President Muhammad Bari has inaugurated the Kashinbilla Multi-Purpose Dam 40 MW Hydro Power Station and associated 132KV switch yard transmission line and distribution substation phase 1 project located at the Kashinbilla in Takum Luka government area of Tarabah State. The president who spoke at a virtual ceremony held at the Council Chamber State House Abuja during the commissioning underscored theme potence of the project highlighting each role in his administration's commitment to achieving the target of 30 GW of electricity in the country by 2030 under the electricity vision 303030. The Kashinbilla Multi-Purpose Dam in Tarabah State with storage capacity of 500 million cubic meters was conceived principally to checkmate the threat of the imminent collapse of the structurally weak and poisonous lake Nios located at the line of volcanic activities in Cameroon Republic which could result in flooding and affecting millions of lives and properties. Even though the dam was meant to serve as a buffer to contain possible discharge of water of lake Nios, the engineering design maximized the benefits of the Kashinbilla ecosystem by incorporating a 40 MW Hydro Power Station 60,000 cubic meter per day water supply scheme 2,000 hectares of irrigation system and airstrip fishing activities and 2,000 potentiaries. Minister of Water Resource Suleiman Ademuz and his counterpart and Minister of Power Gaudi Jeddi Agba shed more light on the project. Fusion of Kashinbilla Ramowo Multi-Purpose Dam project suffered serious setback for over 50 years. The contract was awarded in 2007 to 30C Limited with a completion period of 36 months but was not realized due to inadequate funding and increases in scope until advent of the Bahari administration. I am happy to inform this robust gathering that the contractor has satisfactorily completed the dam and hydro power components of the project. Presently, power generated by the Kashinbilla Ramowo Multi-Purpose Dam is being transmitted into the national grid. In addition, work is progressing well on the water supply component at about 65% completion and the irrigation company will commence in due course. The airstrip, which is another important component of the project, is currently receiving an upgrade courtesy of General T.Y. and Juba. This means the minister of power funded and led implementation of the electromechanical component of the 14 megawatt hydro power plant and power evacuation component. This effort amplifies our commitment to meeting the target of the faculty electricity efficient 30-30-30 which aims to provide 30 megawatt of electricity by the year 2030, which renewable energy contributing about 30% to the energy mix that articulate the increase in access electricity specifically for renewable energy sources. Click the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Aloha and welcome. I'm Peter Rossick. I'm your host for the Hawaii's Volunteer Champions, a program here on thinktecawaii.com where we talk to volunteers and find out why in the world they give up their two most valuable resources, their time and their effort to help some cause or other. And we find out a little bit about some of the causes that they're willing to work for. So today we're going to be talking about a government agency actually, but one that depends on volunteers to do its job. That's the Diamondhead Interpretive Program. And with us are Cassandra Springer, who is the program manager, and a volunteer, Abigail Burke. And let me go right to you, Abigail, and ask you why in the world do you give up your time and your, your, which is valuable and your effort to do this kind of work. I just think it's very rewarding. I get to go to Diamondhead. And first of all, the view's beautiful. I love being able to hike up there. It's a gorgeous view and talking and engaging with the public and being able to give them that little like aha moment and teaching them something about a place that they're just visiting for the first time and they don't know that much about. It's, I think it's very rewarding. And what is it to tell us a little bit more about what you do for the Diamondhead Interpretive Program? So I will hike along the trail and basically just be a resource for any visitors and hikers. And they can ask me questions, ask me for help or guidance for the trail. And yeah, pretty much. You speak Japanese? I do not. I bet you get a lot of Japanese visitors though, right? Yes. What happens if you get a Japanese visitor and they're, they need something? What do you, what do you do? I have used like Google Translate before to try and help as much as I can, or they usually have like the physical map with them. And I can kind of point to where they are on the trail or where they're headed or which direction to point them in. All right, that's terrific. So how often do you do this? How many, how many hours a week or a month do you devote to this? I'm there about one day a week and it's three hours that I'm there. So that's pretty, that's kind of manageable, I guess. But I, you know, I, you're out in the sun.  You're still up for it though. Oh yeah, I love it. Okay. I assume you've got a cool t-shirt or something that you get to wear while you're out there or a sign or something that lets people know you're the, you're the one. I do. I actually have it right here. I can show you. So I guess they'll find you. All right, that's terrific. All right. And that's, and how did you happen to define this? How did you how did you decide to do this kind of stuff? Well, I'm a student at the University of Huy at Manoa and one day I got an email from our college forwarding an email from Cassandra that said that this program was a great opportunity to learn a little bit more about one of Huy's great natural resources and just something for me to do to kind of get out there, get a little bit more experience in the work field that I'm kind of looking towards and I emailed Cassandra and here I am basically. You are terrific. What are you studying at UH? I'm studying natural resources and environmental management. So you are in the right place then, aren't you? Because you're getting some experience in DLNR. Cassandra, I had frankly not heard about this program. I guess I haven't been in Diamond Head Crater. I drive by all the time. I haven't been inside since, can I say, since the Diamond Head Crater Festival. No, I think I've been there since then, but tell us about this program and tell us what's going on with it. So this is my docent program. I created it about two years ago and it was, I did it because there's a definite need for more people on the trail that can interpret the resources, both historical, cultural, natural resources on the trail and in general just give a also be like a cheerleader and advocate for people to hike up the trail because sometimes it can be really hard. And I realized I can't be the only one that does this trail. I need more support. So I created this volunteer program or my docent program to help me get a bigger footprint on the trail physically and you know, everything. And it just, I ended up tapping into the student resources at UH Manoa. And right now I have about maybe a dozen volunteers. My oldest one is 76. My youngest one is probably a sophomore in college. So it's been a real help. And I think the volunteers really enjoy it. And the visitors definitely enjoy it. They can definitely, you know, they have their name tags, they have Hawaii State Parks on their shirt. And I think it's a really good resource for even the students to get that hands-on experience and engaging with people and interpreting the resources to the visitors because we get people from all over the world to come visit Diamondhead as an iconic monument. Do you have a number of how many people visit Diamondhead in a year or roughly speaking? About a million. We get to 3,000 people a day and that roughly translates to about a million a year. Amazing. And you created this program on your own out of the out of nothing. Is that, what did you tell me? A little bit. I used to volunteer at the Waikiki Aquarium as a, what do they call it? I used to be at the touch tank where you- The edge of the reef. The edge of the reef. Yeah, the edge of the reef. So I, you know, I have the collector urchins and the hermit crabs and try to engage with people about the little critters and teach them a little bit more about that. So kind of that was my spark or aha moment of like, oh, this is really cool. People are actually learning this. And then I went into live feeds and cleaning the tanks and it went a little bit deeper, but their volunteer program was, I think really successful and I married their program to my program, but they were, I think, a little bit more successful because they have over 100 volunteers. Well, they've been at it for a little bit longer than you have to. I have been a volunteer at the Waikiki Aquarium. As a matter of fact, Chester Campos who's been on this program earlier was the one who recommended that I talked to you because as I said, I really, really hadn't heard of it. And I will tell you a quick story. Back many years ago, I was very interested in fish and in Hanama Bay. So I talked to some people and I said, we really need a friends of Hanama Bay group, you know, for very much the same reason as you. I thought the museums have docents and, you know, all these other organizations have volunteers, but nobody was doing that for Hanama Bay at that time. And this was long before the present structures were built. And so with some other people who were interested and who'd seen that need, we organized the friends of Hanama Bay, which is still a going concern and I think still giving tours and helping people around Hanama Bay. So clearly these kinds of places where hundreds of thousands or a million visitors a year come need a little more than, you know, just what the government agencies that are responsible for them can do for them, right? Right. So that's terrific. And were you doing all this stuff at the aquarium while you were working for DLNR or before? Where did that fit into things? So I have about 400 hours of volunteer work under my belt at the aquarium that I did for a few years because I was very avid volunteer there. And I think I had a really great experience, but I also ended up working for them about for about six months in the live feeds department. And then I was also working for DLNR at the same time, but I had to choose one. So I chose DLNR because the benefits are really good. And I couldn't, you know, I kind of do two jobs at once. They kind of wouldn't let me. So after COVID and everything, I was like, I really need help. So I created this program mirrored from the Waikiki Aquarium. But I have another program that helps remove invasive species and try to restore the native ecosystem here at Diamond Head. And we have that every first Saturday of the month. Okay. So we'll come back to that in a minute. I just wanted to ask Abigail a little bit more about, so do you, when you tell your friends about what you're doing, do they say, are you crazy or do they say, how do I sign up? I've actually gotten a mix of both. I've had some people, some of my friends interested in doing this because they didn't even know it existed as well. But I've had some friends and especially people on the trail when they asked like, oh, you work here. I'm like, yeah, I'm a volunteer here.  It's so hot and you're not getting paid. It's like, it's crazy. But yeah. Okay. So you get a little bit of each kind there. That's interesting. And do you have any really memorable moments that you think back on when you felt you really helped somebody or somebody was, I imagine some people get into trouble occasionally on that trail. So do you have any stories that you can tell us about when you had a really memorable moment as a volunteer? I don't know about just like one particular story, but there's just so many instances of people just not knowing anything about like just coming to Diamond Head and not knowing anything about it. And just asking like, hi, what am I looking at? And being able to build like their knowledge of Diamond Head from the ground up basically. And then I can just see like a look on their face that they're leaving and they're like, wow, I actually learned something today. And I kind of just feel good about them walking away from the park then learning something. That's terrific. And how did you learn all about the things that you're telling them? Was there a course or did Cassandra hand you a book and say here, memorize this or how did that work out? Mostly Cassandra gave us like a document to kind of study. And then also just talking with her the first few times I was there. And also, as I keep going on, I even learn new things all the time. And I just can ask her whenever I have a question. All right. So Cassandra, you're out at the Diamond Head most of the time or all the time? Five days a week, unless I'm requested to help out somewhere else. Okay. And you put this training together. You created the program. So I'm guessing you put this training together. Again, you had a good model in the Waikiki Aquarium, which has got a lot of stuff and they've been doing volunteers for forever and have a very strong program. But you put together the training for your volunteers. Is that right? Yes. I have a comprehensive guide that has links and bird sounds and different plants to learn as well as ways to interpret the resources because it's not just outdoor education. You're trying to, like Abigail said, build on a foundation and try to get people to an aha moment of a better understanding than when they arrived. And with 3,000 people a day, that's a lot of people. But I think we reach a small portion, but even the small portion can spread the word of, you know, Diamond Head's not a volcano. It's events and these are the reasons. But it's, I built it from the ground up because there was definitely a need and people similar to Abigail kind of want to be park rangers or something in that field. And this is a kind of a way to get that foot in the door or at least the experience to get that foot in the door. All right. So I just think I learned something. Diamond Head Crater, I thought it was a volcano. No, it's events. So we have a two volcano theory and a three volcano theory. If you want me to go on about this, I will. The first volcano... I can do this in two minutes. I got this. So the three volcano theory is, and a point is actually the first one, which is now underwater. The second volcano is the Waianais, which are about 3.7 million years old. And all of these are shield volcanoes. The third volcano is the Ko'olaos. But as you see from Nu'uono Pali Lookout, that you can see the center of the caldera and the one side of that volcano fell into the ocean. And so the Ko'olaos are about 2.4 million years old. It went dormant after a minute or after a while, about a million years. And then I had a rejuvenation period, which caused all these vents to pop up, basically like pressure valves. And there was about 30 or 40 of them, including Punchbowl, Salt Lake, Red Hill, Diamond Head, Hanama Bay, and Cocoa Head. Okay. So I always thought it was the crust moving over the hot spot. So that's how the Ko'olaos and the Waianais were made. But not how Diamond Head was made. No. So during the rejuvenation period of the Ko'olaos, it caused all these vents to pop up. Diamond Head only formed within a few days to a week. There was no lava. It was just like a cough. Interesting. And Hanama Bay, my favorite, is that another cough? Yep. Just another vent, but one side of it fell into the ocean. Yeah, which is the only reason we have a bay after all. Wow. Okay. So I'm learning stuff all this time here. That's great. So let's talk about, well, first of all, you say you've got about a dozen people who are doing this sort of thing. If you could just hire or conjure up a bunch more, how many volunteers would be the right number of volunteers to do this program for you? So I have four shifts throughout the day. I have the six to nine, nine to 12, 12 to three, and three to six. So if I can have at least two to three per shift, I'd say like 12 to 15 people per day. Just so we can have coverage on the trail and engage with people. Because being up on the trail for three hours is kind of a lot. And is there any kind of like, is there like a formalized tour a day or is there anything that, you know, is there a sign there that says be here at two o'clock for your docent tour or anything like that? No, because we don't have enough people to do that. Right now I'm just working specifically with school groups on that kind of stuff. So it's, it's scheduled per quarter. But for docent tour groups, I would definitely have to both through my numbers a lot more. You'd probably have to do some more research or prepare some more materials. So that's, is that a goal you have in mind or is that too far off in the future? I would love that. If people want to volunteer or get involved, how do they do that? They can visit our Diamondhead, or sorry, not Diamondhead, our volunteer website on the deal in our hawaii.gov website.  And then he will forward the information to me. Because we have a variety of programs throughout the island, but just going through our volunteer website will get you in touch with me. Okay, just very quickly. What are some of the other volunteer opportunities? Because I'm learning everything for the first time here. What other deal in our, what other things do you have going on that I might get involved in if I don't want to spend three hours in the hot sun? Well, for Diamondhead specifically, we have one every first Saturday of the month. So we do have one coming up on September 2nd. It's from 9am to 12pm, where we remove invasive bellyache, which is from, I believe, South America. And it's a bush that we remove. It's really fun to remove. And then we sprinkle native seeds throughout the soil that we've just disturbed in order to help restore the native seed bank. And then for throughout the island of Wahoo, I recommend contacting my colleague, K. Kai Mar, where he has events at Sand Island, Ka'ivi Coast, Ka'ena Point. And I think those are the main ones he works on. Okay, this gives us at least a sample of the people who might be interested in other places or might want to do more, have a place to go. We'll come back. I want to ask you more about the invasive species in a minute. But I want to ask Abigail a question. And that is, if you could change anything about the program, if you could, you know, make a, maybe you've made a suggestion. And we'll pretend Cassandra won't listen for a minute here if you want to complain about something, but not too bad. But is there anything you would change? Is there anything you would do differently? Are you perfectly happy with the way things are going? I don't know. I think right now I'm perfectly happy with it. Okay. Nothing you would suggest. No improvements. Come on.  You've got to have a plan for something to do better. Oh, I don't know. My mind's blank. All right. I'm sorry to put you on the spot that way. But the enthusiasm you're bringing to this is really, you're pretty remarkable.    All right. I'm kidding. That's not fair. All right. Cassandra, tell me a little bit more about this invasive species program. So I started it when I began back in 2009, 2019. I realized there was this, this is from a previous program from the previous Park Tech, where she started this program of removing invasive bellyache. And like I said, it's from South America. I'm not entirely sure how, why it was brought here. And it's not really known to be anywhere else but diamondhead. But so far, in the last four years, five years, we've removed about five acres. And I have a lot more volunteers for that program. I get upwards to 60 people per month for that one event. Just to make sure that I heard you right. It's called bellyache. Jitropha gossiphoria. Well, I'll call it Jitropha.  It's either that, but there's also antidotes that I've read where if you treat it correctly, it's medicinal. Okay. Well, that's interesting. Medicine, any medicine, if you take it in the right doses are good. And if you take too much of it, it's bad. My high school biology teacher always said anything you put in your body is bad for you. Even food, if you take too much of it. So that's very interesting. And you've cleared how many acres now? About four or five acres. Okay. And that is what part of the total estimated acreage would you guess? Well, we have about 475 acres of the whole park. So. And it's all over everywhere? 0.005.  It makes me nervous. But you're saying it's all over everywhere? This 475 acres of is got bellyache all over it? I've put a significant dent in the massive groves that I saw when I first started because I get up to 60 people per month for this one event and they decimate acres. And every year I end up removing about either an acre or a little bit more each year. So I think it's been very successful. And sometimes when I go out and look for bellyache, I'm like, oh man, I don't think I'm going to have enough bellyache for this coming up volunteer workday. And then, lo and behold, they clear more bellyache. I find more bellyache. Right. Abigail, you don't want to go out and clear bellyache? You'd rather hear the bellyaching of the people walking on the trail? I did do it once. And it was very fun to pull out. It was. Is this like bend over labor? Is this like pick and cotton or I've never, I don't know what a bellyache even looks like. Correct me if I'm wrong, Cassandra, but it's like a little shrub basically. And it comes out really smoothly. It's pretty fun. Okay. Wow. Abigail, your idea of fun and my idea of fun, they're not quite the same, but I really admire what you're doing here. So, Cassandra, this means this will probably show after, this program will probably be available after the September 2nd date. But just to be clear, every first Saturday of the month, nine o'clock, the people need to register or do they need to, do they just show up and where do they show up? Or how does, if I'm overcome somehow and feel lightheaded and want to go out and pick bellyache for a few hours, how do I do that? You can either visit 808 Cleanups on the app or you can visit Kanu, Hawaii. Those are my two volunteer platforms. You can email me directly. And then I provide gloves and ice water for volunteers.  Head covering, I would think. A strong sense of wanting to get some work done. Right. I just think it'd be great to be able to come back home and say, I've just cleared an acre of bellyache. But then who knows? So Abigail, you know, a lot of organizations take a really good care of their volunteers. They give them a lot of stuff, you know, they'll give them a lot of logo wear and they put on events and everything like that for them. Is Cassandra doing anything like that for you? Well, I got the cool t-shirt like I showed you earlier and the same tag, but it's really just so much fun to hang out with her and everyone else at the park and no cool logo wear, but an awesome time. Oh, that's great to hear. I have nothing wrong with people who volunteer to, you know, go to the parties and everything like that. But people who volunteer just for the pure joy of it, that's got to be a little bit unusual. So how did you get interested in this subject that you're now pursuing in school? What brought you to this point? Well, just growing up, I always had like an appreciation for the outdoors and nature in general. And when I was starting to look at colleges, I found UH Manoa and I really fell in love with the program, the NREM program here. And I applied, I came here and it's just my appreciation for nature is just like skyrocketed since I've come here and studied. Terrific. And where are you in school? Junior, sophomore, what's your prognosis for graduation? I actually just started my senior year, so I'm looking to graduate this spring. Okay. And then what would you graduate school or are you going to try to get Cassandra's job away from her? What's the plan for after that? Well, if Cassandra's job opens up, maybe, but I'm looking at graduate school right now. Okay. That's good. Get that over with. That's my advice. Okay. Cassandra, kind of the same question to you. A lot of volunteer organizations will really pour on the goodies and the events and all kinds of stuff for their volunteers. But you seem to be able to get people to do this just for the pure love of doing it. Now, how does that happen? I'm lucky. No, no.  Now I have stickers. Sometimes I'll have water bottles. I would like to treat my volunteers to like meals, but I'm on a very strict budget. So that's kind of out there. But working with the state, there's a lot of red tape, and I would like to shower my volunteers with stuff like the Waikiki Aquarium does with their spring events and everything, but it's just not quite in the budget right now. Well, it's something to look forward to. I mean, the Aquarium does an excellent job of bringing in a lot of people and, you know, giving them some, they're not, most people, I don't do it for the rewards, but the rewards are sort of icing on the cake. And I'm sure, you know, I hope that someday you get to the point where you can give Abigail a little icing on that cake. Well, you know, this has been totally interesting to me. I didn't know about the program to begin with. So I've learned a lot, and I now know that Diamond Head is not a volcanic crater. It's a vent. So this has been great. Let me give you each a minute or two to say something, you know, to encourage people to join up or whatever you like. And we'll thank you for your time and for all the work you do out at Diamond Head. Cassandra, let's start with you. Volunteering gives you a great sense of self and place. And that in itself is a really good reward. And I mean, that's how I honestly got started. So volunteering, it just makes you feel better. It gives you the good, happy hormones. So go out and find your place. I hear you there. Thank you. And Abigail, what would you say to people who might kind of be thinking about doing this kind of thing? I would say that it really does give you those happy hormones. It makes me feel so much better. And especially for students like me, spending a day in class, you know, staring at a screen, and then being able to go to Diamond Head and go look at the beautiful ocean and the beautiful views and talk to people, get those happy hormones. It's very refreshing, very rewarding. Right. That is terrific. Thank you both. I really, I enjoy this tremendously.  And that's great. I'm going to end up here, as we often do, with a little inspirational quote about volunteering. Get Michael to put it up on the screen.  So with that, I want to thank you both. You've been great.   That's what I'm trying to tell you, but I'm very, very impressed with you and Sandra, with you putting this whole program together. It's really terrific. And you deserve all of our thanks and, and congratulations. And so I will say to all our, my, my two regular viewers, we'll be back in a couple of weeks with some more volunteers. And if you have the slightest inspiration to find out what a bellyache looks like, I suggest for Saturday morning of the month you show up at Diamond Head and you pick some bellyache or contact Cassandra about being a volunteer. It is so rewarding and so important to do. Thank you again. And thank you to everyone who's paying attention. Aloha.


Hello, I'm here to talk to you about a feature that I've wanted on the web for years now, something that has been tried many times before. But this time, this time it feels like we're really close. I am, of course, talking about page transitions. You know what I mean, right? This kind of thing. I look at this in the Material Design Guides, and it just looks really good. Not only that, it gives the user context to the navigation. It's clear which information is coming from where and the direction of travel. Whereas on the web, click pop, that's your lot. Why can't we have nice things? Well, one reason is that page transitions involve parts of the old thing and new thing animating together in perfect harmony. But on the web when you navigate, the old document goes away, and the new one arrives, and there's no opportunity for the two to work together. But that's only true with traditional web navigations. With single page apps, you're driving the state change yourself, so you can do what you want. So why don't we see lots of sites doing cool transitions between pages? There isn't exactly a shortage of single page apps out there. Well, the truth is it's really hard with the APIs we have today. Even something like a simple fade is hard. How would you keep both states alive for the duration of the transition? It's not particularly easy in modern frameworks. There's also lots of subtle accessibility and usability pitfalls. If you're going from a scroll page to a page back up at the top, how do you handle that? If either of the states contain a video or an iframe, how do you avoid their states resetting as you juggle the DOM around? What if you wanted to create a transition where this element in a scrollable container moves over to the other container? Well, that didn't work thanks to overflow hidden. To fix this, you'll need to temporarily pop the item out to the root of the page, which often means changing how you've structured your CSS. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's not easy. Meanwhile, folks over on Android and iOS have dedicated APIs to make this kind of thing a breeze. And that's just not fair. I want some of that. So we've been experimenting with an API to level the playing field. And parts of it are behind a flag in Canary already. In fact, all the demos I'm going to show you are running in the browser. So I hope by the end of this video you'll be as excited about this feature as I am. We're going to take this basic site and use the new API to transition between states. It's a single page app because that's what the experimental stuff in Canary supports right now. But don't worry, this whole system is designed to work in a very similar way for multi-page apps. We just haven't implemented it yet. Here's a rough example of how navigations are currently handled. Let's add some transitions. First up, we're going to add a fallback for browsers that don't support this new API so things continue to work as normal. Otherwise, we're going to create a transition and start it, letting the API know when the DOM change is complete. Some of the API names here may change, but we might rename some stuff, but the pattern should remain the same. The important part is the API gets to see the state of things before and after the DOM change. And just like that, we've got this nice subtle fade between states. OK, fading isn't really interesting, so let's do something better. But to do that, we need to understand how this fading thing actually worked. First up, the browser took, essentially, a screenshot of the page, and it held it in place while we changed the DOM underneath. Then it created a DOM structure like this out of pseudo elements containing both the screenshot of the previous state and a live representation of the current state also as a flattened image. This element structure sits over the top of everything, hiding the real DOM underneath. The outgoing image fades from 1 to 0, and the incoming image fades from 0 to 1, and that's your crossfade. Once it's done, it goes away, seamlessly revealing the real page underneath. But like all my favorite APIs, this is mostly built of existing platform features, and you can mess around with them. For instance, each of these elements can be targeted using CSS pseudo element selectors, and all of the animations are driven by CSS, so we can change what they do with CSS. Like I said, the outgoing and incoming image is crossfade, so let's just set a longer animation duration. And the result of that is a super slow crossfade. All right, fair enough. But let's do more. Let's change that animation completely. First, let's define some keyframes. This slides the element out to the left, and this slides the element in from the right. Now let's use those keyframes. We'll slide the outgoing image to the left and the incoming image in from the right, just using normal CSS animations. And the result of that, not bad. There are a couple of things it could do better, of course. Firstly, it's always sliding in the same direction, even when going back to the thumbnail's view. We'll fix that later. The other thing is, well, the header, it slides out only to slide back in again. You can see that along the top. Ideally, it wouldn't move at all, since it's pretty consistent between the two states. Well, the page transition API lets us do that. We assign a page transition tag to the header using CSS. Site header here, that's just an identifier. You can pick whatever name you want. We also give it paint containment, which is just a requirement for this API. This changes how the page is captured. Previously, the page was being captured as a single screenshot. But when you give an element a page transition tag, it's captured separately, but still just as a screenshot. So now we have incoming and outgoing images for the root and separate incoming and outgoing images for the header. In the same way we've got one of these structures for the root of the page, we get another of these structures representing the header. It's now something we can target with CSS, using the page transition tag we assigned it, which is site header in this case. That means we can animate it independently of the rest of the page. Here's how it looks now. We haven't told the header how to animate, so it's just doing the default thing, which is to crossfade. And that looks pretty good. But we can do even better with one small change. See where it says HTTP, 203 in the header there? Well, let's capture that separately, too. So now we have three parts transitioning independently, the root, the header, and the text in the header. I already mentioned that the default transition is a crossfade, but I sneakily left one detail out. It also transitions the size and position of the element from its before state to its after state. And that didn't matter for the root or the header, because those are in the same place and size before and after the DOM change. But for our heading text, it does this really satisfying shift across to make space for the back button. I really like how we're making small additions and adjustments to create a transition that's super tailored to this site. Also, those three parts that form our transition, the title, the header, and the root, they have a flat structure, even though in our real DOM, the site title is in the site header and the header is somewhere within the root. They're treated as siblings during the transition. And that's a good thing. Remember this example from earlier? Doing simple DOM transitions is hard because of the nesting, but with the flat structure of page transitions, it's not a problem. OK, so things are looking pretty good here. But what about on desktop? It feels, I don't know, a bit much, like the whole page sliding across seems a bit over the top, makes you feel a bit nauseous, a bit dizzy. But we can solve this the usual way we solve things when it comes to responsive design. Here's the transition styles for the root. And here are the overrides for desktop, just using regular media queries. The main difference is they use a different set of keyframes. That means we can keep our previous transitions on mobile where the whole thing slides from the side. But over on desktop, we can have something a bit more soul, like this fade and slide. I don't know, I just made this up. I'm not a designer. You could probably think of something better. But while we're being responsive, here's the code from earlier that triggers the transition. Currently, the transition is skipped if the browser doesn't support the API. But let's also add a check for prefers reduce motion. Alternatively, you could keep the transitions, but just make them really soul for users that prefer less motion. Remember, it prefers reduced motion, not prefers no motion. But I'm just going to avoid them completely, be a bit lazy whatever. All right, what else can we do? Well, watch this. I'm going to take that large video embed there, and I'm going to make it its own layer in the transition. But this video embed only exists on this page. It doesn't exist in this page, the thumbnails page. But that's fine. You can create transition layers that only have an outgoing or an incoming component. That's a pretty common thing to do, as things appear or as things disappear. But that's not what we're going to do here. Here's the rough code for when one of those thumbnails is clicked. Using inline styles, we can say, treat this as the video embed. It isn't actually the video embed, it's just the thumbnail. But for the sake of the transition, we're saying that the thumbnail is the before state of the real video embed. And the effect of that, you ready? Thumbnail now grows into the main embed. It doesn't matter that they were different elements in the DOM, we tooled the page transition API to treat them as the same thing. So that's exactly what it did. And what you saw there was just a default transition. It moves from the before position and size to the final position and size while crossfading the images. But we can go even further. Here's an even more developed example. I've made some tweaks to the easings. I've made the video description part of the transition. I've made the sidebar part of the transition as well. And that stays fixed in some navigation cases. Maybe this is too much. Like I said, I'm not a designer. I'm just playing around with new toys. Maybe you can do better. So give it a go. This is all running in Chrome Canary using the page transition API today. I'm really excited about this feature because it's got reasonable defaults. But with little bits of CSS and JavaScript, you can make the transition as custom as you want. And really, in many ways, that's thanks to you No, seriously. We released a different version of this API last year. It didn't use CSS animations. And transitions were restricted to like a few presets. Feedback from developers made it clear presets weren't enough. It needed to be customizable. Couldn't agree more. And that's what drove the second version of this API. That's what gave us the ability to do this. All right. One last thing before I totally outstay my welcome. In this final version, the transition when pressing the back button slides from the left, as you'd expect. You know, when going forward, slide from the right. When going back, slide from the left. So how do you make the transition different, depending on that? We're actually working on higher level ways to make this easier, but in the meantime, a useful way to influence the type of transition is to add a temporary class to the HTML element. Once you've done this, you can use the presence of that class to make adjustments to the transition. But how do you know when to add that class? It's something you can totally do with the history API that's been in browsers for ages, but it's not a good API. It's really messy. However, we're working on a new API that aims to make it easy. And that's the navigation API. It's a totally separate thing to the page transitions API, but they play well together. For instance, the navigation event here fires when a navigation or traversal happens. And you can hook into this to override the default navigation. It can act as a router for single page apps. And more, like, there's loads it can do that I just don't have time to go into today. But one thing it makes easy is detecting whether the navigation is forwards or back. And that's what this code example is doing. This makes it easy to add the right class name to control the transition. And it's also what I used in the final version of this demo. Links to the demo, but also explainers, docs, specs, they're all in the description, including a code lab where you can learn even more about the API. So I guess all there is left for me to say is, thanks for watching. Bye.


Here's the surprisingly black history of veganism.  In fact, you may be surprised to find out that this new veganism trend is actually not that new. And it's not all that white either. In fact, veganism can be traced back over 2,000 years to the ancient cultures in India, the Mediterranean basin and drum roll please, Africa. Now, when it comes to a lot of traditional black American cuisine, you wouldn't be wrong to say that it features, well, a lot of meat. But this hasn't always been the case. There's always been like this river of African Americans who've been pioneers in the vegan movement. Originally, there were plants and people were eating plants. I mean, that's the natural thing for us to eat. That's what we gravitated towards. That's what looked good to us. That's what our bodies were made to eat. So this is just nothing new. But this vegan tradition changed when European adventurers, aka colonizers, introduced more commercial farming methods, which produced a lot more animals, but also fewer indigenous crops. So the veganism of today is actually more of a nod to the traditions of Africa rather than a recent phenomenon. Now, while the vegans of yesteryear were largely driven out of necessity, these days folks from all backgrounds are going vegan for a whole host of practical, personal, and philosophical reasons. And thanks to Google, there's a whole smorgasbord of information to back these reasons up, like the study from the American Society of Animal Science that calls out how bad livestock production is for the planet. Turns out that 2.8 gigatons of toxic gas from cow boo boo isn't all that great for the environment or the recent study from the American Heart Association that details the benefits of a plant-based diet. But if you still think the veganism is more for Becky than for B, here's another study for you. It's been reported that black people are more than twice as likely to be vegan than the average US citizen. Guess the proverbial cookout is about to get a whole lot greener. I never, ever, ever thought that I would be a vegan. My sophomore year Dick Gregory came to campus and they talked about the plate of Black America and how unhelpfully most folks eat and why we should become vegetarians. That talk literally rocked my entire world. Within a year I was a vegetarian and within a year and a half I went vegan. I started out as an anti-racist activist and it wasn't until I started reading some more like animal rights scholarship that I thought like well how do actual animals factor into this racial conversation? And so a lot of black veganism is not just about black people eating like kale or whatever, it's talking about the world, talking about oppression in a totally different way and re-envisioning a more liberatory world, taking into account animal experiences as well. There are no shortage of prominent black vegans either. As the game changers like Colin Kaepernick, Taraji P. Henson, Erica Badu, Jay-Z and Asa Frocki. Dang that's a whole lot of rappers. Well that's no coincidence. Hip-hop and veganism lately are going together like Kanye and a muted color palette.  Okay that was bad and there you have it folks veganism is for everyone. Thank you so much for watching. If you like what you saw go ahead and give this video a thumbs up and for more from attention click that subscribe button.


Welcome traders to another tickmail weekly market outlook for week commencing Monday the 25th of July with me Patrick Munnally. Okay, let's jump into the data for the week starting in the US Monday we get June Chicago Fed activity index conditions of week and materially across the US as evidence by deteriorating regional surveys because we'll also get the July Dallas Fed index last time we've got a negative 17.7 Actually looking for a negative 22 print this time I think it's a Tuesday May FH a house prices 1.6% versus 1.6% last time our pricing mentioned is set to slow obviously as rate height starts to take effect We also get may S&PCS home price index looking for 1.6% print July consumer confidence index last time 98.7 looking for a 96.4 Inflation concerns are starting to weigh on consumer confidence. We also get the July Richmond Fed index looking for a negative 14 Manufacturing outlook clouded by labor and material shortages We ran out Tuesday with new home sales looking for a negative 3.4% versus the positive 10.7% last time the sales weakening on construction headwinds and affordability Heading into Wednesday key day really we get June wholesale inventories inventory levels very considerably across the economy at the moment We also get general goods orders looking for a negative 0.5% print there businesses are still battling supply issues And then we get June home Sales pending demand is cooling amid these higher rates and then talking about rates We also get the all-important FOMC policy decision Looking for a 75 basis point height which appears to be pretty well telegraph now that would take rates to 2.375% In the US the real focus is going to be on the the risks around the economic improvements in the coming quarters And heading into Thursday We get Q2 GDP Annualized in the US gross domestic product last time negative 1.6 percent looking for a Positive 0.5 percent print here second consecutive negative quarter Could be in the cards though as some market participants are pricing in a negative 0.5 percent print for Thursday We also get initial jobless games. They started to creep up a bit 251k last week So keeping a close eye on those as they are just drifting higher now from those historic lows We also get the July, Kansas City Fed Index manufacturing a game and looking increasingly for agile Then rounding out the week next week in the US we get the Employment cost index looking for a 1.1% print there tight labor market supporting Robust wage growth. We also get June personal income looking for a 0.5 percent there As purchasing power is an ongoing concern as households it households start to run down their savings June personal spending should come in around 0.8 percent And then we get the June PCE deflator last time 0.6 percent looking for a 0.9 percent print PCE inflation Consolidating at high levels, but as many are hoping it should Gradually fall as price pressures abate in the second half of 2022 we also get July Chicago PMI looking for 56.2 there supply issues again an ongoing concern We ran out a week with University of Michigan sentiment looking for a 51.1 Cent 51.1 print there. That's the final inflation concerns obviously weighing heavily on sentiment So from a technical perspective the dollar index Pull back continues to pull back from that 10870 resistance so that we highlighted A couple of weeks ago So we're now looking for three wave corrective move to ideally test into this 105 50 ascending trend line support From there we'll watch with bullish reversal patterns to engage on the long side Tulting move up for the next upside objective 110 from there once again be watching the bearish reversal patterns to be engaged on the short side looking for another leg More protracted pull back into that weekly 104 test Is what I am eyeing at this stage. It would take a closing breach of this trend line support at the 105 50 to suggest a potential for more meaningful high in place And then certainly be looking about 104 and potentially back into the base there at 101 20s moving to the eurozone In terms of data next week. It's uh, it's a sparse calendar Thursday we get july economic confidence looking for 101 versus a 104 last time out Inflation and energy security concerns are weighing heavily on european confidence consumer confidence is expected to come in week as well Then we ran out the week with july cpi Same year over year looking for 8.8 percent inflation pressures are broadening quite notably now We also get second quarter gdp prints Looking for a 0.2 percent growth is stalling and set to Continue to stall over the remainder of 2022 and that rounds out the data in terms of eurozone next week So the euro's likely to take its key from the dollar index and how the dollar responds to the fomc I would ideally like to see the euro make a new low next week trading into We want to sorry the 98 97 area that sets up I'm going to be watching for bullish reversal patterns to engage on the long side Looking for a move back into that 103 50 This stage would take a close through 104 50 to suggest that we do actually have a more meaningful low in place here And then we'd be looking for a move up to test the next resistance. So up to 107 75 In the uk obviously we have the ongoing political drama around who will be the next prime minister and leader of the conservative party And those debates will start to heat up in terms of data next week It's a light calendar. It's focused on the end of the week thursday july and nationwide house prices Demand is continuing to soften as rate heights take effect and net mortgage lending Also expecting to come in weak as rising rates and the slowing economy will begin to weigh on lending so from a technical perspective whilst we hold 121 30 120 150 resistance I'm looking for another leg to the downside and ideally a test into I must be projected great support of that 115 area from there I'll be watching for bullish reversal patterns to engage on the long side looking for a more meaningful corrective move to play out Moving to japan and the yen in focus in terms of data only one real Point of note next week and that comes on friday with june industrial production Last time negative seven point five percent looking for a positive four percent print As expected to bounce upon the reopening of the economy and supply but supply chain issues Obviously will remain a concern from a technical perspective and taking out that trend line support So i'm looking now for a three-way corrective move certainly 134 70 134 50 area and there watch for bullish reversal patterns And we've got an upside target into initially looking for a test of 140 on the outside before extending higher again And down under in australia In terms of data next week we get second-core cpi looking for a 1.9 percent print Some participants pointing towards a 1.7 print housing and food and auto fuel are driving the Second-quarter spike at widespread price pressures from both domestic and international sources continue to push on core inflation So looking for an annualized print there of 6.2 percent and trim mean of 1.5 percent And second-quarter cbi trimmed mean year over year at 4.7 percent Then heading into thursday we get june retail sales looking for 0.5 percent print there Potential for a touch higher at 0.6 percent. They look to have held up well despite falling consumer sentiment We also get export price index commodity prices moving higher Still on supply tops and that should support some robust growth there in terms of the import index Looking for a 2 percent there higher global prices mostly from energy tempered by that higher ozzie dollar Then we ran out the week with june private sector credit looking for 0.7 percent potential for 0.6 growth to ease back after oversized prints for business significant upward pressure and input prices As is also a concern so that runs out the data in australia from a technical perspective We're sitting right at that trend line resistance now Look for a pullback here and if that pullback can find support into the 68 20 68 30s We still see the potential for an extension up into high volume node 71 80s at this stage It will take a loss of that 68 level to suggest a more meaningful high in place and we still have that downside target at 66 40s. We'll just round out this session taking a quick look at bitcoin Still tracking this five wave sequence notable the similarities in terms of the price action here to this section here So whilst we hold that 25,000 level of resistance still we have a downside objective 12185 and again if we're thinking about these dollar seems some strength into the f omc And then putting in a potential tradeable local high And this this could be the move down in terms of bitcoin the final washouts coinciding with that fom c meeting and then we could see a more meaningful move to the outside As always traders plan the trade trade the plan the most importantly manage your risk until next week. Thanks very much


Hello and welcome to NewsClay. I'm Paranjwai Guha Thakurtha. In the first part of the interview I did with Sophie Zang, the whistleblower for my employee of Facebook, we discussed several issues about how Facebook places its profits before checking hate speech, checking falsehoods, how it has influenced politics across the globe. And in this, the second part of my interview with Sophie Zang, she's going to talk about what needs to be done, what's the way forward. She's going to talk about whether Facebook can reform itself, or is the only way forward, regulatory intervention. And she talks very candidly about her personal life as well. So here we go. What if I argue that here is a global, a multinational, an international conglomerate, privately owned, therefore is wanting to maximize its profits. But in the process of maximizing its profits, it realizes that what sells and what goes viral need not be true. It may be factually incorrect, it may be biased, it may be hateful, and therefore your profits are dependent or contingent on a business model which is predicated on going viral and everybody knows fake news travels faster than real news that all the falsehoods, all the material that you and I, with the advantage of hindsight, said this is not good, this is bad, should not have been done. So isn't that a very fundamental contradiction in the way this organization works? I mentioned previously the cases of union carbide and anti-total echo companies like Philip Morris, but in those cases the government did step in. In union carbide they will find, I believe, something close to 500 million US dollars for the role in the Bhopal chemical disaster and the Indian government taxes cigarettes and requires them to stay on the packaging that they will give you cancer. And so ideally it is my personal belief that we have reached the point in which social media should be regulated and that is what I have testified, for instance, to the European Parliament, to the British Parliament and the California State Senate. In countries like India, however, part of the damage done by Facebook is unfortunately its partiality to people, to ruling parties. I do want to note that if the current ruling party is defeated and say Congress regains power, my personal belief is that Facebook will immediately favor Congress the next day. And this creates a very difficult situation because the only people with the power to change the situation, which is government, do not have the incentive to do so because it is very hard to ask someone to give up an advantage that they possess. Let me hear stop you. Facebook's former head of public policy, Aakidas, she overruled her own colleagues when they said, here is a member of the Legislative Assembly of Telangana, Thakur Raja Singh, that he should be designated as a dangerous individual. It's a separate matter that after she's quit her position much later that the same person, Thakur Raja Singh, is arrested, suspended from his own party in August 2022 for insulting Prophet Muhammad and the belief came that his speeches would create a problem, a social problem in Hyderabad and the city and therefore the action was taken. But it's really, if for instance the government of India or Facebook had designated him as a dangerous individual earlier, maybe this entire situation could have been averted. Certainly, in the case of Facebook, Aakidas says ties to the BJP have been reported on for instance by the Wall Street Journal. I mean, it is my personal belief that much of the actions Facebook has taken in India have been to avoid alienating the government and the ruling party because they have the power to make Facebook's life very difficult, whether by arresting its employees as was threatened to be done around the farmers' protests or regulating Facebook or et cetera. I'm going to use an analogy. If a case like this happened in, for instance, Ireland, I think Facebook would take action not because it does not care what the Irish government thinks but because if this person was making wall and trust towards relations groups in Ireland, their own party would distance themselves from them and the public would also distance themselves from this figure and that is not necessarily the case, unfortunately, in India. In this case, I think Facebook was responding to Indian public pressures within the country. I mean, ideally, it would have taken a stand but to the extent Facebook is concerned about India, it's about the power players in India and not alienating those who have the ability to regulate Facebook rather than the common admin. There was another member of parliament belonging to the Bharti Janta Party, the BJP, the ruling BJP who you named, Vinod Chonkar. Now, in his case, apparently nothing happened. It's, yeah, yeah. And unlike in the case of Raja Singh. Yeah, so for the benefit of your audience, I will briefly relate this. So I was working on fake, fake, the use of fake accounts to spread information worldwide. I looked into cases in India around late 2019 and early 2020. These are what Indians think of us, for instance, IT sales. And so in India, I found eventually five different networks of fake accounts being run to promote political messaging and politicians. Two of them were supporting the BJP, two were supporting the Congress and one was supporting the app. So these were quite across party lines. When I found them, Facebook, it took some persuading but in several weeks, Facebook agreed, these took bad, let us take them down. And so we were going to take down all of these networks of fake accounts. And we took down four out of the five. But with the fifth one, we stopped because at the last minute, we realized that the fake accounts that were supporting MP Vinod Sankar and saying nice things about him and liking his posts, they were ran out of the personal account of MP Vinod Sankar. And this was deeply unusual. That means his own personal account was being misused or was being used to spread falsehoods? So some clarity. First, this is not the spread of falsehoods. It's the use of fake... Using a fake account. It's using fake accounts. It's not spreading falsehood, but for instance, having 50 or 60 accounts. It was a small number in this case. It would not have mattered except for the MP and Facebook's reaction. But 50, 60 fake accounts, each having a picture and a name like an ordinary Indian, but all being ran by the same person. And this person was also using Mr. Sankar's personal account. It might have been a staff member. Because that's what he subsequently claimed. I don't know if he claimed anything. You might have seen more than I did. I think he's rejecting... Even Rajas Singh said exactly the same thing. That you know somebody else is misusing. I mean, I'm told that it's common for Indian politicians to have staff members do it when they're older. But if it was a staff member, it was someone who was authorized with access. And it was... The first thing, because it was so blatant and surprising, the first thing we looked for was just to make absolutely sure that, for instance, his account was not hacked. It was not hacked. Usually in these sorts of cases, you want to be careful it is a difficult investigation. This would be... Imagine if the Indian police were investigating in the case of murder and they find that someone had signed his name with the blood of the victim in his own fingerprints. It was so blatant and surprising that I could not believe it at first. As soon as this discovery was made, no action was taken. I repeatedly tried to get Facebook to respond to take actions, etc. First I said, OK, this is the situation at hand. I would triple verify to make sure we understand the situation. His account indeed was not hacked. This is the situation. We have several options. If we were addressing this, we could do a complicated investigation by threat intelligence. They are the team that has coordinated not only behaviour reports. For instance, if Pakistan runs fake accounts in India, they are the one team who looks for it and finds it. That would take a lot of time, and then we could take this down and have an official announcement that he was behind these. Alternatively, and this was the one that I supported, it would be much easier to only take down the fake accounts and leave the MPs account alone. He would have no basis for complaining because what would he say? Facebook took down my fake accounts. Then what finally happened? I could not get an answer from anyone. It was like talking to a stone wall. I kept raising it. Later, when I found fake accounts in Delhi, that was the part in the app. This was around the 2020 data assembly elections in February. Facebook did not want to act on them at first. I raised it to two more people in the company and Facebook decided to act. I told them, while we are taking down these pro-app fake accounts in Delhi, can we also act on the ones supporting the BJP? Otherwise, people will accuse us of being partial, but I could not get a response from anyone. Let me ask you to briefly recount what happened. India's Parliament, its Standing Committee on Information Technology, at that time it was headed by Shashi Tharoor, Member of Parliament, asked you to depose in person before the committee because that is the norm, that's the convention these committees follow. Now, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, India's Lower House of Parliament, Mr. Om Birla, initially didn't say anything. Then in June of 2022, he went on record and says that we don't ask a foreign national to come unless it's a very serious matter. However, a few years earlier in February 2019, Anurag Thakur, who is the present Information and Broadcasting Minister, he had headed a committee where they had Jack Dossier of Twitter deposed, and there have been other instances in the past, also both for us, but your dossier, which was a thick dossier that you circulated, among the members of parliament, I presume it reached all those people. What are your reactions to how the Speaker of the Lok Sabha reacted? I was very saddened by his lack of unanimous to receive this because this is not a BJP issue, or a Congress issue, or an app issue. It is an Indian issue. I want to be clear that it was reported that the Lok Sabha Committee on IT voted unanimously to invite me, which means that people across party lines worked together to support my invitation. I have been interviewed by everyone from Republic TV to NDTV, and I don't think that this should be a political issue. When first the committee voted, I was told by many reporters they considered the Speaker's approval, and after that, certainly he would give it. They told me they were excited to see me in Delhi, and the Speaker is required to respond and give a yes or no answer, but there is no time limit on that response. What the Speaker has done appears to be something very new because he has officially neither denied or approved it. He has used his discretionary power. Yes, to ignore it. It's similar to what happened with the postal bill under the ministry of Rajiv Gandhi in, I think, 1987, because this was a bill that would have allowed the government to look into the mail of Indians for security reasons, and usually the President must approve the bill while returning to Lok Sabha, but I think it was President Dil Singh. He did something very new. He chose neither and sat on the bill forever, and that was the first and only pocket veto in Indian history, and the Speaker seems to have done the same today. I also want to be upfront. Since I released the documents publicly to many news outlets in India back in June, I have tried multiple times and offered multiple times to the office of Mr. Sharu, the chairman at the time of the committee of ways to work around the Speaker's refusal. What I was told was that the Speaker's refusal was only required because I was not in India, and so what I was told was that it was required for travel expenses. So first I offered to pay for travel expenses out of pocket privately to the committee, to the office of Dr. Sharu. When that was no response to what's coming, I made a second offer that if it could be arranged for myself to be in India for an unrelated matter, such as, in fact, for the media rainbow, where I am right now, in that case, I would be, if the committee, in that case, I would be present in India, and I think there would be no question of the Speaker's approval being necessary, and they would be happy to extend my stay and to work on the visa issues to testify of all the present. And I made these offers to the office of Dr. Sharu. Dr. Sharu is no longer heading that committee. These were in the last half year, long before he was removed. I did not hear back from him. Of course, he has since been removed. I cannot say what happened with him any more than what I can say what happened with the honorable speaker. But frankly, it seems to me that if any of the major parties in India wanted me to testify, they could have arranged it. Sophie, let me ask you a few questions which are very general in nature, and then I have a few questions which are personal in nature. The general questions would be, it's clear that the 99% of the resources of Facebook are used to fight spam, but they're not looking into political views and manipulation of election outcomes. That's not quite how I would characterize it. Okay. Part of it was that my team was focused on spam in authentic activity in large scales for mostly non-political uses. There were other teams that were supposed to focus on this from the political's perspective. Those teams did not have enough resources and the investigative areas were prioritized towards other areas. Because again, Facebook is a company to the extent it cares about democracy in India, it's because Mark Zuckerberg is human and needs to sleep at night, which is a limited resource. And also because if Facebook does bad things, the news will report on it and that will impact Facebook's ability to make money. But there is a special dynamic in authentic accounts. For areas like misinformation or hate speech, the amount of attention an area gets, it's a good approximation of how bad it is.  If major politicians impede people to work together and that creates a lot of strife and no violence, that would be very bad and people would notice. But with inauthentic activity, the goal of fake accounts is to pretend to be real, to not be seen, and the better you are at pretending to be real, the fewer people will see you. And so with fake accounts and IT sales, the common person cannot distinguish what is going on. They only find it when it is so obvious and blatant that it is impossible to ignore. What exactly does Facebook understand when they say coordinated inauthentic behavior? C, I, B, how does it happen? When does it happen?  And you are entirely dependent on artificial intelligence, machine learning for content moderation, your human intervention is negligible and that too largely west-centric. I do want to be clear that Facebook does have people, the people who work on coordinated inauthentic behavior all work with human investigations and their focus tends to be, I would say that their focus is not as much western-centric but rather news media-centric. They are focused on what gets press, most of their investigations come in response to, for instance, requests from governments, from NGOs, from reporters. What I was doing was very different because instead I had gone out on my own and found it and that meant there was no one from the outside to push Facebook and told it responsible because if, say, a reporter finds something and asks Facebook to investigate and Facebook says no, even if they are in a global source country, this reporter can say, in that case, we are going to call the New York Times tomorrow, we will tell them you do not care about our country and suddenly Facebook will decide this is a top priority and this is an actual example. But in my case, I had gone out on my own and looked for this. I had no special training. I am not a super genius. No one taught me how to do this. I figured it out on my own. I still caught two world governments and the parliamentary chair of ASICS in India red-handed. It was not because it was very good at it, it was because no one had looked before. I think his head was of course Mr. Sonkar who we discussed earlier. Sophie, is there any possibility of reform within Facebook stroke meta? Or will it continue to allow disinformation campaigns because it wants to prioritize and maximize its profits? The question is, if there is no possibility of internal reform, then the only way forward is to have some sort of regulatory intervention or regulatory checks and that could include theoretically breaking up meta, Facebook's separate entity, WhatsApp's separate entity, Instagram's separate entity. Yes, your thoughts on this subject? I tried very hard for two years to try and fix Facebook from within. I was not successful, but I tried to convince Facebook employees that they were areas that needed work. When I wrote my departure memo, it was aimed at internal employees because Facebook does respond more to its employees than to public pressure. But in the end, Facebook's response, the only change I am aware of at Facebook that may have happened in relation to my revelations and whistleblowing is that Facebook has greatly restricted internal communications that are not directly related to the job. Yes, exactly. And so that is a change, but it is not when in the positive direction and it is when, frankly, that I think anyone who lives through Mrs. Gandhi's emergency recognize because authoritarian leaders often cannot comprehend it when people that they consider to be their own would dissent. If you disagree, you have to be part of a conspiracy, be paid by outside organizations. And genuinely, doubt what is right for the company and the society. I think Facebook has accused myself of Francis of being part of a conspiracy against it. And at the end of the day, if there was a chance for internal reform within the company, that chance has failed. I'm sorry to say. So in other words, the only way Facebook meta would reform was if there was a regulatory intervention. If they were literally told, you have to do this and you don't have a choice. Is that the only way forward? And would that include breaking up that conglomerate into three separate entities? That is the only realistic way forward that I personally see. Other options would include public pressure from people, and it's obviously hard to get people worldwide to work together to avoid using a product. And that's easy to say, but it's hard to do, and it's not a solution for many people worldwide. I mentioned Azerbaijan earlier. And when the press spoke to the very opposition leaders who was harassed by the government, while Facebook turned a blind eye, I was surprised by their response. What they said was something like this, and I'm paraphrasing from Montgomery. He said, I thank Mark for making Facebook and allowing the opposition to speak to one another and organize, but Facebook should hire someone who speaks as every. It was very mild-mannered and polite, but looking back, I think I understand it now, because in Azerbaijan there is no independent media within the country. What remains has been axed out to Berlin outside independent journalists and politicians regularly meet with unfortunate accidents, and so social media is the only option the regime has. In Myanmar, for instance, the people's reaction to the coup d'etat has relied on social media in a way that was not possible back in the late 1980s when the first coup d'etat happened. In Iran, there's mass protests right now. There's protests, again, utilizes social media. That sort of thing is easy to say in countries that have other institutions, but in countries where there is nothing, like Azerbaijan, social media is better than the alternative, and deserting it is simply not an option for them. Going back to the point of regulation, there are many possibilities. It is possible that Mark will hit his head and wake up a new person tomorrow, but that is not very likely. I think regulation is the most realistic way forward, but it's also especially difficult in India because the Indian government seems unlikely to regulate Facebook. Yeah, that's it. I mean, this was my next question. India. We describe ourselves as the world's largest democracy. Yes, we are already the world's most populous country. If you exclude China with 1.4 billion people and India with 1.4 billion, of course, the demographic profile of India, the world's largest user base, whether it be WhatsApp, whether it be Facebook, so the role of the social media in influencing Indian society is unparalleled anywhere in the world. So what are your special comments and observations? I would first comment that I'm not sure that I would describe Facebook's influence as unparalleled simply because of course 150 years ago that the British East India Company ruled over India and covered India like its own personal faith and raised armies. And compared to that, Facebook has a great deal of soft power, but I'm not sure its power compares. With regards to the requests that India has going forward, this is a very difficult situation. You could try to elect people who have the integrity to regulate Facebook in office and not simply turn a blind eye because they benefit from the platform. If India becomes more educated and a very public pressure, public pressure could have an effect, the people rising up and demanding change. It must have seemed unthinkable for Mahatma Gandhi when he first decided to take a stand against the greatest empire in the history of the world. But when the Indian, as the people come together, I don't think anyone can stop them. They are simply very difficult to get to come together as a people. Yeah, beyond that, regulation is difficult. I mean, most foreign countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, they are naturally most concerned about themselves. And even if they were willing to regulate Facebook abroad, it would be difficult to do so in a way that did not frankly seem like colonialism. And the United Nations also seems difficult simply because in that case each dictator would demand to have their own social media as their own preserve. I'm sorry to have not had any easy solutions for this, but this is not an easy problem. You've been very, very kind and generous with your time and holding your views. I have a last set of questions and they are completely personal in nature. You grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan where you studied at the university there and though you might claim you're not that super intelligent, you certainly did very well and studied physics.  When you decided to come out in the open and, you know, tell the world that you are a transgender woman, you had a very, very difficult and troubled relationship with your father. You accused him of abusing you. He denied it. But the point is you were essentially a human being. You joined Facebook because you were tired of freelancing in the Bay Area of California, San Francisco. Now, suddenly after you become a whistleblower you're in the eye of the storm. Suddenly you're having to answer all kinds of questions including the question I asked you about your personal life. How has your life changed and how do you reconcile to this new avatar of yours? It's very strange. When I'm speaking to the press I do not know why anyone would want to be a celebrity but I think most people would not like to wake up at 6am in the morning to go into the office or to their job and yet they still do it because it's important and they see my speaking out the same way. I am not naturally gifted or talented speaker. I made my first friend when I was perhaps 18 or something. In grade school I was the donor who no one spoke to. Speaking out has also been difficult. I lost half of my friends when I joined Facebook. I lost another half when I spoke out as a whistleblower but I stay home and chat to my cats and the cats are very good. They keep me sane and as much as I dislike speaking to the press and the public pressure it's nothing compared to the internal pressure I faced when I felt myself having to decide between cases like should I prioritize this case in Dundee in Rajasthan, in Bolivia etc. If others who have had training might have dealt with that but for myself it was deeply traumatic and tiring. I don't want to go into the details but I have not spoken to my father in 12 years except unless you count my interaction with him denying my story with the MIT Tech Review and the interaction of the rest of my family members I have had perhaps 3 conversations in the past 7 years all of which were since I came forward as a whistleblower and people who grow up in traumatic environments are more like the A2 perpetrate trauma themselves whether it's personal or on a communal level there's perhaps comparisons like statistically those who have been abused that the child are more likely to be abused themselves I'm old enough that I'm coming to peace with it even if I I mean I can't change the past it will always be part of my story in the sense that it's a defining part of my moment and much of why I spoke out in the first place when I was young like many people I found myself in a situation where frankly I was filled by those in positions of authority they completed the letter of their duty and they made up my mind that if I ever was in a position of responsibility myself I would do my best to avoid letting anyone down and I never expected that to be so difficult I thought I would never be in any very important this was just an after-salt promise but instead it turned out like this that's the way the road goes Thank you so much Sophie Sophie you've been very candid you've been very generous with your time and I'm hopeful that not only you carry on the good fight the demons in your head will disappear gradually and thank you so much for giving the viewers of NewsClick your views and I wish you all the best Thank you very much You've just heard and watched Sophie Zan formerly a data scientist and a whistleblower she worked with Facebook till September 2020 she's here in India attending the Media Rumble Festival and she's expanded at great length not only about the role of the giant social media monopoly Metta also known as Facebook she's talked about her personal life keep watching NewsClick subscribe to the channel share this video with your friends Thank you very much for being with us


First of all, it was an honor to be part of this jury. I didn't think I was a natural jury member. I'm really not in the creative field. I'm more from the analytical field. So for me, it was a unique experience to understand creativity. And I was amazed to see the type of stuff that's happening out there. So firstly, congratulations to Exchange for Media because this is the 11th edition, 11th edition of the digital awards, which means you've been so far ahead of the curve. I mean, 11 years ago, who thought digital was frontline advertising? I mean, today digital is no longer the future. It's the present. And you've been there when it was the future. So congratulations for being involved in this 11th episode. Clearly tells you that you've been ahead of the curve. Again, my heartiest congratulations to all the winners of a very well-fought competition. With all the quality entries, I think the winners should be especially very proud to have made it. We really struggled in some categories to pick up single winners. And we actually ended up doing a couple of multiple winners for certain categories because we just couldn't actually say this was the best. So for me, it was a unique experience. I think the event has been superbly organized. I think the jury members will share with me that doing this digitally, remotely was not at all a constraint. In fact, I would say that it is quite appropriate that the digital marketing awards were actually judged digitally. So I think it was a great experience. And I look forward to the evening. Thank you.