An Ugly Truth Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination

I feel like for years, there's been a lot of reporting about what's going on inside of Facebook, but it's sometimes hard to figure out the difference between the company's positive spin, some of the kind of worst possible readings on their decisions. And then the reality of what goes on inside of a company of just human beings, sometimes being malevolent, sometimes being incompetent.

It is a great read and I found really helpful to understanding this incredibly important powerful company that seems unwilling to recognize how important and powerful it really is.

I feel like for years, there's been a lot of reporting about what's going on inside of Facebook, but it's sometimes hard to figure out the difference between the company's positive spin, some of the kind of worst possible readings on their decisions. And then the reality of what goes on inside of a company of just human beings, sometimes being malevolent, sometimes being incompetent. And I felt like this was an incredible window into how Facebook works.

Everybody should read an ugly truth. It is a great read and I found really helpful to understanding this incredibly important powerful company that seems unwilling to recognize how important and powerful it really is.

Hi, Cara and Scott, it's Cecilia Kang of the New York Times and co-author with Shira Frankel of An Ugly Truth Inside Facebook's Battle for Nomination.

having recently read An Ugly Truth, the authors of which you had in your podcast.

Hey, Karen Scott, Shira Frankel. My prediction is the next year is likely going to mean a lot of time spent in Washington for Mark Zuckerberg, who as we know from people close to him has always joked that he is allergic to the nation's capital to Washington, D.C. But lawmakers seem incredibly energized by the recent reports from the Wall Street Journal regarding the harm that Facebook causes to teens.

I'm reading an ugly truth right now and she expected it to be a friendly environment but you know you can't really have all those things going on around you and not anticipate really tough questions

Oh fuck. How did we miss this?

We assess, the summary read, with moderate to high confidence that Russian state-sponsored actors are using Facebook in attempt to influence the broader political discourse via the deliberate spread of questionable news articles, the spread of information from data breaches intended to discredit and actively engage with journalists to spread said stolen information.

Mark Zuckerberg is the most dangerous person in the world.

If power equals danger then there may be truth to what you said Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most powerful people in the world because he's created a company in which there's no real oversight of his power.

I would go out I would say your problem's not facebook your problem is social media your problem is that Americans don't know how to use the internet despite probably we should be better than any other country we should be able to teach our kids media literacy we should be able to teach Americans how to find valid sources of information online we're not doing that there are countries all over the world including Singapore Estonia that are doubling down and saying our democracy is going to break down unless we start teaching people media literacy America's not doing any of that and I would tell the no way right and I would tell the Biden administration you this is not a Facebook problem this is a problem that is going to persist it's going to get worse deep fakes and AI are going to make it worse for all of us and unless you do something now where does democracy sit in 20 years 30 years time very good how you what the Biden administration is telling themselves actually which is that we've done a lousy job as a federal government of enforcing our own laws and there are so many examples of violations from facebook and other companies but let's just stick on Facebook for a second they say that you know the privacy settlement of 2019 was so long overdue there are so many other examples of violations I mean this is what I'm hearing from people in Washington is that there needs to actually be a real cop on the beat I mean they've the federal government allowed more than a thousand mergers by big tech companies over the last decade and they never challenged any of them so I think that what I'm hearing from them themselves is that we actually have to be bolder

There's a book coming out by Shira Franklin, Cecilia Kang of The New York Times called An Ugly Truth Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination.

They're very worried at Facebook internally about it. They're worried about the book?