course. It might work better for me. Equally strong economics, only a dozen people doing that across the university. And I never looked back. I could drop Latin and friends of Latin and they had to do one foreign language paper in French, Italy.

00:02:53:06 - 00:03:13:22
Unknown
And then also the exact lectures I'm doing and will turn to that enabled me to have a bit of a reset. It was a real godsend in terms of my time at whatever I would have been when I look back on it, what a terrible travesty it would have been to have abandoned Modern and Oxford academic course so early on.

00:03:13:22 - 00:03:34:01
Unknown
And I'm thankful to the Chaplin and Clive Davis to my tutor and others who persuaded me to come back, figure it out and stick around and tastic. And it sounds like, you know what? Almost quite a supportive community back then, which it really is today as well for a lot of students, you know, whatever other challenges they face.

00:03:34:03 - 00:03:51:23
Unknown
But I'd kind of like to hear more about what the college identity was like in the day. Yeah, actually, it's interesting when you talk about being supported. I mean, there is also there was banter in the day as well. So remember, I think we still have what words is that still a thing on the magazine? You mean kind of gossipy?

00:03:51:23 - 00:04:16:18
Unknown
Yeah, you know, it's had tough, but it does exist. Okay, so when what words kept them out? My eye was Simon over the wall. MILNER That was my kind of moniker. And so, yeah, fair enough. Everybody knew that I'd gone away and come back. And so people were. But but you're absolutely right. I did find it very supportive.

00:04:16:20 - 00:04:39:14
Unknown
Look, one of the reasons why I came to the college was because it was very welcoming for kind of Northern grammar school boys, as I was the grammar school kids. There were many other people there who come on particular programs. And so they did in this case mean state schools that this college was already running in those early days from the north east.

00:04:39:16 - 00:05:02:17
Unknown
And it became some good friends of mine. I know. So but but part of the reason the coming was because Martin was well known to be in these days, we'd say, progressing Ben, with a kind of left wing and that they appealed to me as something that I thought I ought to be getting into as a as a student.

00:05:02:19 - 00:05:29:05
Unknown
Lovely. And that kind of political engagement and progressiveness also definitely carries through till now. So what kind of political because you've mentioned you are very engaged in the day, so what kind of political things did you get involved in here, especially as as president? Yeah. So I mean, it's going to be hard for your male colleagues of a similar age to kind of place yourself back into the mid eighties.

00:05:29:07 - 00:05:56:15
Unknown
I'd say the industrial industrial relations was usually a huge topic. The miners strike was in its kind of dying days remains. And when I came to the colonies, but it was still very prominent in terms of black politics. And then there was the printer. The printers went on strike against Ali Shah and Murdoch and associated with the move of News International to Wapping.

00:05:56:17 - 00:06:31:20
Unknown
That was a big, big thing in the eighties. It was a big moment, was a massive clash between labor and capital and the form of massive forms of industrial disputes, which will probably come back on to later. And then the other main topics, I would say were AIDS, as AIDS was a major issue, a major social issue, a lot of stigmatism directed against homosexual men, gay men, and and that was something where I'm part of my campaign as progressive president was for same sex education I managed to do.

00:06:31:20 - 00:06:52:07
Unknown
I don't quite know how this came about some kind of deal with the condom company for everybody to get safe sex advice and a free condom. And that was part of my so that was part of my bid about, you know, AIDS was a it was it was a big topic in the mid-eighties. And then apartheid, I'd say.

00:06:52:09 - 00:07:22:15
Unknown
I mean, this kind of links back to free Nelson Mandela and especially like a song. But apartheid was still very much in place. And, you know, the college student body was pushing the the the college itself to divest, to pull up coal investments out of Barclays in particular. So there was a lot of activity around that. So, you know, that was when the only things as opposed to a lot of stuff around anti-fascism as well.

00:07:22:15 - 00:07:49:22
Unknown
So yeah, a whole heap of causes that we as a student body engaging in, those are that time that's really impressive. And just kind of out of curiosity on, you know, how was your experience of, you know, negotiating all of these kind of different areas of activism with the college or with the university at large? Because there's, you know, been various periods of support and then kind of more conflict between the two.

00:07:49:24 - 00:08:22:09
Unknown
It's a little bit foggy. I mean, we're talking a long time ago that I was in the middle of this in the mid mid-eighties and almost 40 years ago. So but, you know, I certainly found there was always respect from the college authorities. They wanted to hear from students, classmates that I was the warden during my time was very engaged, where students had a long track record of public service and and, you know, we didn't always felt like we were winning.

00:08:22:11 - 00:08:44:00
Unknown
We 75, we got a hearing from the college and a lot of the issues we were putting that we were campaigning on that were not about were not in the hands of the committee to do anything about them or indeed the university authorities. They're about much bigger issues both in the UK and and elsewhere in the world that we were campaigning on.

00:08:44:00 - 00:09:05:16
Unknown
So, yeah, I guess that's my my take on it. We certainly weren't getting a lot of great hearing from the government of the day. And that's that's pretty clear. Yeah, I think it might be a good connection, but it may have kind of further towards, you know, your career and you had, you have further academic work, a master's and a PhD in industrial relations.

00:09:05:18 - 00:09:40:10
Unknown
And you mentioned that this was kind of an early interest as well of your activism at Wharton. So kind of how did that trajectory happen for you? I mean, it's onwards and actually thinking about the world now, you can understand why people might want to do a study in some villages. There's an awful lot happening in the UK and Europe and elsewhere in the world in terms of this kind of battle between kind of trade unions, workers, employers, but mainly governments is in the UK and it's mainly public sector workers.

00:09:40:12 - 00:10:02:06
Unknown
And that was that was true to a much greater degree in the eighties. I mean, this was the be most intense period of industrial action and the UK had seen for a long time and it had been extended from the seventies, right? So we had a very long period of these waves of industrial action and a real battle for who gets to control the government.

00:10:02:06 - 00:10:26:16
Unknown
So I was fascinated by that. You know, as an economic historian, I really wanted to explore that more then student politics and being in the student as president and being products and taking part in U.S. events as well made me think, okay, this is an area where I want to explore this more. I want to get deeper. And that's why I went to the industrial relations with them to see the LSC.

00:10:26:21 - 00:10:59:12
Unknown
And I absolutely loved it. I mean, very, very different from what I come in there right in the middle of London and a very different kind of teaching environment. Obviously much older students, a lot of mature students all mixed in together, a lot of people with different kinds of experience and I have to say that whereas what I'd say was very much my political awakening, certainly a big part of my growing up once I came back and maturing, but I really no offense to what I'm not.

00:10:59:12 - 00:11:22:04
Unknown
So but I think it was the LSC which really kind of drove me academically and because it was just a very different way of teaching, it was just so much more intense. And I do, yeah. And you've kind of progressed in your career to different contexts other than academia, so what was your reflection on that? You know, not continuing further on that path?

00:11:22:06 - 00:11:44:22
Unknown
Yeah, so I did, I did APAC at the LSC and was kind of all set for this academic life. There are two reasons why I decided to move on. One is quite lonely and a lonely life in academia. A lot of time on your own, trying to kind of solve big problems or come up with an alternative way of looking at big problems.

00:11:44:24 - 00:12:08:15
Unknown
And then I'll say really coding papers. And I and I was we were at the stage of life where we were thinking of starting a family. And my wife and I just thought, you know what, I need to do something else. I need to give something else to try. And that's why I went to work for a think tank, think that wasn't particularly well paid, but I felt like it was give me an opportunity to.

00:12:08:19 - 00:12:31:04
Unknown
This was the Institute for Public Policy Research, and a couple of years before the big general election in 97, with Tony Blair as leader of Labor, a real sense of momentum behind in sense center was going to be a big shift. And I remember during the I remember during the eighties that what and this general sense of well labor will never get back the pound will never go back to the Tories.

00:12:31:04 - 00:12:50:14
Unknown
It just was all sewn up and we can never get back. And it was kind of mid-nineties was a real recognition that Labor could come back to power and the EPR was the kind of almost almost the enhanced think tank for Labor. And I thought that would be a great opportunity to get on board with that that train, really.

00:12:50:16 - 00:13:18:08
Unknown
So it was great to be able to spend a couple of years. I thoroughly enjoyed it. That's fantastic. I guess quite a common question that comes up especially well in personal experience at this stage is the uncertainty about the career moves that you'll make after academics and transitioning. And so, I mean, I'd be interested to hear your take on the uncertainty and fear that you're picking something wrong for you, especially early on.

00:13:18:10 - 00:13:50:24
Unknown
Yes. So, I mean, you and I talk a little bit about this ahead of the call. I do mean reflecting on my life and career. There are key moments when I think you've made big decisions that then really do set in that, you know, that kind of crossroads, a big turning point. Supplements that's in your life. I actually don't think there were many of those in my early twenties, you know, whether I went to the LSC and did the masses in industrial relations or, you know, went somewhere else and did economic history, I don't think that would have made a big change for me.

00:13:51:05 - 00:14:21:20
Unknown
Even those early jobs, doing a pasty, being a kind of a lecturer at the NSC, again, I think I don't I think just I don't think I was all just building some privations, really. I think if I'd stayed in academia for another few years, then it would be time to share. So I do think that's something about and it may be different in that it may be very different, but I feel that there was this sense of actually being in your twenties.

00:14:21:20 - 00:14:44:01
Unknown
You can play, you can play different things, and some people I know just went up and did almost non jobs, just kind of maintenance jobs, enabling them to have an income. Some people went into management consulting and you know, and these big bucks and you thought, well they're now doing some different things. So I do think you're trying to do is a time to play.

00:14:44:03 - 00:15:02:08
Unknown
But I think that you get into me getting into my late twenties when I went to the ATP, then the next job, the next one is the big one. And that was when I was in 97, I was almost 30. That was the big moment where I think I made this big kind of career decision, which was quite defining.

00:15:02:10 - 00:15:26:24
Unknown
And so my sense of my sense of things to me, at least to different people, is you can play in or as an active after your undergraduate years, try different things and don't you don't have to kind of set a course or make decisions that you feel are going to weigh you down or restrict you and and what you do.

00:15:27:01 - 00:15:55:16
Unknown
That's obviously, you know, very reassuring to hear. And when we told I'm telling this to my sons as well, I summons 23 teaching English in in Argentina having done a master's in classics. So who knows what I end up doing. Sounds interesting. The one with earlier. You're saying that one of these kinds of key points for you, you know, transformed the big first job was to work as secretary of the BBC.

00:15:55:16 - 00:16:19:03
Unknown
So how was that time for you? You said it's something you are passionate about. Yes. I didn't join the BBC to do it. I joined the BBC as just a policy person and having and the policy credentials that the IPR and the BBC, which is keen to hire people who knew Labor because it was full of people who really knew how to work with the government.

00:16:19:05 - 00:16:39:21
Unknown
And clearly that's all they needed to do for 17 years or 18 years. And so they were rapidly trying to hire people that understood labor and how to work with labor. And that's when I joined. And I think like many people, when you first during a big organization like that, it can be pretty hard to find your feet.

00:16:39:21 - 00:17:04:02
Unknown
It took me a while to do that and but we've kind of a long story short, but the big job was becoming secretary. The BBC was is this role of being responsible for the governance and accountability. The BBC. I was pretty young for doing that before I started the job, and on the 1st of January 2000, a quite important moment.

00:17:04:04 - 00:17:30:02
Unknown
And I and it was and was an absolute Frankenstein. I just learned so much. I grew so much during that time. But also being in that right at the heart of know, I think in probably in the UK is one of the two or three most important organizations in the UK and still is was incredible, says the secretary you get to report to the Crabtree did in the time this job doesn't exist.

00:17:30:02 - 00:17:56:05
Unknown
That was me to report to the Director-General and the Chairman and we had this guy called Great Night. I could just been appointed as director general. He was very, very different from before, very commercial and very competitive, really wanted to find the culture of the organization and it was astonishing to be alongside him for the four tumultuous years.

00:17:56:07 - 00:18:19:20
Unknown
I suppose you're leading a bit to this early and I'm not sure if your experience allows you to answer this, but how different do you think it is working at an organization like BBC between different governments, you know, through the transition from conservative to Labor, how differently does the organization work with that shift? I don't know, because I only ever worked in government.

00:18:19:22 - 00:18:48:21
Unknown
So while I was at the time that I worked, that was the whole time. And Tony Blair was in power because I left in April 2005. You need to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm still in power then and signing a new Labor government and the key it's interesting when I'm and this is quite it's quite a moment it's quite an issue at the moment right this week with Richard Sharpe resigning.

00:18:48:23 - 00:19:06:14
Unknown
But one of the issues is, is the political connection between the top two people in the BBC and the government. And there'd been the tradition of always having about if you have a Labor chairman, you have a conservative leaning Director-General, and that was maintained when I first joined. We had that great diving Crystal Bland right back with Labor.

00:19:06:14 - 00:19:30:12
Unknown
Crystal Bland was was a Tory. But one of the key moments was when Crystal Bland, about eight months into Gregg's time, I got the job, a kind of rescue beat, and that's part of the reason I ended up. You got the job of Rescue Beattie left. He left the BBC and the vice chairman was a guy called Gavin Davis, who was very well known as a Labor supporter.

00:19:30:14 - 00:19:50:24
Unknown
And Gavin had to go for the job because otherwise kind of what was he there for? The government appointed him. But then you had a Labor director general and a labor change. And I remember and just going back to history, the BBC's historian Gene Seif and Professor June Seaton said to me, Simon, there will be consequences. We should.

00:19:50:24 - 00:20:16:23
Unknown
We need a balance, there will be consequences. And I kind of thought, well, you're probably right, but what can I do about it? I mean, the government decides that I have examiners, but she was absolutely right. And then when the Iraq war happened in 2003, the BBC reported that the government knew that the case for the war had been sexed up and there was a massive fight between the BBC and the government.

00:20:17:00 - 00:20:48:15
Unknown
And because we had these two Labor people at the top of the BBC, they felt they had to show their credentials of standing up to the government or defending the BBC independence. And so they just went at it so hard, so hard. There was no kind of backing off at all. And I do think it's because, you know, it's partly or entirely it's partly because of their connection to labor, and they wanted to prove they were not Tony Blair's cronies.

00:20:48:17 - 00:21:22:22
Unknown
So it's a kind of an example of what happens when you get an unbalanced team at the top or on top of the BBC. And I kind of think that's what's happened recently. Our Richard Charlton and Tim Davie are both Tories. It's not good. You're balancing that makes total sense. It's a really interesting dynamic as well. And I've also just realized that Gene Seton is someone I cited quite a lot in my thesis work, did not realize it, so, you know, Yeah, yeah, it it's a small world as well.

00:21:22:24 - 00:21:48:13
Unknown
I realize it is a very the you then from your perspective has to have the accountability questions that the BBC should be most concerned with. Have they changed over time? Because it suggests that, you know, this kind of balance of political alignment is one of the key ones the tracks over time. But have other worries changed? I honestly don't know.

00:21:48:16 - 00:22:11:07
Unknown
You know, when after I left, I left the BBC after the Hutton inquiry. So 29th of January two and four, the Hutton report came out completely Blame the BBC for the death of David Kenny, Greg Dike and Gavin DAVIES resigned within 24 hours and all kinds of things. And in theory I was right in the middle of it.

00:22:11:09 - 00:22:34:10
Unknown
Front row seat both the highlight of my career to be right in the middle of that because there was a failure of governance. Things did go wrong and I was in charge of it for it's pretty hard to me. Eventually I left the BBC in April 2005, about a year later, and I always felt I was leaving. I have to come back.

00:22:34:12 - 00:22:58:24
Unknown
I have to come back to the BBC because this is not the way it was meant to end and I need to write some wrong, but also I need to come back and work in the most organization in the world. And I had that belief. And that's partly to do with whenever you you work for a big, important organization, you tend to think we are the brightest people in the world where the most creative people in the world were the smartest people in the world and we matter.

00:22:59:03 - 00:23:19:00
Unknown
This organization matters more and any other. And I believe that then I don't believe it now. But I did believe in them. And there was a long time after very, very close to it. It took quite a long time to decompress for me. Six months after leaving the BBC and and I would say it took two or three years before I was fully kind of out of it.

00:23:19:02 - 00:23:42:07
Unknown
And I've kind of recovered my confidence in myself as a as a as a leader, as someone who could be can be thoughtful and figure out what to do in a tricky situation. But since then, I've kind of followed it more fleetingly, I would say, in emails. I think Jean Seaton is much more expert in this than me.

00:23:42:07 - 00:23:57:09
Unknown
So you should definitely credit her in all of your essays rather than me. With respect to the BBC, unless you want to talk about what happened in 2003, then you can't quote it because this is not is this child bearing child of ours. But I don't think you can use this as your own as part of your finals assignment.

00:23:57:11 - 00:24:20:11
Unknown
All right. I've already had to submit it. Okay. But in this sense, it's actually quite interesting. You know, talking about this evening, that is a massively important organization in the world. And you know that you've actually transitioned to another organization that a lot of people have contributed that way. So I'm quite interested. How was your experience of transitioning to Facebook so early before it was established?

00:24:20:11 - 00:25:09:05
Unknown
That's the kind, you know. Vicki Murphy It is today, yeah. So I kind of skate over. The beating is over six years and Beattie enabled me to just kind of recover my confidence, get back on track and get back to a sense of actually I can stick my neck out a bit more. My, the, the, the issue I got involved in the amputee, which got me noticed by the people at Facebook was when we challenged the British government and this was the dog effectively the last piece of legislation that came out of Gordon Brown's government called the digital economy, which was going to force ISP, Internet service providers to essentially do the kind of protect

00:25:09:05 - 00:25:39:21
Unknown
the copyright of music companies and film companies and actually could lead us to I mean, it seems amazing to me that this could lead us to have to throttle people's Internet connection because they were using peer to peer file sharing, to share musical themes. And we challenged that in court and say on the basis that it was not complying with EU law, something you can't do in the UK anymore, obviously, and we won enough to stop it.

00:25:39:23 - 00:25:59:04
Unknown
And it was quite a moment. The BBC, I mean BP, this very traditional kind of risk averse organization to say we are not going to we're not going to set this, I'm not going to set this legislation, which is done at the behest of Peter Mandelson, his mates in the music industry and the film industry, which is exactly what it was.

00:25:59:06 - 00:26:27:24
Unknown
So that's what we're going to be there. This is somebody who was a particular kind of good in media sticking my neck out, knew the industry. But when Facebook headhunters had recruiters call me, I was very unsure. I thought that I actually run this company making money. It's American. I never worked in America. American Export Company before. I was really worried about being a long way from chief exec.

00:26:27:24 - 00:26:54:08
Unknown
I'd been used to having worked to the top of the BBC, being pretty senior and beat me. I was used to being run away from the chief executive. I was quite worried about that. And and so so there was that. Then in the interviews I was asked, this was how long have been 11 early forties mid-forties. And somebody did ask me, how is a guy as old as you want to cope with a company as young as this?

00:26:54:10 - 00:27:17:24
Unknown
I was one of the interview questions mean completely illegal. You can't ask that question, but you still ask it. And it was a very, very young organization. I'm in chief exec Mark's only 38 now, so he was 25, then 26 and something like that. And I was being interviewed and a lot of my colleagues are very young and scrappy and small and a 3000 people.

00:27:18:01 - 00:27:44:18
Unknown
So I was pretty unsure. But nonetheless, there was something about it. And meeting the people that I saw, yeah, that's giving us a go. It's worth the risk. And a bit like the BBC, it took me six months before I really felt kind of like in this system that I can figure this out. Nothing was written down. I remember it in the first month my boss said to going to give evidence and at the end, what was his name?

00:27:44:18 - 00:28:11:00
Unknown
The the judge who did the media hacking inquiry? The Leveson inquiry. My boss had to go and give evidence at the 11th hour. I was kind of a mess really early on and all those issues around speech online and the difference between kind of social media and mainstream media and all that kind of stuff. But it was a very different couple, so it took me a while to get into it.

00:28:11:02 - 00:28:33:07
Unknown
But I and there've been some ups and downs from the way we've been through quite a few crises in our time. But thankfully throughout that time we've continued to grow. We're a very successful business. The issues, the range of issues that we get to do is phenomenal. And of course I've had this big life opportunity to move to Asia, which was pretty amazing.

00:28:33:09 - 00:28:55:20
Unknown
Yeah, there's a long answer. Sorry. You know, it's a great it's giving a lot of, you know, further questions to me. So that's fantastic. So I'm curious about the kind of nature of work has changed for you, especially, you know, you being on the kind of public policy side of things at a company whose social role has changed quite significantly.

00:28:55:20 - 00:29:30:05
Unknown
People are becoming more and more aware of, you know, its influence on various democratic processes, etc.. So quite curious kind of what is the big picture for you over the years, you know, over ten years or the nature of your work and the change in the big picture, I would say is two for one. That compared with the BBC, which obviously is extremely important in the UK in terms of its influence over national life and democracy in an election crimes and is somewhat influential elsewhere in the world, not as influence as it thinks it is.

00:29:30:07 - 00:29:56:05
Unknown
Or is it? I'm sorry, sorry. Somewhat influential. That's not it's not to Facebook. Almost from day one. You realize this is completely different. It's completely different because we are we matter pretty much every man. There are few places where we're blocked. Obviously, the big one is China, which is part of my remit. And and there are some places where we're not as popular as others.

00:29:56:09 - 00:30:25:13
Unknown
Meaning, for instance, career, Facebook and Instagram, the number four and five in the in the pecking order pretty much every year or elsewhere, the most popular after we have been for a very time. So we it just the sheer number of countries where the political class, the media people care about our products, care about our policies, care about how we enforce them, we care about how we're regulated, how I can do both, That is pretty phenomenal.

00:30:25:14 - 00:30:44:17
Unknown
So a reason why we have such a massive policy team in the company. The second area that's very different is the speed with which products change there. Whereas when I was at the BBC, yes, you knew programs would come up and they were kind of like 40 hours of broadcasting for every hour on the day because a local radio station, etc..

00:30:44:19 - 00:31:11:21
Unknown
Actually the core content of the BBC hasn't changed for a very long time, which is TV and radio programs, right? Some live, some not, and an online presence, but the core is the same. And indeed, one of the challenges that the BBC doesn't get to change, that it's very, very hard for the BBC to change. And a technology company like Facebook, and this is true of other technology companies, your products are changing all the time and it can be very, very hard to keep up even when you're in the company.

00:31:11:23 - 00:31:41:04
Unknown
So that also makes incredibly hard for policymakers and regulators and media and others to care about us and want to comment on us and bring us to and to also keep up. And so I'd say that a combination of the speed of technology change and product change and the sheer number of countries where we have doing or where they want to engage with us, they want and want to a connection with that company.

00:31:41:04 - 00:32:07:22
Unknown
But it's incredibly different for these kind of companies compared to the BBC or traditional media. That's very interesting. I'm also quite curious about, well, it seems like a lot of your policy background is specifically in the UK. So, you know, how come you took on the challenge of moving plausibly to, you know, one of the most challenging political books Facebook is going to face and you know, about?

00:32:07:24 - 00:32:39:24
Unknown
Well, it wasn't a direct ship. So, I mean, when I first got there, I got the opportunity to do UK and Ireland, so I got to the island and that was great. I love that we have our headquarters for Europe in Ireland, where I really enjoyed spending time in Dublin and engaging with policy there. But the big trip for me was in 2014, So it seems to imagine that the Facebook I joined only had a policy team for Europe and that we were AMEA, Europe, Middle East and Africa.

00:32:40:00 - 00:32:59:24
Unknown
We didn't have anybody doing policy, the Middle East and Africa. And there was a moment in 2014 when my boss said, Hey, we need to build a policy team for the Middle East and Africa. Can you do it? And I said, Absolutely, I'd love to do that. So I got to hire people for Turkey, for Israel, for the Middle East, Africa, and spend time and areas in those places.

00:33:00:04 - 00:33:35:03
Unknown
And and that was a complete eye opener about just how to represent and engage in cultures, societies, political processes that you are starting from scratch. And so there were some funny moments along the way in figuring this out. Also some amazing moments. I was the first person from the company to ever give evidence in in a hearing in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, on what to do with issues around violence and incitement on our services.

00:33:35:05 - 00:34:02:08
Unknown
Absolutely fascinating. I'm completely loved there. Just to give you a sense of it and the first 50 minutes of this hearing, the members of the committee argued with each other in Hebrew. I had no idea what was going on. And at some point they just stopped talking to each other and they start asking me questions. And then also in the middle of the hearing, a person who was a litigant against us, because members of the public are allowed to ask questions in the Israeli parliament was amazing to us.

00:34:02:08 - 00:34:34:24
Unknown
But you can read this aspect as his questioning was, I'm going to serve papers. They tried to serve on me in the Knesset during this hearing. So that was amazing. I absolutely loved that experience and it meant that when 2017 came around and the company was my boss bosses, both sides looking for a new head of policy for AIPAC, I had I built my credentials of running a very diverse region and doing it well.

00:34:34:24 - 00:35:05:03
Unknown
So that's why I was given the opportunity to come to a really impressive range policy context, because I also imagine a lot of the issues that are raised very much depend on the countries you operate in as well and you know, the current political issues there. So yeah, it's quite a good connection for them here is that, you know, social responsibility is a massive part of the identity here and something that, you know, very regularly comes up in discussions, etc. and a lot of academic work by students and staff around that.

00:35:05:03 - 00:35:31:23
Unknown
So what's your kind of take on what are the key social responsibility challenges that, you know, social media giants like matter face currently? Well, that's a big question to me about that email, right? And I also said to you, you can ask I said, you can ask me anything. Look, I'd say there are two fold. One is data.

00:35:32:00 - 00:36:01:13
Unknown
So people are sharing incredible amounts of confidential data with not with us, but with others through our services. And it's incredibly important that we protect that data and protect that confidentiality and just to give you an example of that, I mean, you may not know this rings true. Certainly a big part of our of our work is figuring out we want to make sure that people understand who they are sparing with.

00:36:01:15 - 00:36:32:04
Unknown
So when you are on Facebook, for instance, one of the features when you post that you can see who you're sharing with because certainly the in the early days there was a very big problem about people having their on Facebook posting environment to public and then complaining about everybody can see my stuff. And there was this general sense of, oh, well the thing about Facebook is everybody can see everything you're doing all of the time.

00:36:32:06 - 00:36:53:16
Unknown
And one of the things we were educating people about was, well, you know, hey, you don't have to put anything on there but to you as to what you put on. And B, you can control who Caesar. And so that whole question of building supply, basic building products that enable people to share in a way that they might be seeing it and then ensuring that that was actually what happens.

00:36:53:18 - 00:37:25:18
Unknown
So this is not easy and involves incredible amounts of engineering and then really our systems to ensure that that's indeed what happens. If you want to share a photo district by friends, you should be able to do that and be competent. And so that so the whole privacy data space is enormous. And then let's say that over the years that one of the biggest errors has been how do you balance giving people a voice with safety?

00:37:25:20 - 00:37:59:06
Unknown
And that's cuts across a enormous range issues and particularly, I mean, often associated with child safety. But it's so much bigger than that. And when should one draw the limits of speech because of the harm that speech can cause? So we spend a lot of time focused on that. I actually don't spend much time and I spend most of my time actually saying to governments, look, you need to set the rules rather than having private companies the rules.

00:37:59:06 - 00:38:36:08
Unknown
And we do. We have rules that apply all over the world. We think this is actually a role for governments, particularly liberal democracies. But they've got to be the ones who decide where, where the where the limits are. And then we will build systems in order to comply with that. But it's one of the biggest challenges. An example recently might be when you get a human rights atrocity like, say, the recent in Myanmar, it's one of my country's terrible, terrible recent history from Myanmar and in the long term issue of Myanmar, after all about hope, now it's just despair.

00:38:36:08 - 00:39:16:13
Unknown
And recently there was an example of the there was an attack by the armed forces, the government armed forces on a bullet which lots of people killed people wanted to share on Facebook. So people are still able to access Facebook, wanted to share on Facebook what was happening in their village. Some of that content was extremely graphic. And so the real question marks about what do we allow in terms of people sharing graphic content of this moment bodies as a result of state violence, when we also have maintainers, people under 18 using our service.

00:39:16:15 - 00:39:42:05
Unknown
And so those are the kind of things that we have to kind of work through. And that's just kind of the stuff we've been doing for 20 years of our existence now. There's all the stuff I made a very separate case, a whole set of interesting other challenges. Yeah, if it is a massive can of worms talking about regulation of digital services and we'll into you know generative especially towards the end of this.

00:39:42:05 - 00:40:14:07
Unknown
But in the meantime you've mentioned this kind of I agree entirely with the stance of it is actually the role of governments to decide the lines of this, especially actually, you know, from citizens interest, actually figure out, you know, what their objective of having digital media is and how that fits to their ideal society. But I imagine there is this concern of once different states are starting to set up different regulation, especially when it concerns data privacy that you might end up with quite a divided service.

00:40:14:09 - 00:40:42:07
Unknown
And you mentioned that this is a concern for this week is whether you can actually run the service when countries are demanding very different regulation on data, for example, I think data is much harder than content. The content we have built the systems to enable us to comply with different content laws in different countries are classic example is Holocaust denial, which is illegal in certain countries, particularly in Europe, but not illegal everywhere.

00:40:42:09 - 00:41:09:12
Unknown
And indeed it would be regarded as protected speech, for instance, in the US. And so we can build systems to enable us to what's called geo block, which means that pieces of content can't be seen in certain jurisdictions. So irrespective of who's there. And so if your in this case a Singaporean traveling into Germany, there are times that you can't see whether you're in Germany, you can see when you're in Singapore or the US, in Brazil or anywhere else.

00:41:09:17 - 00:41:33:22
Unknown
So we build the technology. Lots of other companies and governments not learn and we are we're grappling with a lot of different content finding mechanisms to be able to comply with that data is much, much harder because data is the core of parallel systems work and how these products work. And one of the biggest challenges of all and we have we fight hardest on this.

00:41:33:22 - 00:41:53:07
Unknown
It's a big it's a red lines is data localization. And when governments you can kind of understand it when they say, look, the best way of protecting our citizens data is to say you've got to keep the data in country, you've got to keep all Swedish people's data in the country. I'm not suggesting the Swedish government is doing this, and I can understand what that means.

00:41:53:07 - 00:42:14:18
Unknown
And so well, that's the best way to protect it. Be in data centers in our country, nobody else will have it. This will protecting our services don't work in a world of data localization and also we think that we massively undermines the huge benefits that come from the kind of data enabled services of which there are enormous proliferation.

00:42:14:18 - 00:42:31:22
Unknown
So that's one of our biggest areas that we really kind of campaign on. And we really have to find a better lesson. What is it? Why are you trying to do this? And sometimes it is a genuine kind of interest and we want to try and protect we want to we want to ensure that people know what's happened to their data.

00:42:32:00 - 00:42:51:14
Unknown
Fine, let's work on that. In some cases, it's actually because the governments want to be able to access the data. They want to be able to get at people's data whenever they want it at any time to know what people are up to. And of course, that's the most nefarious examples and that's being barred. China requires all data.

00:42:51:14 - 00:43:22:24
Unknown
The Chinese citizens could be held in China so they can access the data. So we fight very hard against that. And so far, thus far, I mean, I'm never going to win in China, but thus far we've managed to spread many governments and the Indians to the courts and the Bangladeshi governments, to Vietnamese government and others. But this is not the right way to build a healthy, integrated digital economy and to promote and to enable those citizens to access services which can bring value.

00:43:23:01 - 00:43:46:11
Unknown
Yeah. Do you think there is any kind of prospect for, you know, more cross-country regulation, you know, standardization across areas rather than segmentation in this way, too, Each country deciding what they require? Look, we've already got it right. And so the EU and say you guys are there, but you know anymore so the EU does that rules the 27 countries.

00:43:46:13 - 00:44:06:01
Unknown
It takes a while to get there but when it does, it's pretty thorough and we don't always agree with some of the laws. And I do feel that there's a bit of a tendency in the EU to reach for the rulebook because what else has the EU got than to write rules, whereas national governments can have a more and have a greater mix of levers they can pull.

00:44:06:03 - 00:44:39:24
Unknown
And we we do see some opportunity for this within the kind of G7, G20 provides some opportunity indeed are my bosses boss Nick Clegg has set out the case for that. We need a Bretton Woods moment for the Internet where that we write some kind of framework of rules, particularly to support free flow of data internationally. I just think in the moment, challenging to achieve international really big business.

00:44:40:01 - 00:45:04:17
Unknown
I mean, having said that, you know, the OECD is on a good job in coming up with a framework around trying to tech companies like ours, which we are very supportive of. There's not impossible, but it's hard. And so we think that probably more likely is a kind of mini lateral is what we might be describing, where smaller groups of countries come together, say, look, let's let's try and do something here.

00:45:04:19 - 00:45:30:08
Unknown
So the Asia is a page that Singapore is very pro those kind of things. The Japanese is certainly among the G7 countries is the most prominent on this front at the moment as a big they are trying to push a framework like this within the G7. So it's possible, but it's very hard and therefore we we're not waiting for that.

00:45:30:10 - 00:46:04:16
Unknown
We are going to mainly working with national governments as they figure out what's the right framework for them. I'm just hoping they can come up with a reasonably consistent that makes sense and it's encouraging that there is kind of development towards that direction as well. One of the other kind of common concerns that comes up quite regularly and I know we discussed this briefly yesterday, is obviously the idea of echo chambers and how easily those can develop in digital environments when each user has been able to feel to their own content and kind of decide what they see.

00:46:04:18 - 00:46:37:00
Unknown
So, you know, how important is that worry to matter? What's your perspective on this? I'm going to throw this back in your email, though, because as you and I talked about yesterday when I was a board and undergrad, 85 to 88, we all read The Guardian and that was about it. I really want many other news items that would appear in the and I wanted was an echo chamber.

00:46:37:02 - 00:47:06:15
Unknown
Absolutely was an echo chamber. And then I'm curious now when we think about your time in all this demand coming to the end of three years, what was the when you think about the media consumption to you and your colleagues, is it like that? Or do you draw on a wider range of media sources? And to what extent is social media, including Twitter, play a role in it?

00:47:06:17 - 00:47:30:01
Unknown
Yeah, that's a good question. And I can say definitely the newspaper from The Guardian is still the go to every way. It's Yeah, no, it's a good point in the sense that there is much more range in kind of different sources of information. But also there is the interesting dimension where a lot of the information people get doesn't have a defined source.

00:47:30:03 - 00:48:08:10
Unknown
A lot of, you know, it emerges on your doorstep quite anonymously. It's very difficult to pin to where you hear about different things from, which is obviously, you know, quite a different kind of concern from democracy. And, you know, how people come to hold the information that they do in the digital media. But definitely, I think on the front of them, a wider range of different kind of social questions have been raised recently, at least during my term as a Cyprus, there was a huge amount of different topics that came across and we took college and university policy to entirely fresh dimensions.

00:48:08:12 - 00:48:30:05
Unknown
And I think at least partly, you know, the exposure to what other countries or other universities, etc. are doing with their policy has been driving that. So that's entirely, you know, to answer your kind of indirect question here, social media is on that front through access, helping, you know, undermine that kind of community isolation based on new sources.

00:48:30:07 - 00:48:59:19
Unknown
But I think it still leaves open the possibility that, you know, just as much as some people might use the opportunity to broaden their views, a lot of other people use it just to, you know, filter it to basically what they want. There is always the cognitive bias to want to see exactly what you believe in. And I'm just, you know, I guess the worry is justified on the grounds that if there is something not ideal, but people tend to do, should the platform somewhat combat the ability to do so, to isolate yourself?

00:48:59:21 - 00:49:21:16
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. Now I'll answer the question. Thanks for that. I wanted to write back to you. So, look, there are a number of things that one certainly just to answer your question. Yes, it's an area it's an area of concern and it's an area that people in our company work on. And the number of different things that we do, one needs to understand it and actually bring evidence to bear.

00:49:21:18 - 00:49:47:14
Unknown
I get very frustrated when I see people say, well, of course all social media is echo chambers, unless we might look at the evidence we have, it doesn't bear that out entirely. And one of the things that's quite striking, of course, is that Facebook is used all over the world, as is Instagram, as Twitter. There are massively different degrees of polarization across the world and with countries that have exactly the same amount of usage, our products.

00:49:47:16 - 00:50:07:07
Unknown
And yes, therefore, the polarization that you particularly see in America plays out on other platforms. But it's not because of our platforms or because I would argue a lot of it has to do with the two party system that they have in the U.S. and all kinds of other other things in the mainstream media there as well. All kinds of reasons why such a polarized country.

00:50:07:09 - 00:50:37:17
Unknown
But there are many countries which are not polarized. And indeed our services are associated with a diversity of people. And when I met with Imran Khan in an Islamabad couple in India for the pandemic 2019, he said to me, I would never have got to part with that role, but it enabled me to build a grassroots organization that would simply not have been possible in a world where the previously established elites and the army controlled the media was no other way of reaching people.

00:50:37:19 - 00:51:07:21
Unknown
So that that's been transformative in terms of breaking polarization and changing societies. And then the other thing we do is we sometimes try stuff. We try in our product to address this not just example of the kind of things we might try. And it's a few years ago now, but was a page when what we would do is when people were coming, would particularly when that people's friends would share with them a particularly polemical piece of news.

00:51:07:22 - 00:51:43:13
Unknown
So very, very slanted perspective on a news story. We then tried surfacing a couple of other stories which are very different just to try and give people a genuinely a diversity of news sources. But what we found is that people hated it and actually solidified their initial views. So it didn't help. It didn't help. So if you try and give people a kind of a more balanced news feed, they spot it immediately and they say, What are you doing?

00:51:43:13 - 00:52:10:12
Unknown
I do not want and it does not change their views, that it reinforces their original view so they do not like us interfering. And I can understand. Imagine my own news feed of some subject, seeing a lot of stuff that just didn't get my world view adequately in doing what you said so that you can understand. It also demonstrates how hard it is to try and address the problem.

00:52:10:18 - 00:52:38:15
Unknown
And so, so other questions, but the one thing that I try to do is bring transparency. So I do think one of the really important areas here is paid advertising. And it's certainly the case that there is understandable concern around so-called dark advertising where political parties can't see or their opponents are saying because their advertising is so narrowly targeted and there are just so many varieties of every single ad, you can't respond to it.

00:52:38:21 - 00:53:14:12
Unknown
And so it's one of the reasons why we kind of like the way we see things. But that's likely where every single ad not just political, but every single ad placed on there, anybody can see where it is, particularly in our politics and how much was spent. It was being targeted on and in front of it. And so that just bringing some transparent into it and in the US is also a process whereby in the run up to the election we stopped all new ads as well as a way of just ensuring there wasn't a flood of dark advertising on the site to respond to.

00:53:14:17 - 00:53:36:24
Unknown
So a few days before election year ends, there's a really interesting insights, especially because as far as I've seen the idea of kind of they call them random dynamic nudges, which is basically what you're mentioning, you know, randomly feeding content into people's feeds that is not based on their particular preferences to, you know, get people involved with a range of views.

00:53:37:01 - 00:53:58:08
Unknown
It's interesting that your experience of that has shown quite different results to what have a lot of the academic consensus on that seems to be, which is they think it's quite promising in diffusing echo chambers where they do exist. Yeah. And it could be that my I'm quoting from some old research and lots of other stuff that we published.

00:53:58:10 - 00:54:35:19
Unknown
I know that especially as the academic community here, one of the challenges is people would love us to just have what looked at complete access to your data so you could run or do all the research we think is incredibly badly burnt around this with the Cambridge Analytica scandal whereby a researcher ran or was given access to, a platform and ran research which ultimately we embroiled in a big scandal in which we have had to pay a lot of fines for, even though really there's not a lot of evidence not having really happened.

00:54:35:21 - 00:54:57:23
Unknown
But nonetheless, it's it's among the reasons why we have not seen much more kind of bolted down in terms of our approach to the development of data for research. But that's entirely understandable. And also with us closing in on the now or I'll ask one more question, but then it's entirely open for questions from anyone else on the call as well.

00:54:58:00 - 00:55:26:14
Unknown
And I got 15 minutes after that. I guess to conclude, I wanted to ask, especially relating to the Cambridge Analytica point, what how does Meta see its role, especially, you know, in democratic processes, and how has that changed in particular in response to kind of public events such this? First and foremost, we're here to try and support democracy to enable people to exercise their democratic rights.

00:55:26:16 - 00:55:56:13
Unknown
A lot of work around with electoral bodies and encouraging people to register to vote, to know how to vote and to to battle misinformation around voting. We want to enable all political parties to be able to use our products in the same way. So, for instance, the teams of people that work with political parties are not gold on revenue, and they have to provide exactly the same service to every party, irrespective of how much they're spending in elections.

00:55:56:13 - 00:56:17:10
Unknown
It's one of the changes we made recent years, and we want to ensure that we do not put our finger on the scales, that even if we might have a view about whether a particular electoral outcome might be more beneficial for the company, we cannot interfere. It's not not our role. We think we should not be involved in that and.

00:56:17:12 - 00:56:49:05
Unknown
But also, frankly, we we we also want to recognize that a lot of people don't really want to talk about politics on our products and they don't want to get politics on Facebook or Instagram. It's not something that most people are not that and don't see affects the right balance. Less than 3% of people's newsfeed on Facebook involves news of any description, and so they are you know, it's just not it's it's not big.

00:56:49:06 - 00:57:01:16
Unknown
And it used to be it was very different and we were we really did see a much more political change. But it's massive dropped off now. It's moved to Twitter and other places

00:57:03:23 - 00:57:19:17
Unknown
Thank you for listening. If you have any comments or feedback about what cast, we'd love to hear from you and continue improving the show. You can leave your feedback by heading to Twitter. BW Dot Wharton Talks to AC UK slash Vodcast. Bye for now.