Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen joins ‘Influencers with Andy Serwer’ to share her thoughts on cryptocurrency, decentralized finance, and blockchain technology.
Video Transcript
– And what about the future of the internet, Frances? Big question with–
FRANCES HAUGEN: I love that question.
– It looks right now, for instance, simplistically, the United States, China, Europe–
FRANCES HAUGEN: Yeah.
– Is that going to be the future going forward that there are at least three sort of geographies and distinct internets increasingly?
FRANCES HAUGEN: So I don’t think– so I think you’re totally right that Europe is taking a different regulatory perspective. But in terms of networks, I believe if you look at it, I don’t think Europe and the United States are going to isolate. So when you say China, China does have a closed internet. And the thing that I’m scared about is Russia and China have made indications that they may kind of merge their closed internet.
They’re talking about building their own closed financial system, they’re talking about having their own closed internet. And I think once you start separating the internet and separating the financial systems, that’s where things start to get dangerous because you are–
Once you begin operating so independently, then you have opportunities for conflict. I think there’s some really interesting conversations happening right now around the role of decentralization. So you might have heard of DeFi, you might have heard of Web3 or crypto based networks. And those are going to open some really interesting conversations. Because this is software that doesn’t run in the United States, or run in Europe, or run in Africa. It runs everywhere simultaneously.
It’s applications instead of running in a data center, they’re all running in little kind of pockets everywhere on these decentralized networks. And so I think there’s going to be unquestionably sometime in the next five years probably, a social network where no one is responsible for it.
– Is that good or bad?
FRANCES HAUGEN: It’s a really interesting conversation. It depends how it’s designed. There’s ways of designing these networks where you do safety not based on content, but you do it based on the dynamics of the network. And if they make those kinds of decisions where they’re like, oh interesting. We’re going to cut reshare chains [INAUDIBLE] too. So that means Alice rates something, Bob reshare it, Carol reshares it, it lands in Dan’s newsfeed. Imagine if Dan had to copy and paste that content in order to share it.
So he had just hit a button. He has to copy and paste it. That change has the same impact as the whole third party fact checking program today.
– So it sounds sort of like a social network kind of based on blockchain in a way.
FRANCES HAUGEN: It could be. Yeah. I think there’s going to be one at some point.
– I mean I know you’re a big correct me if I’m wrong crypto fan. Or–
FRANCES HAUGEN: I do believe in the power of crypto.
– Right.
FRANCES HAUGEN: Yeah.
– Right.
FRANCES HAUGEN: Yeah.
– Talk about it. I mean, I don’t want to go way down that rabbit hole. We don’t have too much time. But tell us why you’re enamored of crypto and blockchain.
FRANCES HAUGEN: So I’m a big proponent of– actually, I’m not– I always try not to give investment advice because people do when you ask them this question. I do think there are interesting opportunities though around– we’re getting new models of how to run finance systems like the DeFi networks. The rules are transparent. We all see exactly how they operate. And I think there are interesting conversations around governance that a lot of these crypto projects are experimenting with new ways of doing corporate governance in terms of who gets to influence what decisions and how.
And as someone who really values organizational design and organizational health, I’m intrigued to see where they go. But beyond that, I don’t think I would have expertise to envision the future.
