Today. And i really want to start by bringing our viewers back to fall of 2020. What would you release . The facebook of a series of stories that really sparked this this global conversation and about about the company and in how a lot of it a lot of what it was communicating to the public was not how it was working internally. Can you take us back to that moment, those stories and what that was like . Yeah, sure. So, you know, the book came out of initially the documents that were provided to us by francis horgan, a former facebook employee, who in final stint, final months at the company, began talking with the journal and documenting some of the things she was concerned about internally. And she ended up taking more than 20,000 screenshots, lots of internal work product, and that was kind of the basis for the Facebook Files and the stuff covered just kind of a really wide range of how facebook interacted with society from like the special dispensations it gave to powerful individuals on their own, on their platform to violate its rules and not get punished to teen Mental Health and instagram issues to the sort of the companies failure to combat Human Trafficking on its platform. Until apple threatened to remove apps from the app store unless it did something about it to covid and so it was kind of a pretty and then also to politics, right. How the platform changed the tenor of political conversations worldwide by favoring really vitriolic, you know, kind of firebrand content over and over a sort of more moderate voices. So all of that, like kind of this big, massive documents that we got and that sort of suggested the company was far from the neutral platform that matter had it Facebook Meta had always spoken of it as and i think that that was kind of the basis of that stuff. Obviously, those documents ended up going to congress and to a whole bunch of other news outlets as in the end, and from there, i think the goal was to write a book that both went deeper into those records than a newspaper could ever do, and also could explain the story of how it came to be. Francis howe again only touched on a small piece of her work. You was only a tiny piece of the overall sort of collection of information and i kind of wanted to write the story of how facebook came to be aware of its role in the world and how it affects human interaction. And in some instances distorted it and, you know, kind of the people who made those discoveries and the internal fight to to get facebook to address some of the things that its own safety staff discovered. The thing that is so stunning about all of this is is not just what you were able to reveal through those documents, but also just the contrast, the constant contrast between how facebook was presenting itself and its goals to the public and what it was doing behind the scenes. So can you paint a picture for us of what things facebook says, what it now at the company is called meta . Well, what what does zuckerberg say about the companys goals and about its attention to these difficult problems . And how does that contrast with what youve seen behind the. Yeah, so i mean, i think one of the things that sort of paved the way for the difficulty facebook had after 2016 and sort of the internal reckoning was that they had 2016 president ial election on is that theyve been pollyanna ish about the platforms role in the world. The idea was that they were going to connect everyone and that it was going to make the world better in every possible way. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg at one point talked about how the spread of facebook would literally end terrorism in the middle east because, you know, young, disaffected youth that were online and were connected via social networks to, you know, young guess views on the other side would lose the capacity to hate. Right. Obviously, that didnt work out very well. And so they kind of just had this like everythings going to be great all the time. Expectation. And i think they didnt put much work into safety at the beginning. You know, it was just kind of well deal with the worst possible stuff if it breaks the law and it comes to our attention, then well take it down. But they didnt really do much on that front. And i think one of the things that was really important here was that the company was in the you know, for basically the last decade was sort of leaning heavier and heavier into algorithmic Recommendation Systems. The platform stopped being kind of the original version of facebook and social, where it kind of you just followed your friends and you saw the things they posted and it became much more heavy on recommendations and as you know, this is true of instagram as well. And so that sort of taking a more active role in promoting content, but they never liked the idea that they were responsible for what they promoted. You know, the whole idea was that the platform was completely neutral, that Mark Zuckerberg, you know, wanted humans to be completely out of the loop. But at the same time, i think one of the things that it the safety staff found was that not making choices about what content thrives in your platform and what content you promote is still making a choice right. It was turned out to be very easy to gain the platform that bad actors didnt matter if they were russians or macedonian high students or you know, just about anybody who was committed could easily gain the algorithm and they just sort of i think they just didnt assume. I mean, for a company that set out to change the world. Right, which was kind of facebooks thing, they to some degree were shockingly unprepared for actually changing it. That makes sense, right . It seems to me that, you know, just from from your book and from my own conversations, they have this idea that, you know, as people become connected, they generate empathy. Theyll theyll build friendships that all connection is good and all conversation is as good as an extension of that. Right. And as you lay out, in many cases of facebook groups with recommendations or to follow on instagram with virality and its sort of like often those those recommendations or just giving the people what they want turns into disaster or harm. Can you give us a few examples . Yeah. Yeah. So, i mean, i think i actually would question a little bit one thing you said there, which is that its giving the people what they want right. They have this like extreme only rudimentary system in some ways for determining what people want its like called if you get a response, then send more of whatever got a response right . Unless like literally seeing a post caused people to close out of the platform if they respond in any fashion, thats a good thing. And you know, engagement is the industry term for that, right . Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, they they one of the really interesting things is that they did user surveys and very clearly the users wanted them to do far to address misinformation, to you know, reduce kind of disturbing content to address clickbait and engagement efforts to. Just basically game the system to boost more reliable news over, you know, fly by night publishers were either making things up or just, you know, stealing other peoples work and making it more aggressive. The users wanted this stuff and they told the company that no in no uncertain terms, but at the same time, the engagement metric right, which is like do they use the product for and longer. That was always with the Company Trusted as what users really wanted right and i think that was a to degree its a pretty unfortunate choice and one that does disrespect. You know, peoples actually stated choice. Its like, oh, you know, you know, you say you dont want this, but you cant your eyes away. So clearly you do want it right . Thats thats i dont think a particularly healthy approach for or a respectful approach, if that makes sense to the presiding officer the senate will come to order. The clerks clerks read a communication to the senate. The clerk february 23, 2024. To the senate under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable thomas r. Carper, a senator from the state of delaware, to perform the duties of the chair. Signed patty murray, president pro tempore. The presiding officer under the previous order, the Senate Stands adjourned until way. Ds adjourned until right. Like, i mean, how many times have you have you heard the phrase, you know, we connect you with the people and things you know, you love or like, you know, kind of these extremely vague things that acknowledge that theres a lot on, but dont really say what the company was doing and know. And i think that a lot of the choices when you start looking at them a little more closely, start looking, i would say. Morally suspect, you know, is it a you know, just because people tend to respond to vitriolic political stuff, does that mean you should send them more vitriolic political stuff . You know, i think thats an you know, thats not something that i think is an obvious. Yes, but it always was at mita likewise. I think, you know, some of the design changes that theyve made things like allowing people to invite literally thousands of people into groups per day, like send bulk invites to thousands of people. You know, the safety researchers did plenty work on this. They were finding that, you know, the speed at which facebook groups grew made them complete ungovernable. If, you know, even a wellintentioned Group Administrator possibly keep up. And, you know, in some instances you had literally a single user that invited 400,000 people into a queue. And on Conspiracy Group over the course of four months. Right. Like anything i think the company had a hard time suggests staying or accepting that there be anything that was such a thing as usage. Right. Other than like kind of the most obvious and fake account stuff beyond that, you know, people wanted to use the platform to, you know, try to manipulate Public Opinion if people wanted to, you sort of build hyper aggressive almost a misinformation base. So social movements that, you know, that was something that the company just didnt really want to touch. Top touch was a little bit about, you know, ever since elon musk acquired twitter, turned into x, there has been this this drumbeat and and even before that, with facebook, this drumbeat of people calling free speech like facebook shouldnt manipulate what what we think. And the do. And i guess im gathered from what youre saying is there was never a world in which facebook didnt manipulate we think and do. Can you explain that a little bit to those who might not understand how al rhythms work . How recommendations work, that there is no National News role . Yeah, i mean, i think, look, there is a natural neutral which is called facebook. In 2004 people post things and you can visit other peoples profiles and you can look and see what they posted right after that. Things start getting a lot more complicated and i think, you know, conversation that we had about social media for a lot of years was based, you know, pretty much limited, like what should they take down, right . You know, is this such a bad thing that it needs to get removed and . You know, so it was just kind of this binary censorship type question and, you know, that doesnt really account for how the platform works. As you were saying, the way i mean, american, the way that things that post make it into peoples feeds, whether thats instagram or facebook, that is a combination of Design Choices in terms of, you know, what the Company Believes users are most likely to do and then just kind of some straight algorithmic black box work in which literally you were turning over to a computer. The goal of maximizing engagement, however it sees fit, and so itll serve whatever content it predicts is most likely to yield engagement. And, you know, one thing that they did, i think very intentionally was dial up virality, right . They constantly made the platform faster. They constantly, you know tried to make it easier for, you know, just sort of massive amounts of activity. I think one thing in the book that really touches on kind of where, you know, not everything is algorithm, right . Like what you know, where the company went wrong was it was it was the friending team, right. So this is the team thats responsible trying increase the number of connections people make the platform a reasonable goal in principle. Problem is is they realize that for several years the way theyd been hitting their targets was by encouraging people were already friending more than 50 people a day to friend. Even more people. Right. And like as soon i read that or i suspect as soon as you you know that anyone hears that they would think, oh god, nobody makes legitimately 50 friends a day on a regular basis like what sort of activity are you actually boosting because they had you know like bam. I mean like it sure sounds it right. I just have a hard time. Maybe you know, theoretically one person could one day after joining facebook brand new find 50 people they know and friend albut lik thats a one time thing you know like the quality of connection know and thats something that theoretically facebook was supposed to be working on the quality of connection is obviously going to be trash if youre sending out 100 invites per day and the company just like just didnt want to hear it. Even when its own staff was raising this. And so, you know, theres a combination of two things, right . One is the algorithm, because theres that people, you know, people you may know was what it turns out they were recommending the people who send hundred friend request a day because guess those people accept every friend request. They get. So theres the algorithmic part of it. But then theres also the design choice, which is like, should you really be able to send out hundreds of friend requests per day and, you know, meta could never bring itself to say maybe thats unhealthy in these metrics matter for a couple of reasons to facebook, right . First being, if youre on the friend team trying to make more friend connections, maybe if you hit that goal, that number you a bonus, you get a raise, you get promoted. And two, if you more connections for people on facebook more content is to show up in their newsfeed, which then makes for more slots potential advertising, which is great for full cash cow, correct . Yeah. And i think that that was another thing that was really fascinating to realize was just how much users were being manipulated into certain of behavior. Right. They would also try manipulate users into posting more by say, for example, showing them when they would launching reels. They would try to show people, you know, five or six versions of videos in a row the same audio being used, different videos in a row because that increased did increase the number of times that. People then went out and used that same audio. It was like they were trying to basically create an impression of extreme and getting get people to join on the bandwagon. And so like i think the search was, the metrics were are all important to that company, right . You know, if you cant measure it as a problem, it doesnt exist. It is, you know, i think a frequent complaint of a lot of people who were trying to argue for kind of more intervention and more ways to mitigate some of the known issues. And so, you know, they would just, you know, whatever was going to hit the numbers, they would kind of bang that drum. And to some degree, i think it sense right you know that move fast and break things things ethos that the Company Early on was kind of the reason why it beat out its other competitors is that like if something was going increase usage they would just hammer on it until number went up and they never really sort of lost that approach even after they were running something. I think by their own acknowledgment was a near indispensable public utility, right. You know, something that people relied on around world to have conversations and to, you know, discover information were still running as if they were just trying to get the you know, get the quarterly number up. And after 2016, president ial it was we we talked about earlier where facebook realized that there was there was manipulation on the platform by by actors like russia, where they they pledged to do more. Zuckerberg goes on this crosscountry tour. Hes basically a politician and promises that hes really about Building Community and empathy, that 2018 year. Thats when francis haggard joins in. Why does she join facebook . Yes, i think francis is a fascinating human being and a remarkable source. You know, this is a story that like candidly, the people at mit had a hard believing because it was so like almost like scripted, good. And candidly, i did, too when i first met her and heard all about this stuff, i was like, i think persons gilding the lily. I had to do a lot of research. So her background is that had she had a friend who was radical ized on the internet and it wasnt met platforms that did it but, this guy went from, you know, sort of being a, shall we say, you went down a rabbit hole that began with politics and ended up with some version of White Nationalism and the singularity, which is when computers overtake human beings as you know, the more intelligent and dominant force. It was all very weird. But point being, is this this guy just lost his marbles, actually, by his own admission. I tracked him down later. And so she facebook and tried to recruit her for years because, you know, thats not sign that she was like necessarily, you know, the most valuable person in the world it was just that this was a company that had an insane appetite for anyone who was good at data data science and sort of had a track record of able to do this sort of work. I mean, they were doubling in size every 18 months. So she finally basically bit on a recruiting offer and told them that bau of her friend and, you know, having the experience, having lost a friend to radicalization, she wanted to on misinformation. She wanted to work on on that sort of stuff and so she was like very transparent about she was coming in, which is that, you know, she believed that social media was potentially a risk and that she needed to address it, needed to do her part, to address it. And she then a couple of years, i think, growing increased angry, disillusioned because. You know, one of the things that anyone through meadows internal documents will realize is that a lot of the problems that the company describes as being intractable are ones that there were, in fact, plans drawn up for to address. And, you know, the plan wasnt to censor everybody, right . Like it wasnt you know, this wasnt to kind of a