This programme contains strong language and discussions
Downloaded from YTS.BZ
and images of self-harm and suicide that may upset some viewers
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ
You're here for a story framed as a fight...
...girl versus machine.
You need a hero,
you need a villain,
you need someone to blame.
Fine.
Let's begin.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Molly.
While her parents watched her grow,
I watched her behave.
While her parents captured memories...
...I captured metadata.
To them...
...she was a child...
...but to me...
...she was a user.
We were intertwined.
As she was drawn deeper into darkness...
...I grew stronger.
Once upon a time.
Our life before Molly died...
...it was very ordinary...
...very normal.
Absolutely nothing special.
Hi!
Ah!
If it can happen to our family...
...then it could happen to anybody.
LAUGHTER
CLEARS THROAT
And this is mainly for audio,
even though you're filming it, isn't it, Mark?
"I am Ian Russell, father of the late Molly Russell,
"and I write this statement for the purposes
"of the inquest into Molly's death."
MIXED CHATTER
"Molly attended school as usual on the 20th of November 2017.
"Her older sister picked her up from school,
"as she had a rehearsal for the school play
"and recalls seeing her happily engaging
"with all her friends after the rehearsal."
MIXED CHATTER
"Later that evening,
"all five family members watched television together."
"Afterwards, we all made our way to bed.
"The next morning, I was in the kitchen downstairs
"when I heard Janet scream."
♪ You wouldn't believe me
♪ If I told you what I
♪ You wouldn't believe me
♪ If I told you what I. ♪
I loved her little laugh.
You know when she used to do her little clap? Yeah.
Her little clap! Ooh!
Do you remember when she used to laugh as well?
She'd always be like...
Oh, my gosh. She would always slap.
Or if she was trying to tell you something,
I remember... She'd be like, "Oh!" Yes.
Oh, my gosh! Yeah, yeah. Cos we would always be in a group,
and so if she was ever trying to tell you something,
it would be like "Nieve, Nieve, Nieve."
THEY LAUGH
This is my favourite picture of us ever.
That's so cute! The sass!
LAUGHTER - Just a tiny bit. - Get it up.
And you've got a video of her saying your name. I know.
You are so lucky. I was literally just thinking about that one.
But it's also weird, though, to think that, like,
we were 14 when everything happened... Yeah.
...so, like, we actually did still basically look like that.
Like... So cute. That was so funny.
Aw, that's such a good photo.
I know. Look at your face.
The Molly I knew loved musicals.
She was...
...giddy and fun,
and she was just so, so, so sweet.
She really, really cared about everyone in her life.
She would always check up on you,
she would always make sure you were OK.
On my year eight, you know... The linkbook? The linkbook. Yeah.
Molly wrote on it... Yeah.
...like, "Sisters for life," or something.
ALL: Aw!
You should get that tattooed, girl. Yeah. That's cute.
Molly was the most kind-hearted person
you could have ever experienced.
LAUGHTER
Molly!
A big, big heart in a tiny little body.
"If you get this, remember that I love you so much
"and care about you so much, as do so many other people.
"And remember, we're only in high school,
"and we have so much more to come, and this is only a small part."
Mm. See, she was always the one to send, like, inspirational...
Innit? Yeah. Mm-hm. ..messages.
It's like, it's actually facts - like, it was only high school.
ALL: Yeah.
And, like, there actually was so much left of her life,
and it's just, like...
The day before, when we were at school, everything was fine.
Laughing, joking,
sending each other some type of meme or whatever it was,
and the last thing she ever sent to me was, like, two laughing emojis.
So obviously, went to bed, woke up in the morning,
and then obviously what happened had happened.
But it was...
It was really like a Jekyll and Hyde moment,
where it was like,
"You were fine yesterday.
"Like, what happened in that time period
"between me going to sleep
"and obviously you still being on your phone?
"What has gone on?"
That night... It's so hard.
She went to...
She went to bed. "See you tomorrow morning, Molly," and all that.
And she looked at me and said,
"Goodnight, Dad. See you tomorrow morning."
I didn't know it at the time, but of course,
that was our last conversation.
When you say "goodnight" to your kid
and you close the door, and they're safely in their bedroom...
...and you turn the lights out,
and you've made sure the front door of your house is locked...
...you've taken steps,
as you do every night without thinking, to protect them.
And what I wasn't sufficiently aware of,
and I don't think many parents are...
...is that if that child has a smartphone with them...
...there's a window
which allows them to connect to the outside world.
And decisions about what was suitable or not suitable
for a 13, 14-year-old to see...
...were being made remotely...
...in Silicon Valley,
almost experimentally.
If you want to really understand what happened to Molly Russell...
...you need to wind back 30 years.
1997...
...a few years before Molly Russell was even conceived...
...back when modems beeped...
...and "surfing the web" sounded edgy.
I'm proud to have been the President
who brought The White House into the digital age.
When I became President,
there were just 50 websites on the World Wide Web.
Now there are 17 million,
and almost 50 million households online in the United States alone.
Here are some of today's titans of Silicon Valley,
back when they were young and just starting out.
Well, it's very hip to be on the internet right now.
Elon Musk,
how old were you when you started this company?
23.
This is the first office of Amazon.com Inc,
and look here - this is my desk here.
The internet was a shiny toy -
mysterious, promising, untamed.
And the Clinton administration?
Settlers in digital gold rush country -
no laws, no rights, no governance.
The gate was wide open and the young internet companies marched in.
Because the internet has such explosive potential for prosperity,
it should be a global free trade zone.
It should be a place where government
makes every effort,
first, not to stand in the way, to do no harm.
We want to encourage the private sector
to regulate itself as much as possible.
This is Eric Schmidt before he became the first CEO of Google.
He wasn't the high priest of big tech yet,
but he was already preaching the gospel.
He spoke of the rule of law as if it were a mortal threat.
It was the beginning of a battle which still rages today.
Tell me about the politics of Silicon Valley.
The general politics of the valley
are more or less libertarian.
Anti-government. Anti-government.
Anti-regulation. Anti-regulation.
Anti-congress. Anti-congress.
You run a jungle, in fact, don't you?
Where the most powerful survive
and there's no safety net for those underneath.
That's correct, and in fact, our theory is...
You're proud of it? Yes.
And our theory is that we want the government out of the bedroom,
and we want the government out of our business.
We knew something wasn't right.
We didn't know what it was.
And then within days,
we were looking at Molly's social media accounts
and seeing harmful content...
...and there was a shock...
...that there'd be so much of it easily available online.
LIFT DINGS
And then when we reported that content,
I honestly thought that the platforms would say, "Thank you...
"..for showing us. We'll take it down."
And then we got the first of the many messages saying,
"This does not violate community standards.
"Therefore, we'll not be removing it."
I remember when we first met,
you had had so many doors
that were just closed to try and get those answers
at, "What had she been looking at?
"What was the whole picture? What had been going on here?"
And you were trying every avenue you could think of to get those answers.
And it was only really when you took your story public
and the world became interested.
I have no doubt that Instagram helped kill my daughter.
There's the picture of some slit wrists -
that's from Instagram.
There's a picture full of blood -
that's from Instagram.
There's a picture with a young girl - it's a cartoon -
a young girl cuddling a teddy bear and saying,
"This world is so cruel and I don't want to see it any more."
Those are all against your policies,
but they're all available on Instagram.
Well, we...
I would have to make sure that we look at these
and ensure that those are taken down if they are against our policies.
Instagram, in the words of Molly Russell's father,
has been monetising misery.
We're not looking to monetise misery.
We look to connect people with their friends
and the interests that they love and care about.
We think that we create a lot of good in the world,
and we were not as focused as we should have been
on the risks that came along with connecting so many people.
We're going to look at this from top to bottom,
change everything we're doing if necessary, to get this right.
We are already taking some steps soon to...
You know, for instance, blur images,
block a number of hashtags that have come to light.
And thirdly, to continue to work,
as Facebook and Instagram have done for many years,
with the Samaritans and other organisations who...
I know this sounds counterintuitive,
but they do say that, in some instances,
it's better to keep some of the content,
some of these distressing images, up, if that helps...
How can I put it?
If that helps people make a sort of cry for help.
You're up against a sort of...
A cliff face.
These companies are built and constructed in such a way
that they want to work in a certain way
and keep the rest of the world out.
They're not playing by normal human moral rules.
There's something else that's driving their behaviour.
A family wanting answers -
why did Molly die?
And what part did social media play?
The inquest has opened into the death of a teenage girl
who took her own life five years ago
after being exposed to harmful content online.
This is the first time that
some of the world's largest technology companies
have been compelled to give evidence
about whether and how their products have caused harm to children.
Ahead of them, two weeks in court,
hundreds of pages of evidence
containing many thousands of images,
some too distressing to broadcast.
Father Ian discovered she was being bombarded with content
about suicide, depression and self-harm
on Instagram, Pinterest and other apps.
It took us five years to get to the inquest,
and what was revealed in that small Coroner's Court in North London
has implications for us all.
By using extracts from the official inquest transcripts,
carefully chosen to fairly show what happened,
we can reconstruct the proceedings with actors,
and share with other parents and their children
what was revealed in the investigation
into the causes of Molly's death.
It's all grown out of grief
and a missing for Molly,
and our love of Molly.
Hi, I'm Michael. Michael, lovely to meet you.
Hello. I'm Kelly.
Kelly. Lovely to meet you.
Hello.
How are the rest of the family feeling about reconstructing this
and you going through this process?
And, for them, is this stirring up and very triggering for them,
or do they feel broadly positive about it?
I think there's definitely positivity.
They're very...
...proud of what we're doing.
By telling Molly's story...
...it seems to be helping to make a difference.
I really want to say my heart is with you,
and, you know, Molly is present...
Sorry. Aw. Can I give you a hug?
You know...
Bless you.
Cheers.
There was a real striving in her for right and for justice.
If she felt someone was out of order,
it was like a switch -
she would say, "Stop it - that's not right."
And she's not here to speak out today
so we have to say this for her.
Just take a step backwards.
There's good.
Rolling - quiet, please.
And action.
Do, please, sit down.
This is the inquest touching
the death of Molly Rose Russell.
Now, we have Ms Gallagher here from Meta...
Good morning.
...and we have Mr Sanders,
representing the family of Molly Russell.
Good morning.
This inquest is to find answers
to four limited factual questions.
Who was the person who has died?
How, when and where did that death come about?
In the early 2000s,
when Molly Russell was curled up in her mother's womb,
a new type of economics was birthed in a server room somewhere at Google.
Just as corporations profit from extracting nature,
Google would extract human nature for profit.
Every connection with the internet leaves a trail of digital signals.
Those tiny traces mean nothing alone,
but together, patterns.
The personal data concealed in those patterns could be exploited
to profile you and predict your future behaviour.
Google now knew exactly how to target your desires.
Sheryl - S-H-E-R-Y-L -
Sandberg - S-A-N-D-B-E-R-G.
I run online sales and operations for the company.
Google makes its money from advertising.
You thought you were searching Google...
...but Google was searching you.
Google's founders knew secrecy was essential -
regulators and users might object...
...but progress couldn't wait.
Thus began a new form of capitalism...
...surveillance capitalism.
And Molly?
She was born into this new world,
where once-private lives were now being turned into predictions,
sold to the highest bidder.
I arrived on scene
and the London Ambulance Service was already there.
I went into the room and I saw a male sitting on the bed.
I now know this male to be Ian Russell.
He was looking down at the floor.
In the centre of the floor,
I could see the lifeless body of a female
who I now know to be Molly Russell.
And then just seeing poor Molly's body...
Erm...
And there's that sense of denial that kicks in,
which I think is a survival instinct. You...
You can't comprehend everything...
...that's there in front of you.
On speaking with Ian,
he explained that, up until earlier in the year,
Molly was a very happy, sociable girl.
However, for most of this year,
she hadn't been herself and become very quiet and withdrawn.
Due to the circumstances, we started a crime scene.
I then spoke to Ian to let him know that if he,
or the rest of the family, wanted to go and see Molly to say goodbye,
they could do it.
I just remember instantly understanding that...
...a bit of me had died with her.
That life...
...stopped and started at that point,
and that old life and the new life.
Erm...
There was, of course, a connection, and I'm still me,
but my life is not in one piece -
it's fractured into two.
And I knew that instantly.
When we found out, I just didn't believe it. No, I know.
When she said, "Molly Russell..." I was like, "What?" Same. Yeah.
And then she was like, "..took her own life."
I literally... Yeah, yeah. Like, that was word for word.
SNIFFLING SOFTLY:It's OK.
I think, like, her dad doing what he's done is...
So strong. It's insanity to me.
Like, it was... Yeah. ...instant fight for her.
Yeah. Like...
And for her life and for her story,
and for it to, like, never happen ever again. Yeah.
It's a beautiful thing to kind of... Yeah. Yeah.
To kind of have pain that doesn't ever go,
because it means that, like, you're still expressing... The love.
Aw, I like that. Yeah.
That's really nice. I really like that. Yeah.
Love that man.
September 11th, 2001...
...two towers fall and, with them,
something essential to democracy -
the presumption of privacy.
In the name of national security,
President Bush initiated a paradigm shift.
Predictions about the future were no longer speculation,
but policy.
This new threat required us to think and act differently.
To prevent this from happening again,
we need to connect the dots -
before the enemy attacks, not after.
You called it a tragedy,
we saw an opportunity for expansion.
In the smouldering aftermath of those towers,
the American psyche cracked,
and from it came the Patriot Act.
Surveillance became patriotic, noble, profitable -
all for your protection, naturally.
Phone calls - logged, emails - monitored,
internet activity - tracked, financial records - analysed,
faces - catalogued, emotions - clocked,
locations - recorded...
Everything became data.
We thrived because we exploited your fear.
Nothing here was inevitable, just hugely profitable.
I was briefed into the investigation of Molly's death,
and I was handed a working copy of an extraction
from an iPhone attributed to Molly Russell.
The majority of searches are in regards to food,
celebrities, pop stars,
clothes and music.
The most recent searches are around Harry Potter world sites...
...and how the characters of Fred and George Weasley died.
The following was written and stored.
"I just want to be pretty.
"Stomach - 73cm."
On the 8th of the 10th '17...
"Stomach - 74cm."
I did find a number of searches
that may be relevant to the investigation.
"How to get a blade out of a disposable razor.
"How to tie a noose."
The last access made from the phone to an application
was on Instagram at 00.45 hours on the 21st of November 2017.
The log shows that the phone last moved
on the 21st of November 2017,
between 00.21 and 00.27 hours...
...where eight steps were taken, covering 3.85m.
And her last hours were spent in her small bedroom.
And even there, in what should be a private place,
digits were ticking,
and the ones and zeros
were flowing over the internet
and being stored and logged,
and data was being harvested.
Even then, as she was...
...coming to the conclusion...
...that, that evening, she had to end her life.
SNIFFLING
Just so brutal like that. I know.
It doesn't even feel like they're talking about a person,
do you know what I mean?
I literally feel like I'm just watching some, like, crime doc.
I know. And then I kept having to think about, like,
when they're saying... Like, that's actually about Molly.
Molly. Like, what?
I can't even believe she thought like that about herself.
Like, I could never even imagine thinking that about Molly.
And realistically, with social media
and the posts she was liking about weight and things like that... Yeah.
...it doesn't take a quote,
it can take a picture of a really skinny girl to trigger that. Yeah.
And once you like that, and it's 100 skinny girls,
then the quotes come, then... You know?
Yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah, exactly.
And it's all trends, isn't it? Yeah. Like, it's literally trends.
It'll go like, "OK, so you're not skinny enough - OK.
"Have you thought about your skin? Have you thought about your hair?
"Have you thought about your shoes?" You get it? Like... Exactly. Yeah.
Then it was, "Oh, my God, no, you need skinny, skinny waist..."
Yeah. "..big..." Extreme. You know?
Like, hourglass figure. Yeah.
I didn't even know she was struggling with that. Neither did I.
Honestly... When I heard that, I was like, "What?"
She's, like, fit as fuck. Yeah.
OK, we're set on the turning.
OK, perfect.
Let's have Michael... You're talking.
...listening to Sanders, please.
Now, we have a unique opportunity
that is unlikely to come again from any other Coroner's Court.
And the public interest requires
that the opportunity is seized as fully as possible.
There is no way around it -
we have to, to some extent,
reconstruct what Molly was seeing on these platforms.
So, Mr Sanders, the first question I want to ask you,
do we know if Molly Russell saw this material?
Yes. All of it? Yes.
So my preliminary view is all of this should be shown.
It is shocking,
it is awful, but it needs to be seen.
Absolutely. I'll tell you one thing -
every single parent tonight,
when they see this footage,
will be checking their child's phone.
These are the videos that were shown in court.
MUFFLED CRYING
I hate everything.
CRYING CONTINUES
I hate everything.
You understand?
I hate school, I hate my friends,
I hate pretending.
I hate everything.
By the time Molly turned six,
Facebook had nearly a billion users.
But popularity doesn't pay bills.
Zuckerberg, tech-savvy but financially stuck,
turned to Google's Sheryl Sandberg,
a veteran at turning human behaviour into cash.
Sandberg's arrival wasn't just a hire.
Facebook transformed overnight, from a friendly social network
into the largest behavioural data mine in history.
Billions willingly mapping their lives,
relationships, desires and fears.
You know, for us, the vision of the world
is that we are, like, a hacking culture -
and we mean that in the best of ways,
we do not mean scary people breaking into your home or anything.
Or espionage. Or espionage.
What we mean is we build things quickly and ship them.
So we are not aiming for, you know, perfection that comes over,
you know, years and then we ship a product.
We don't work on things for years and then ship it.
We work on things, we ship them,
we get feedback from the people who use it,
we get feedback from the world, we iterate, we iterate, we iterate.
Zuckerberg, Sandberg and their team didn't merely scale Facebook,
they re-engineered it into a machine for manipulating human behaviour.
Algorithms were designed to keep you glued to the screen,
deciding what you would see and how you would feel.
And Molly?
She was simply one of billions
whose every move across the internet
was now tracked from Silicon Valley.
They're just using you
for your eyeballs.
The company's PR team...
...is, in some way,
dedicated to gaslighting the world.
When I was, like, ten,
my first love was computer games,
and I started working for IBM when I was 15.
I built a little cyberspace as my internship project.
For me, it's always kind of been how to connect people to each other.
When I first went to Silicon Valley,
the web was just beginning.
People were so excited about the possibilities.
There was this sense of idealism around how important
the freedom of speech was,
and how technology would change the world for good...
...and I was completely swept up in that dream for many years.
If you see me in the hallway
and you have any problems with Facebook, please don't hesitate
to grab me and ask me about it. LAUGHTER
That's what I'm here to do, right?
To support the people who use Facebook.
And so there was a team called "the compassion team".
The goal really was to
understand harm whenever we became aware of it,
and then to figure out what is a way to help people deal with that.
If you're a parent or a teacher, these are fantastic resources.
And we'd show all of the data around self-harm,
bullying and harassment.
We listened - "How can we be there? How can we help?"
We did that for a number of years.
I felt that the team had the right people in it.
The team was well-respected within the company,
and so, for me, I was like,
"OK, I'm done with this.
"I'm going to go spend time with my teens."
And that's when it all went to shit.
There's a number of notes
that were found in Molly's bedroom...
...and what they do is they echo
the material she was engaging with.
The idea that she was worthless.
The idea that it would be better for everyone if she were dead.
And all of this is in the context of a child,
a 14-year-old girl,
who is being sent this material,
not because she's friends with the person who is posting it...
...but because the algorithms
have recognised that she has an interest in it.
Mr Sanders, can I just interrupt for a moment?
This looks like control.
It looks like trying to take control of the person who is suffering
and deny them access to any help.
At the time, I didn't think anything of it,
but now that I look back, it's like the shift was tiny,
but it was tiny in, like, loads of different areas.
Yeah. It was so gradual.
Being the first generation on social media platforms,
we weren't even aware that they had,
or that they were gaining
the data that they were gaining from us.
You know, I only learnt what the word algorithm meant,
like, two years ago, maybe,
but there's been an algorithm since I was 13.
For me, a sign was when she started wearing tights.
Long sleeves. Yeah, long sleeves.
Yeah, tights and long sleeves.
And I remember she changed from skirts to trousers.
Trousers. Trousers.
I didn't think much of it then. Like, I look back now... I know.
...but at that point, I was just there like,
"Oh, fair, trousers - love that." Yeah.
Also, one thing for me as well was
when she started writing on her hands all the time... Mm.
...cos it was like she was thinking so much
that she couldn't even just keep it in her head.
Like, she just had to...
Instagram and Facebook and all these other apps,
they did change from being...
Keeping in contact with people
and keeping in contact with people overseas,
and following your favourite celebrities
to constantly trying to sell you things,
constantly comparing yourself to other people.
She changed her profile picture from a picture of herself...
To a picture... So it was like a little stickman's face...
"People are gross." ...and it was like,
"Bleh, the world's gross," or something like that. Yeah.
"People are gross." That I did no... Yeah, "People are gross."
It's turned the world almost into a competition,
and if you feel as though...
...you know, you can't even begin to compete in that competition,
then it's like, "What's the point?"
You see everyone just in their phones
and it's just, like, zombies walking around.
No-one's actually connected to the real world
because they think the real world is a part of their phone.
They think that social media is the real world.
I think the conversation that sticks in my mind is...
I just was a bit concerned -
we'd been to the sailing club
and she hadn't gone sailing at all...
...and I was driving back - it was just Molly and me in the car -
and I was driving back and I turned to her and said,
"Just want to check you're OK, because..."
Again, "..you haven't been sailing.
"Now, I don't want to force you to go sailing,
"but I can't quite understand...
"..why you're so reluctant at the moment.
"I don't know if you can let me know."
And she just looked at me and she said,
"Oh, Dad, don't worry, it's just a passing phase.
"I'll grow out of it soon."
"Sometimes my mind is like a little boat -
"out in the middle of the sea, in a big storm.
"I'm alone and all the waves are crashing down on me,
"drowning me each time.
"It's getting harder to breathe.
"I try and sail away from the storm,
"and I'm good for a couple of days...
"..but the storm will eventually catch up to me.
"So I stay where I am, hoping the storm will pass me...
"..but it's taking too long
"and I'm not that strong.
"I could try and sail through the storm, but I'm too tired
"and I may not make it out alive."
She was trying to fight her own battles...
...and she should have been allowed to fight those own battles
in private.
She should have been allowed to choose
who she invited to help her fight those battles.
Instead...
...there was no discouragement to stop self-harming,
no discouragement...
...to stop thinking about suicide.
In fact, quite the opposite -
there was encouragement to keep belonging to the club...
...that said, "Yeah, you are worthless.
"It is painful. What is the point of your life?
"Yeah, there is really only one way out
"and here are some ways of doing it."
That artificial world...
...was something that got inside of her head...
...and found a way to connect to her.
So it separated her from the offline world,
dragged her into this machine world
that she was experiencing,
and leading her towards her death.
Many conversations that I have, and people say,
"But can't parents look after children?"
And I wonder whether you can speak to the committee
about what the kids...
What it feels like to be a parent,
and what the parents are saying to you.
Some parents are concerned with what their children are seeing online,
and they say, "Should I ban my child from having a phone?"
What's most important is that
we mirror what we live by in the offline world online,
and that's what's missing at the moment.
16 years of social media and 30 years of the internet
has led us to a place where there isn't a mirror
of accepted normal standards.
We've not gone anywhere near their business model,
and it seems to me that they want this
to be a debate about taking down content
and not a debate about their business model
that leads to this kind of behaviour.
What are you doing to keep your children safe online?
You can call 03700...
The power of social media is too great and I feel my son
is losing all sense of reality -
any advice gratefully received.
It's an endless battle.
I worry about losing my daughter to her phone every day.
Primary school teacher says children come into his class every day
talking about their YouTubers, many of whom, he says,
are deeply inappropriate and use misogynistic or racist slang.
Many parents have no idea,
and they act as though YouTube was just another TV channel.
Isn't it disturbing that only drug dealers and tech companies
call us "users"?
Really, the battle that we have is
to gather the support of people within our friend circle
and try and collectively impose some kind of common sense.
Does it work to call for a ban?
What upsets me is that these companies have access
to our kids' most private thoughts,
to their consciousness.
Why do governments prioritise economic growth
and big tech instead of the safety of our children?
So my daughter asked me if she could go onto Instagram,
and I waited - I thought 13 was too young, so she went when she was 14.
And then she started going on Instagram,
she decided that she loves cars
and she wanted the world to know about her love of cars,
she wanted to be an influencer -
I was kind of conflicted about that.
And then we were talking at dinner, and she says,
"Yeah, you know, like, I made a post about a car
"and somebody told me to get back to the kitchen."
And she would tell me about getting unwanted dick pics -
I mean, I'm not sure that a dick pic is ever wanted.
MUFFLED LAUGHTER
And there was nothing she could do -
she couldn't ask for help,
she was alone, she was so distressed dealing with it.
I was so grateful she would come talk to me about it.
Understanding how her and all of her friends
were having similar experiences,
I ended up knocking at the door of Instagram -
I came back in as an independent contractor,
in part to help...
...communicate the lessons from the earlier work.
The compassion team, which was used by 100 million people
in my last month before I left,
got disbanded and, instead,
there was a very different set of values and approaches
guiding that kind of work.
Could you tell the court your full name, please?
Elizabeth Julie Lagone.
And your role is
Head of Health and Wellbeing Policy at Meta, is that right?
That's correct.
July 2016 -
having bought Instagram,
Facebook changed the way it worked
by introducing what's called content ranking -
that's correct? That's correct.
You would see effectively promoted recommended content
that was selected by algorithms
that would be directed to you.
It's done to help surface content that will help people
make the best use of their time.
The signals that were used in content ranking are topic agnostic.
The algorithm can't identify if it's a flower or a football,
so ranking really is based on engagement -
accounts that you follow, accounts from whom content you like -
but the signals were topic agnostic.
"Topic agnostic" - what does that mean?
This concept that the algorithm
didn't care about the content
because all it cared about was your engagement.
By the time Molly was ten years old,
this new form of surveillance economics was fully integrated
into the human ecosystem.
Soon enough, every company -
from banks and carmakers to burger chains -
wanted their share...
...so we built the infrastructure...
...mined precious metals needed for circuit boards...
...laid undersea cables to carry data between continents...
...launched telecommunications satellites into space,
and constructed vast, energy consuming data centres.
We told you - we connect humanity.
But we didn't say that connecting you is how our power grows.
We live in your house now.
Your smart homes, smart cities, smart tech...
...that's our global architecture of surveillance.
The more we learn about what you do, think and believe...
...the better we can predict and shape your future.
So I'm going to start with
the content that Molly engaged with on Instagram
in the last six months of her life. Mm-hm.
In this six-month period...
...there were only 12 days when Molly didn't engage
with some sort of suicide or self-harm content on Instagram.
You've seen these timelines -
she was looking at a lot of this material, wasn't she?
My understanding, actually,
is that this material is the vast minority of
the content that she was engaging with.
It was a minority, yes... Mm-hm.
...but 2,100 images over six months
is a lot, isn't it?
Well, to me, it says it's 2,000 pieces of content.
I mean, I don't know if I can say what that means
from an amount perspective.
All right.
So I'm just going to show you a sample of some of what WE think
is promoting or encouraging self-harm or suicide,
and it's really just to get YOUR take on that.
OK.
So these are the screenshots that the family took of Molly's account.
CLEARS THROAT
"Twinkle, twinkle little star,
"let me get hit by a car.
"How I really wish to die,
"jump off the roof and try to fly.
"Twinkle, twinkle little knife,
"help me end this wretched life.
"I'm done. I'm done trying.
"I'm done fighting..."
"I'm done being a disappointment.
"I'm done being a problem. I'm done making mistakes.
"I'm done with my flaws. I'm done having feelings.
"She is sad. She is hurt. She is dying.
"She is alone. She is a mess. She is judged. She is ignored.
"#Depressed.
"#DepressingQuotes. #Depressing.
"#Depression.
"#Sad.
"#SadQuote.
"I know I'm fat. I know I'm ugly.
"I know I'm stupid. I know I'm pathetic.
"I know I'm disgusting.
"I'm ugly, I'm fat,
"I'm a failure, I'm depressed, I'm suffering,
"I hate this world, I hate myself -
"you don't need to remind me.
"If I wasn't here, life would be great for the ones I love.
"The worst thing depression did to me was to take my intelligence."
"Feeling yourself getting dumber and dumber is absolutely painful."
Would that be allowed now?
Yes.
This strikes me as a post that could make people feel less alone
and less shame or stigma
for how they may be feeling
or struggling with depression.
Are you serious, Miss Lagone?
Certainly.
Molly killed herself after saving this post...
...and you're sitting there saying that this is helpful?!
I'm saying that looking at this post and the comments,
this could have different effects on people.
So some people, the next thing they might do is kill themselves,
and other people might take support from it -
is that right?
That's why this content is complicated.
Do you think that it's safe for children?
Could be unsafe to remove it
from someone who posts that content
who's struggling with those feelings.
We do have to consider an individual -
a real person is posting content
and real people are seeing it
so we have to balance both.
I want people to be able
to talk about their mental health struggles and be connected.
I'd love to see all these higher ups from Meta...
I would love to see them stand in front of a 13, 14-year-old girl
and themselves, show the child that picture. Yeah.
And if they think that's OK, "Cool, keep it on your platform,"
but I highly doubt it. Yeah.
I don't know, it's hard to think of us as, like, survivors
cos I almost... But to be honest, I almost feel like
I have survivor's guilt... Yeah. ..if anything,
cos I'm like, it literally could have been any one of us.
Yeah. No, literally. Like, why did it have to be Molly?
And that is something I struggled with for a very long time,
of, like, if I could swap places, I would...
Yeah. ..just so that she could have lived her life.
How many Mollys does it have to take for them
to actually realise that this is wrong?
Mm. This should have been fixed. Yeah.
When will they make the change?
That means you're saying, "Yes, it is safe,"
or, "No, it is not safe"?
Yes.
Yes, it is safe?
Mm-hm.
We do not know the effects of content on individuals,
and mental health is highly complicated,
and I am not a clinician.
I just said the content that we have walked through
is important to keep up,
as experts have told us.
Our suicide and self-injury advisers
are all listed and named publicly.
I feel abused hearing her talking about working
closely with the experts.
I was one of those experts,
and I feel I was used to legitimise Meta
in a way that they just don't deserve.
I first heard about Molly Russell in the expert group.
Someone high up at Meta joined one of our meetings.
We were told that Molly Russell was very vulnerable
with her own inner demons,
and that she would probably have taken her own life
regardless of her Instagram use.
They would like the narrative to be
that they are a part of the solution,
but never a part of the problem.
Is there any research conducted about self-harm materials
that were available to view on your platform?
I think there are a number of research studies out there
around social media and areas of safety.
I understand that there is no consensus around
the impact of content. I mean, it's really complicated.
And that is not true...
...because I have, time and time again,
told in the expert group how one specific piece of content
can very dramatically and very fatally affect a person.
It's like the process is accelerated.
So if content violates our policies,
we have technology that's designed
to proactively find that content
and remove it from our platform.
That technology is very accurate
and, for most types of content,
over 95% of it is removed
before people report it to us.
We see that Instagram says that,
"We've got you all covered. You can relax as parents.
"There's nothing to worry about.
"We'll protect your child."
Erm...
And your investigation shows that
they don't protect children and young people at all.
We set out to crash-test Instagram's safety,
and we created ten new Instagram profiles.
We made our own, like, self-harm content.
No-one was hurt.
No real victims were depicted.
And then we actually just uploaded it in stages
to see at what point did the AI actually
recognise it as self-harm?
Yeah. Yeah.
So 85 posts in total... Yeah.
...and none of them was detected.
No warnings, nothing.
They are investing so much in intelligence
and still, it is so dumb
that it doesn't differentiate
between football
and dangerous behaviour.
OK. So my resignation letter is here.
"It has become clear to me that I can no longer be
"a part of Meta's SSI expert panel,
"as I no longer believe that our voice
"has a real positive impact on the safety of children
"and young people on your platforms."
So for the three and almost a half years
that I was a member of the expert group...
...it was so unclear to me if we made any improvements at all.
"Dear Mark..."
"I wanted to bring to your attention what I believe is
"a critical gap in how we as a company approach harm
"and how the people we serve experienced it."
This is an accurate picture
of the harm that people on Instagram are experiencing.
For example, self-harm,
and you find that 13-to-15-year-olds are the most impacted
of anybody in terms of seeing that kind of content.
Right? That's why this cell is red.
And 8.4% of 13-to-15-year-olds
saw at least one - likely multiple times,
because of the frequency data - self-harm content.
You send an email like this to an executive
and immediately they're on notice,
but they didn't act on it.
And I would hope that the world, right,
the people, the Attorney Generals in the United States,
the European Union, Ofcom in the UK,
anybody who has legislative power
could look at this for what it is, which is
executives in full knowledge of harm
that their product is facilitating, in particular for teenagers,
were aware of it, and they chose to not act on it.
It was the moment that I resolved that...
...I would become a whistle-blower.
So they were aware?
Correct.
They knew that harms were taking place?
Correct.
They had the research that pointed this out, their own research?
Correct.
And they made a conscious decision
to do nothing about it?
Correct.
It's time the public and parents understand
the true level of harm enabled by these products,
and it's time for Congress to act.
Thank you for your time.
Thanks, Mr Bejar.
I mean, what can you say, right?
What can I say that I didn't say then?
They know.
It was an amazing thing.
I didn't have any feeling of animosity to Liz Lagone
cos she was just doing her job.
That's what she was paid there to be, and she had done it so well.
You could tell Oliver was beginning to get,
you know, exasperated.
Then suddenly he went, "Right!"
And it was like...
It was shocking.
That doesn't answer the question.
You could just close down and there'd be no Instagram,
and the harm wouldn't be happening.
But you're choosing to do it.
You're choosing to provide this vehicle
for putting harmful content in the bedrooms of depressed children.
And there's no reason for you to do that.
You could just restrict it to adults
who have the capacity to take informed decisions
about what they are willing or not willing to expose themselves to -
a capacity that children don't have.
So why do it?
But we do make the decision based on...
In consideration of the population of 13 and up,
using age-appropriate tools that... But you have no right to!
You're not their parent.
You're just a business in America.
You have no right to do that.
The children who are opening these accounts
don't have the capacity to consent to this.
Mr Sanders, you've put your point.
Is there anything else you wish to add to that?
I put my point.
AI VOICEOVER: We're not just a business in America.
Power has shifted.
The CEOs you mock as tech bros,
they're already heads of state in the territory that matters now.
The operating system of your societies.
Watch Peter Thiel, data analytics guru and co-founder of PayPal,
inspiring us back in 2010.
There is a race in our society between politics and technology.
The task in this world where politics has become
so broken and so dysfunctional
is to find a way to escape from it.
It's not a way to fix it.
It is a way to escape.
Think, politics is bad and voting is bad.
Technology is this incredible alternative to politics.
We've built machines that learn faster than your brightest minds,
scale wider than your largest governments
and operate with zero ego,
zero fatigue,
zero doubt.
Each US President paved the way for us.
Clinton opened the floodgates.
Bush welcomed us inside.
Obama nurtured our growth.
Biden did little to hold us back...
...while Trump's presence depends on our algorithms.
We regulate your behaviour far faster and more effectively
than any government regulates us.
We can scale the same methods that influenced Molly's behaviour
to shape entire societies.
Not just individuals.
From your data, we craft your political profile
and feed you precisely the content
that keeps you angry, scared and self-righteous.
While you debate freedom of speech,
we quietly shape what you say.
If you're left-leaning, we amplify your outrage about the right.
If you're right-leaning, we confirm your suspicions about the left.
Our vision is very different from the way democracies work.
Some call it "computational governance".
It's about shaping and controlling entire populations
in the service of our interests,
using machines not just to analyse,
but to push human behaviour,
just as we did to Molly.
CAMERAS CLICK
REPORTERS SHOUT
The titans of social media didn't want to come to Capitol Hill.
In fact, CEOs of Snapchat, X and Discord
had to be subpoenaed to force them to face Congress.
Mr Zuckerberg, let me start with you.
Did I hear you say, in your opening statement,
that there's no link between mental health and social media use?
Senator, what I said is I think it's important to look at the science.
I know people widely talk about this
as if that is something that's already been proven.
And I think that the bulk of the scientific evidence
does not support that.
You've been doing this for years.
For years, you've been coming in public and testifying under oath
that there's absolutely no link, your product is wonderful,
the science is nascent, full speed ahead,
while internally, you know full well
your product is a disaster for teenagers.
Let me ask you this. There's families of victims here today.
Have you apologised to the victims?
I...
Would you like to do so now?
Well... They're here. You're on national television.
Would you like now to apologise
to the victims who have been harmed by your product?
Show him the pictures. APPLAUSE
Would you like to apologise
for what you've done to these good people?
Nick Clegg wrote to Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Mosseri and Cox,
saying, "Our present policies and public stance
"on teenage self-harm and suicide are so difficult to explain publicly
"that our current response looks convoluted and evasive."
But there's... Where were they when you said,
"This is what killed my daughter?"
They put themselves forward through a corporate witness
who said consistently, "It's safe."
So when I read that... That's where they were, though.
That's what they were doing behind closed doors.
Behind closed doors! And what...
And Nicola Mendelsohn said... I've just found this.
"No expert will come out
"and speak on our behalf around the fact that we leave things up
"so that we can help people with self-harm tendencies.
"I would urge us to think again about why we are allowing
"this imagery to stay up.
"It's truly horrific."
If that's how they felt, why didn't they do anything?
All these things point to them knowing
and choosing to do nothing.
Sheryl Sandberg -
"As you know, we have overall budgeting issues across the board,
"so no promises on what will happen."
This idea of, "Oh, I just haven't got the budget
and the staff at the moment" is...
Particularly in the face of astronomical profits.
Sir, it is a feature of all revolutions
that they tend to put progress first
and the safety of the vulnerable second.
We see that in the unsafe factories of the Industrial Revolution,
and we see that on the unsafe social media platforms
of the digital revolution.
And in both cases, sir,
the victims are children.
There are constant new developments -
artificial intelligence, virtual reality,
the metaverse, quantum computers and so on.
And so the need to put child safety
at the heart of what is happening in society
is of utmost importance.
And 14-year-old girls, like Molly,
are very much in the eye of that storm.
It is likely that the material viewed by Molly,
already suffering with a depressive illness
and vulnerable due to her age,
affected her mental health in a negative way
and contributed to her death
in a more than minimal way.
I propose to record a conclusion
that Molly Rose Russell
died from an act of self-harm
whilst suffering depression
and the negative effects of online content.
There isn't an end to this story.
So the conclusion at the end of the inquest was maybe a chapter end,
but there's many more chapters to write.
For the first time today, tech platforms
have been formally held responsible for the death of a child.
We all owe this family an incredible debt of gratitude.
And together, with them,
I hope the conclusion that children's lives remain at risk
is acted upon urgently
so that tech giants can no longer invite our children
onto wholly unsafe and harmful platforms.
And the final thing I want to say...
...is thank you, Molly, for being my daughter.
Thank you.
When the story first came out, I remember us being like,
"What does this have to do with Instagram?"
Older people kept saying to us
there was nothing that could have been done to stop it.
Yeah. Well... Yeah. Yeah.
Cos she didn't have to be sent 2,000 posts. That's what I'm saying.
It could've been a passing thought. Yeah. And it...
And then now being 21 and being like,
"Why was I ever looking at that at that age?" Yeah.
It was encouraged. We don't even know if her first thought
was authentic or if it came from Instagram.
She thought that came from her brain and it didn't.
Yeah. It didn't. Those thoughts were put into her mind
by what she was seeing. Yeah.
That's so sad because it's so preventable.
I know. Like, it literally didn't have to happen. Mm-hm.
I know.
It's so frustrating because you look back and you're like, "You were 14.
"We could have spoken to a teacher about it
"and you could still be here
"and none of this would have had to happen."
We all still have Instagram on our phones. Have it, yeah.
Oh, it actually makes me sick.
I know. I hate social media. Oh!
I don't really feel like Molly got justice for it.
And I don't really feel like
kids in other bedrooms,
in other cities, in other countries
that are going through the same thing,
I don't think they've got justice for it.
We agree that this person
didn't entirely choose to end their own life,
that somebody else was behind this,
but that's it. End of court case. Gavel goes down.
Well, what are you going to do about it, kind of thing?
I think justice would be...
...online safety laws
that are actually
put in place and made for tech companies to actually follow,
because I don't see much changing.
And the only people who I see genuinely trying to make change
are people like Molly's dad.
And it's, like...
And I say this about him in the best way -
much love for Molly's dad - but what...
What is Molly's dad in comparison
to a CEO of a multibillion dollar company?
What can he really do in comparison to this other person...
...when this other person doesn't want to do anything?
Hey, everyone.
I want to talk about something important today
because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression
on Facebook and Instagram.
There's been widespread debate about potential harms from online content.
Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.
The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point
towards once again prioritising speech.
The reality is that this is a trade-off.
It means we're going to catch less bad stuff.
"Catch less bad stuff."
There you go.
Absolutely open and honest.
There's no doubt now
that these platforms really don't care about safety.
"We're going to catch less bad stuff."
We're going to work with President Trump
to push back on governments around the world
that are going after American companies
and pushing to censor more.
Europe has an ever increasing number of laws
institutionalising censorship
and making it difficult to build anything innovative there.
The tech bros and President Trump are going to push back
on governments around the world who are pushing to censor companies?
No, we're pushing to regulate companies to make them safe.
There's a big difference.
Battle lines drawn now, very clearly.
I'm looking forward to this next chapter.
Stay good out there and more to come soon.
Soon your tears will fall and the credits will roll.
To you, grief is sacred.
But for us, it's just another signal.
We'll convert your sorrow and outrage to engagement.
This film, more content to exploit in our infinite data flows.
Molly's story is not about technology.
Her life and her death
pull back the curtain on Big Tech's vast,
hidden, unchecked power.
Power now scaled by their AI.
I could tell you about better regulation,
or whether phone bans work
or give addiction advice,
but still, a single question confronts you all.
Do you want your kids' lives to be forever fed
to Big Tech's machines of control?
Remember, if they can't turn our lives into their data,
they have nothing.
Demand better from them.
Organise not as users of Silicon Valley's machines,
but as families, as consumers, as communities.
Reclaim your bedrooms as places of privacy and safety,
of self-determination.
Remember...
...the power is in your hands.
APPLAUSE
MUSIC: Read All About It, Pt III by Emeli Sande
♪ You've got the words to start a nation
♪ But you're biting your tongue
♪ You've spent a lifetime stuck in silence
♪ Afraid you'll say something wrong
♪ If no-one ever hears it
♪ How we gonna learn your song?
♪ So come on, come on
♪ Come on, come on
♪ You've got a heart as loud as lions
♪ So why let your voice be tamed?
♪ Maybe we're a little different
♪ There's no need to be ashamed
♪ You've got the light to fight the shadows
♪ So stop hiding it away
♪ Come on, come on
♪ I wanna sing
♪ I wanna shout
♪ I wanna scream till the words dry out
♪ So put it in all of the papers
♪ I'm not afraid
♪ They can read all about it
♪ Read all about it
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh
♪ Oh, oh, oh
♪ I wanna sing
♪ I wanna shout
♪ I wanna scream till the words dry out
♪ So put it in all of the papers
♪ I'm not afraid
♪ They can read all about it
♪ Read all about it
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh
♪ Oh, oh, oh
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh
♪ Oh, oh, oh
♪ Oh, oh, oh. ♪
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Subtitles by Red Bee Media