Speaker 1: I think it's important to have both virtues advices.
Speaker 2: All right, Oh, elaborate, Kevin, what are your favorite advice?
Speaker 3: He's a huge candler. Of course, we contain Volta Zudes.
Speaker 3: Hello Snaffoo fans, and welcome back to snaff Who, the
Speaker 3: podcast about history's greatest screw ups. I am your host
Speaker 3: ed helms, and today we are diving into part two
Speaker 3: of our Cambridge Analytica story, because this one was just
Speaker 3: too insane to try to squeeze into one episode. It
Speaker 3: is just absolutely bonkers. And of course I am still
Speaker 3: joined for part two by my incredible guests, the brilliant
Speaker 3: Kevin Russe and Casey Newton of the New York Times
Speaker 3: tech podcast hard Fork. They are two of the most delightful, hilarious,
Speaker 3: brilliant and insightful people you could ever hope to have
Speaker 3: on a podecas. And they're also incredibly well informed on
Speaker 3: this particular story.
Speaker 2: Because they both covered it as reporters when it happened
Speaker 2: back in the mid twenty tens. All right, so I
Speaker 2: highly suggest if you haven't already go back and listened
Speaker 2: to the previous episode just so you're fully up to speed.
Speaker 2: But you know what, you don't have to. I'm going
Speaker 2: to give you a quick little recap here, so we're
Speaker 2: all in this together, all right. Previously on Snafu, a
Speaker 2: seemingly harmless Facebook quiz turned into a full blown data
Speaker 2: exploitation scheme, as millions of users had their information quietly
Speaker 2: scraped from Facebook and handed over to a nefarious political
Speaker 2: strategy operation called Cambridge Analytica, which then used said data
Speaker 2: to build psychological profiles of nearly eighty million users and
Speaker 2: then target them with manipulative political messaging. This very sketchy
Speaker 2: firm was employed by both the Ted Cruz and Donald
Speaker 2: Trump campaigns during the twenty sixteen presidential election. Kevin Ruce
Speaker 2: actually landed an inn with zuck in the immediate aftermath
Speaker 2: of this giant scandal, and it's a wild story. Kevin
Speaker 2: was given like in his colleague. They were given like
Speaker 2: twenty minutes to prepare for this epic interview, which was
Speaker 2: probably something of a psycho power play on Zuckerberg's part anyway.
Speaker 2: Cambridge Analytical whistleblower Christopher Wiley also had some very choice
Speaker 2: words when he described the operation as targeting people's quote
Speaker 2: inner demons, and he described the entire endeavor as quote
Speaker 2: Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mind fuck Tool. Yeah, Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's some good quote. I mean, that's what it is,
Speaker 2: all right. So whether you're just joining us or you're
Speaker 2: back for more, you are now fully caught up. So
Speaker 2: let's dive right back into it. We've just heard about
Speaker 2: Wiley's quotes the psychological warfare mind fucked Tool. Very soon
Speaker 2: after this, Channel four in the UK aired under cover
Speaker 2: footage of Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, who had recently
Speaker 2: told Parliament that the company hadn't used Facebook data, which
Speaker 2: is a statement that did not age well. In the recordings.
Speaker 2: Captured over a series of meetings with a reporter posing
Speaker 2: as a wealthy prospective client, Nix laid out a menu
Speaker 2: of tactics that sounded less like campaign strategy and more
Speaker 2: like a rejected Bond villain, pitch honey traps with sex workers, bribery, blackmail,
Speaker 2: the works, and just around things out. He also casually
Speaker 2: discussed using data to influence elections across the globe. It
Speaker 2: went further than that. Wiley's documents revealed that Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 2: had even pitched its services to Russia in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: they met with representatives from Luke Oil, a Russian oil
Speaker 2: company that often acted as a surrogate for Putin. The
Speaker 2: topic on the table was unsurprisingly psychographic messaging to help
Speaker 2: Russia interfere in foreign elections. Now, it needs to be
Speaker 2: noted they didn't end up doing any official work for
Speaker 2: Luke Oil or the Russian government, But the fact that
Speaker 2: this meeting was taken is dark. We're used to operating
Speaker 2: through different vehicles in the shadows, and I look forward
Speaker 2: to building a very long term and secretive relationship with you. Now,
Speaker 2: I believe that was the perspective, wealthy perspective client meeting,
Speaker 2: not the Luke Oil meeting. But you just get a
Speaker 2: sense of this guy.
Speaker 1: Opening line on Tinder.
Speaker 4: I think, yes, yes, I would love to have that
Speaker 4: very long term and secret of relationship. I as have
Speaker 4: a long term and secretive relationship with Ed. But he said, no,
Speaker 4: you have to come on the podcast. So we're going
Speaker 4: to release.
Speaker 2: It publicly, but it can be long term. Okay, good.
Speaker 2: So by March. By March and April of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: this story was everywhere. You couldn't open news apps without
Speaker 2: bumping into cambrage. Analytica the idea that your memes and
Speaker 2: likes and casual quiz results might have been repurposed in
Speaker 2: political targeting. It just hit people hard. I think it
Speaker 2: hit all of us in this like visceral way. It
Speaker 2: just felt like suddenly what we thought harmless internet background
Speaker 2: noise was not It was more insidious. Perhaps outrage followed
Speaker 2: hashbag Delete Facebook started trending. Tens of millions of accounts
Speaker 2: were implicated in the data exposure or included in the
Speaker 2: data exposure, and users were not happy to discover that
Speaker 2: they had been participating in a system they didn't realize existed.
Speaker 2: Did that backlash affect Facebook?
Speaker 4: I think it was a devastating blow to the trust
Speaker 4: that Americans had in Facebook that the company has truly
Speaker 4: never recovered from. When you look at polls of trust
Speaker 4: in American companies, Facebook typically ranks around the bottom of
Speaker 4: that And while it hadn't been a particularly popular company
Speaker 4: before then, it still had a much better reputation than
Speaker 4: it did before that. So yeah, I think Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 4: was the beginning of the moment that Americans said, this
Speaker 4: company seems kind of shady and it's sucks now. Interestingly,
Speaker 4: that did not stop Americans from continuing to use all
Speaker 4: of its products for many hours a day. But it
Speaker 4: is also true that reputationally camera j analytica was just
Speaker 4: huge for this company well.
Speaker 1: And I think it also brought Facebook more into the
Speaker 1: political sphere because people, I think in politics have kind
Speaker 1: of a varying level of sophistication and familiarity with technology,
Speaker 1: but like political campaigns and political influence is something they
Speaker 1: do understand, and so I think, you know, Zuckerberg spent
Speaker 1: most of the next couple of years like testifying before
Speaker 1: various legislative bodies and answering angry questions from lawmakers, and
Speaker 1: this became like a huge headache for them politically, and
Speaker 1: so I think that was maybe the biggest sort of
Speaker 1: long term consequence of this for Facebook was that it
Speaker 1: just it made them into a political actor in a
Speaker 1: new way, and I think that ended up being very
Speaker 1: hard for them.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. Now, the million dollar
Speaker 2: question did anyone in power actually face any real repercussions?
Speaker 2: And the answer is kind of but also not really.
Speaker 2: So let's dig into that. First off, Facebook executives apparently
Speaker 2: knew all this was happening on their platform. They found
Speaker 2: out in twenty fifteen that cogan'sapp had been mining data,
Speaker 2: but when they looked into it, Cambridge Analytica claimed that
Speaker 2: all the data had been deleted. You guys have been
Speaker 2: mentioning this so far, and so Facebook just kind of
Speaker 2: let it go. Now did they tell any of their
Speaker 2: users that their data had been taken? Of course not.
Speaker 2: There was no need to do this, I guess. I
Speaker 2: feel like the scale and complexity of these platforms just
Speaker 2: makes it really easy to sweep things under the rug.
Speaker 2: Like you just you don't have to you don't have
Speaker 2: to own up to things so much like to what
Speaker 2: is the percentage of healthy activity versus unhealthy activity in
Speaker 2: a Facebook office?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that the way that the company thinks
Speaker 4: about its core business would really shock people. They sort
Speaker 4: of dress it up in a lot of like metaphors
Speaker 4: and they don't always say out loud exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 4: But like, make no mistake, like the longer that you
Speaker 4: stare at the app, the more money that company makes,
Speaker 4: and so like that is what that company is built
Speaker 4: to do, is to like get you to stare at it.
Speaker 4: And yeah, that's had maybe a lot of negative downstream
Speaker 4: consequences over the years.
Speaker 2: When the Cambridge Analytical data leak was revealed, of course,
Speaker 2: Facebook CEO Zuckerberg went silent for five whole days. Kevin.
Speaker 2: On March twenty first of twenty eighteen, you wrote a
Speaker 2: New York Times article called missing from Facebook's crisis colon
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg, where you said that since the scandal broke,
Speaker 2: neither mister Zuckerberg nor Cheryl sam Berg, Facebook chief operating
Speaker 2: officer has made any public appearances. I'm now quoting you
Speaker 2: to you, but I love it. Mister Zuckerberg's last public
Speaker 2: post on Facebook was a March second photo of himself
Speaker 2: and his wife, Priscilla Chan baking ham and tash and
Speaker 2: cookies to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Porum. Miss Sandberg's
Speaker 2: most recent post was a four day old photo from
Speaker 2: her child's debate competition. It feels like they're terrified, like this,
Speaker 2: this is four days of what Like what's in that
Speaker 2: moment for them?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think they were trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what had happened. They were clearly surprised by this. They
Speaker 1: were looking into the various actions they had taken against
Speaker 1: Cogan and Cambridge Analytica. They're trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: this had sort of slipped through their systems. But they
Speaker 1: were also just on their back feet and they were
Speaker 1: you have to remember this was coming just shortly after
Speaker 1: all of the Russia stuff which sort of swirled around
Speaker 1: them in the aftermath of the twenty sixteen election, and
Speaker 1: there were you know, investigations and congressional hearings and the
Speaker 1: Mulla Report. Like all this was happening, you know, roughly
Speaker 1: in the same period of a couple of years, and
Speaker 1: I think for them, they were just trying to figure out, okay, well, like,
Speaker 1: is this sort of an all hands on deck code
Speaker 1: read incident or is this going to blow over soon?
Speaker 2: I'm going to jump now into Zuck's testifying in front
Speaker 2: of Congress. This is this was a wild media circus.
Speaker 2: He gets obviously pulled in to answer a lot of
Speaker 2: questions and there's some kind of interesting moments. We've got
Speaker 2: one here to take a listen to. Thank you very much,
Speaker 2: mis chairman.
Speaker 1: Mister Zuckerberg, would you be comfortable sharing with us the
Speaker 1: name of the hotel you stayed in last night?
Speaker 2: No, I'm just loving Congress's approach here. They're making Zuckerberg
Speaker 2: feel like his privacy is maybe that he holds it
Speaker 2: at a different level than those of his customers, and
Speaker 2: that that's not real. Chill chill.
Speaker 1: Maybe he was just embarrassed because it was like a
Speaker 1: best Western. Yeah, the Four Seasons was all full.
Speaker 2: So yeah, somehow I doubt that, but I do. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I just think that there were some ways in which
Speaker 2: this hearing was was pretty effective and just sort of
Speaker 2: channeling the bad will of what's afoot here. In later testimony,
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook probably should have banned Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 2: back in twenty fifteen. Instead of accepting their assurances that
Speaker 2: they had deleted the harvested data. Zuckerberg took responsibility, saying
Speaker 2: it was my mistake and I'm sorry. I started Facebook.
Speaker 2: I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens here.
Speaker 2: And just reading that, I also I realized that in
Speaker 2: my cadence it sounded like I said and I'm sorry
Speaker 2: I started Facebook, which is not what he said. He said,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry period I started Facebook. But I kind of
Speaker 2: like the other interpretation. Well, Zuckerberg, this is all well
Speaker 2: and good, but sometimes a simple apology doesn't cut it
Speaker 2: when the personal information of eighty seven million people is
Speaker 2: stolen on your Watch, Casey. On June seventh, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: you wrote a column in The Verge called Congress roasted
Speaker 2: Facebook on TV, but won't hear any bills to regulate it.
Speaker 2: So did Zuckerberg testifying accomplish anything? Was it all just
Speaker 2: kind of a dog and pony show.
Speaker 4: My view is that the congressional hearings really did not
Speaker 4: accomplish very much. I got frustrated because he wound up
Speaker 4: doing a bunch of these hearings over the next few years.
Speaker 4: Typically somebody would ask him a question, he would get
Speaker 4: five words, undo the answer, are they interrupt him and
Speaker 4: move on to their next question. So it all just
Speaker 4: sort of felt useless. And you know, one of the
Speaker 4: really sort of funny things that emerge was that the
Speaker 4: main product of these hearings was that the congress members
Speaker 4: would ask him their gotcha question. They would you know,
Speaker 4: interrupt him and try to look tough and sort of
Speaker 4: push back on him, and then they would clip that
Speaker 4: and then put that on Instagram, you know. So it
Speaker 4: was like they were sort of using his platforms to
Speaker 4: like burnish their own reputations but not actually address any
Speaker 4: of the underlying issues that they were allegedly mad about
Speaker 4: well and.
Speaker 1: Critically like Congress didn't do anything. You know, they didn't
Speaker 1: pass a federal privacy law. There was no lasting change
Speaker 1: that came out of this that made anyone's data any
Speaker 1: safer that originated in Congress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what that's that's unusual for Congress. That feels
Speaker 2: weird that they didn't do anything. Let's get back to
Speaker 2: your interview in those days right after Kevin, where you
Speaker 2: did have you and your colleague did have that chance
Speaker 2: to talk directly to Mark Zuckerberg. There's a pretty poignant
Speaker 2: moment in that interview where you asked Mark if he
Speaker 2: felt guilty about the role Facebook is playing in the world.
Speaker 2: He said, I don't know that it's possible to know
Speaker 2: every issue that you're going to face down the road,
Speaker 2: but we have a real responsibility to take all these
Speaker 2: issues seriously as they come up and work with experts
Speaker 2: in people around the world to make sure we solve
Speaker 2: them and do a good job for our community. At
Speaker 2: another point in the interview, he reiterates that the primary
Speaker 2: mission of Facebook is to connect people. Now, I think
Speaker 2: at this point we all feel that that's a pretty
Speaker 2: tired canard, but I'm curious at that time and being
Speaker 2: on the phone and hearing the tenor of his voice, like,
Speaker 2: did you believe that he was being sincere year in
Speaker 2: that moment about Facebook's larger mission, about their sort of
Speaker 2: sense of integrity and this quote real responsibility to take
Speaker 2: these things seriously.
Speaker 1: I don't know what response I had at the time,
Speaker 1: but looking back on it now, I see that this
Speaker 1: is just what he does or what he did. You know,
Speaker 1: for many years since the start of Facebook, basically there
Speaker 1: was a pattern where Facebook would do something, whether it
Speaker 1: was changing the news feed or taking away some feature
Speaker 1: that people liked or implementing some new feature that people
Speaker 1: didn't like, and he would say, sorry, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: feel a real responsibility to get this right or something
Speaker 1: like that, and then nothing would change, or they would
Speaker 1: walk back part of the change but keep the rest
Speaker 1: of it. He did this a lot, and this was
Speaker 1: a particularly high stakes example of this, but I think
Speaker 1: it fit with the pattern.
Speaker 2: Do we need to go to couple's therapy with Mark
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg as a population?
Speaker 4: I mean, I think we know who Mark Zuckerberg is
Speaker 4: at this point. He is a man who wants to
Speaker 4: win and will do almost anything to do that. But
Speaker 4: like that is the thing that is important to him.
Speaker 4: It is growing a big thing. His legacy is very important.
Speaker 4: He wants to be remembered as like a sort of
Speaker 4: you know, very important inventor. All the other details are
Speaker 4: you know, negotiable. And I think that's actually quite scary.
Speaker 4: And as the years have gone on, we've sort of
Speaker 4: seen that, Like the explanation that he gave Kevin, he
Speaker 4: gave it because that was what the world wanted to
Speaker 4: hear at the time. But then as long as but
Speaker 4: then when the sort of world moved on, his explanations
Speaker 4: could move on to.
Speaker 2: Well, despite everything, Zuckerberg got away basically scott free. But
Speaker 2: what about Cambridge Analytica? So the fallout for them was
Speaker 2: more straightforward. The FTC sued the company in by May eighteen,
Speaker 2: it had filed for bankruptcy. Alexander Nicks, the CEO, didn't
Speaker 2: exactly walk away clean either. In twenty twenty, the FDC
Speaker 2: barred him from holding directorships or working in similar data
Speaker 2: driven political operations. The list of conduct attached to that
Speaker 2: ban included bribery, honeytrap schemes, voter disengagement tactics, and covert
Speaker 2: information operations aimed at discrediting political opponents. The fine print,
Speaker 2: of course, is that the ban is time limited, which means,
Speaker 2: doing the math, he is set to be eligible to
Speaker 2: return to this field in September of twenty twenty seven, and.
Speaker 4: We're all rooting for him to get back in the game.
Speaker 1: You got this, Alex.
Speaker 2: He paid his debts to society. Come on, I'm sure
Speaker 2: he turned around. He learned a lot of lessons. Casey.
Speaker 2: In your article from The Verge titled Cambridge Analytica died
Speaker 2: because it couldn't stop playing the victim, you wrote, Cambridge
Speaker 2: Analytica was nothing if not consistent. After nearly two months
Speaker 2: of scandal, the Trump campaign's one time data analytics firm
Speaker 2: died as it lived, denying it ever did anything wrong
Speaker 2: and excoriating the journalists who reported about the ways in
Speaker 2: which it misused data. No one at Cambridge Analytica was
Speaker 2: sorry for what the company did, and few will be
Speaker 2: sorry to see it go. I love your writing, both
Speaker 2: of you guys. I truly it's like there's just a
Speaker 2: it's like a little chippy, you know, but also just
Speaker 2: deeply honest and like attached to I think you guys
Speaker 2: are coming from a place of deep integrity, and I
Speaker 2: really appreciate that. This is obviously the classic deny, deny,
Speaker 2: deny move which we see so much in the political sphere. Now,
Speaker 2: do you think it's just as prevalent in the tech world.
Speaker 2: I don't have a sense of that. I mean, obviously
Speaker 2: it's the it's de rigueur in the political space.
Speaker 4: What specifically just this kind of just like can deny everything.
Speaker 2: Take no responsibility. I mean, we were just talking about
Speaker 2: how Zuckerberg is a little bit of sort of like
Speaker 2: pablum supplier.
Speaker 4: But I mean my view on this is that Silicon
Speaker 4: Valley at the very least used to pay more lip
Speaker 4: service to corporate responsibility. You know, I started covering tech
Speaker 4: in twenty ten, and I you know, spent the first
Speaker 4: decades hearing companies talk endlessly about all of the good
Speaker 4: that they were doing in the world and how they
Speaker 4: were going to sort of change everything around us for
Speaker 4: the better. I think the moment that changed was when
Speaker 4: Elon Musk bought Twitter. Because Elon Musk did not really
Speaker 4: pretend that he I mean, he would you know, make
Speaker 4: noises sometimes about you know, Twitter saving civilization, but it
Speaker 4: was also sort of like lofty and ridiculous. I think
Speaker 4: no one took it seriously. But then in the meantime,
Speaker 4: you know, he would like fire the team doing the
Speaker 4: content moderation. He would post incredibly offensive things online all
Speaker 4: the time, he would laid off many of his employees,
Speaker 4: and a lot of the other CEOs in Silicon Valley
Speaker 4: took a look at the fact that no matter how
Speaker 4: outrageous Elon musks behavior was, value of his company has
Speaker 4: kept going up, and they said, why have I been
Speaker 4: paying lip serviced all this corporate responsibility stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't have to do that. I'm just gonna do
Speaker 1: what I want.
Speaker 4: And so we're now sort of living in like that
Speaker 4: dark world where no one feels any like like the
Speaker 4: like they can sort of get away with the stuff
Speaker 4: that they have been wanting to do the whole time.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's i would say, it's even like it's
Speaker 1: even gone further than that, to the point where you know,
Speaker 1: if these CEOs used to be virtue signaling, they are
Speaker 1: now vice signaling.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: They want to be seen as sort of care free
Speaker 1: bad boys who don't play by the rules, because that
Speaker 1: is sort of the vibe in this class of executives
Speaker 1: Now it's not cool if you're a CEO to be
Speaker 1: bossed around by your employees or to take cues about
Speaker 1: how to run your company from from anyone else. What
Speaker 1: is in is founder mode and the idea that you
Speaker 1: just have to sort of rule with an iron fist.
Speaker 1: So I think there's been a real cultural shift in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valleant and Mark Zuckerberg is a great example of that.
Speaker 1: You know, you will notice that he no longer apologizes
Speaker 1: for things when he went when you know, meta as
Speaker 1: it's now called, does something that gets a lot of
Speaker 1: people upset. You don't see him doing these sort of
Speaker 1: apologetic press tours and saying, oh, I feel so much
Speaker 1: responsibility over this, because that is not the it's not
Speaker 1: required de ragur to borrow your French phrase that that
Speaker 1: CEO should do that anymore.
Speaker 2: Can we go back to virtue signaling?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Like, can we just what's like? Virtue signaling is mildly annoying,
Speaker 2: but the but vice signaling is like deeply unsettled.
Speaker 4: Right Also, like I would hope that even the people
Speaker 4: complaining about virtue signaling would admit that it's still like
Speaker 4: good to have virtues, you know, thank you, We should
Speaker 4: still like have basic principles that we operate by that
Speaker 4: you know, create a better world. So yeah, I would love.
Speaker 2: To see if the accusation is that you're not living
Speaker 2: up to the virtue is that you're espousing. I can
Speaker 2: deal with that a lot more than just espousing horseshit
Speaker 2: as like your value system anyway.
Speaker 1: That's I think it's important to have both virtues and vices.
Speaker 2: All right, Oh, elaborate, Kevin, what are your favorite vikes?
Speaker 1: He's a huge scambler. Inside every person, there's a you know,
Speaker 1: there's of course.
Speaker 2: We contained multitude. This has sort of emerged throughout our discussion,
Speaker 2: but it's worth putting a fine point on the fact
Speaker 2: that it came out later that Cambridge Analytica's efforts may
Speaker 2: not have had nearly as much impact as they intended
Speaker 2: or claimed, which perhaps it really was just a giant scam,
Speaker 2: a scam of a scam. But Cambridge Analytica's shuddering wasn't
Speaker 2: the end for this case. Finally, in twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: came the drum roll please class action lawsuit Facebook I'm
Speaker 2: sorry now. Meta agreed to pay seven hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: five million to set a legal action over the data
Speaker 2: breach of victory. But you know, a record twenty eight
Speaker 2: million people had staked their claim, equating to an average
Speaker 2: payout of thirty dollars. Was this a win? Yeah?
Speaker 1: This was huge.
Speaker 4: I think everyone who was really upset about Donald Trump's
Speaker 4: election and some of the underhanded tactics that Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 4: employed to get there, all.
Speaker 1: They really wanted was thirty dollars.
Speaker 4: And so when that came down, I think people were like,
Speaker 4: all right, that actually was like that was a fair deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm retired on that thirty dollars.
Speaker 2: Yes. Facebook did also bay a record five billion dollar
Speaker 2: fine to the US government. The previous record holder was Equifax,
Speaker 2: who had been charged four hundred and twenty five so
Speaker 2: that's a pretty big jump. On top of that, there
Speaker 2: was an sec penalty of one hundred million. The UK
Speaker 2: Information Commissioner's Office will find them five hundred thousand pounds afterward.
Speaker 2: According to The Guardian and Channel four, Facebook quote modified
Speaker 2: their corporate structure to ensure executives are more accountable for
Speaker 2: users privacy, and they also locked down quote their APIs
Speaker 2: as you reported, Casey, And that's the extent of it, guys,
Speaker 2: that's the whole kitten kaboodle of Cambridge Analytica, which I
Speaker 2: always want to say Encyclopedia Britannica whenever the name comes up.
Speaker 2: That's the first thing that falls in my head. But
Speaker 2: before we dive into just a couple of wrap up reflections,
Speaker 2: did we miss anything? Was there any like crucial part
Speaker 2: of this narrative that I skipped? Well?
Speaker 4: I mean, one of the reasons that the British press
Speaker 4: seized on this story and sort of led a lot
Speaker 4: of the coverage was that it was also implicated in
Speaker 4: Brexit of US, and that there was a lot of
Speaker 4: thinking that the same forces that wanted Trump to win
Speaker 4: also wanted Brexit to happen, and so they had sort
Speaker 4: of run their same psychographic operation on the UK and
Speaker 4: Brexit wound up being successful. So I think that's an
Speaker 4: important thing to point out, because even though again I
Speaker 4: do believe that a lot of the feeders around what
Speaker 4: Cambrage Analytica actually did or overstated, the fact that it
Speaker 4: was implicated in these two kind of like epical shifts
Speaker 4: in Western civilization within a couple of years of each
Speaker 4: other is one of the big reasons why it caught fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree with that, and I would just
Speaker 1: add one more sort of coda to this story, which
Speaker 1: is that I think this scandal cost Facebook in one
Speaker 1: particular way. And I'm not sure about this, but I'm
Speaker 1: just piecing together some threads here, which is that in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, as they were dealing with this, this was
Speaker 1: also the year that researchers at places like open Ai
Speaker 1: and Google were starting to experiment with these new kinds
Speaker 1: of AI systems. At the time, Facebook was one of
Speaker 1: the leading AI research companies. They had a lot of researchers,
Speaker 1: they had this big division, and they basically missed this
Speaker 1: wave in part, I think because they were so distracted
Speaker 1: by all of the political controversies and the testimonies and
Speaker 1: the hearings, and the fines and the regulation threats, and
Speaker 1: I think it was just if you could sort of speculate,
Speaker 1: you know, that these things have kind of a butterfly effect.
Speaker 1: I think that one of the reasons that they were
Speaker 1: late to this new wave of AI that is now
Speaker 1: they are now spending a lot of money to try
Speaker 1: to catch up in is that they were just really distracted.
Speaker 1: And part of that distraction was this Cambridge Analytica business
Speaker 1: in summation.
Speaker 2: Guys, I just have one sort of one last, sort
Speaker 2: of broad reflective question. I love that Zuckerberg's original mantra
Speaker 2: was move fast and break things, and then in twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen they changed it to move fast with stable infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Of course, this was before all of this stuff broke down,
Speaker 2: so apparently they didn't stick to it very well. But
Speaker 2: it does indicate an awareness of some of their liability,
Speaker 2: an awareness that perhaps they're not sort of signaling ethics
Speaker 2: forward in the way that they should be. They should
Speaker 2: be doing better. Cambridge Analytica was a huge misstep. But
Speaker 2: I'm curious for both of you, guys so entrenched in
Speaker 2: the tech industry right now, do you feel like the
Speaker 2: general sense of the integrity of the leadership in tech
Speaker 2: is trending better? Or it feels like we went through
Speaker 2: a phase like you were just describing Casey, where you know,
Speaker 2: maybe Musk taking over Twitter was like the inflection point
Speaker 2: of a downward trend. Are we where are we headed?
Speaker 2: And please tap into your inner optimism here?
Speaker 4: Oh man, I'm trying to think of an optimistic take
Speaker 4: on this that I actually believe. I think that if
Speaker 4: I have any optimism it's that we're sort of reaching
Speaker 4: the Nader, you know, like we have seen over the
Speaker 4: past few years, most of the CEOs try to align
Speaker 4: themselves with just these sort of very exploitative, hyper capitalist
Speaker 4: forces where they seem like they scarcely care about any
Speaker 4: individual like one of their customers. And I think that
Speaker 4: that is just going to burn itself out, like I do,
Speaker 4: like I feel like right now we are being consumed
Speaker 4: by a fever, and I think the fever is going
Speaker 4: to pass, and I do not think it is going
Speaker 4: to kill the patient. And I think that once that
Speaker 4: fever has passed, people are going to be looking around
Speaker 4: and they're once again going to align themselves with you know,
Speaker 4: companies and CEOs and political leaders who do actually signal
Speaker 4: some virtues and live up to them and seem to
Speaker 4: sort of have their best interests at heart. So I
Speaker 4: think we are in a pretty dark time for that
Speaker 4: at the moment, but I don't think it'll last for ever.
Speaker 1: I'll offer one more threat of optimism.
Speaker 2: Please, But first let me just say that was beautiful.
Speaker 2: That was such a deep dig for optimism and I
Speaker 2: believed it and I really appreciated all Right, Kevin.
Speaker 1: Mine is optimistic in a slightly different way, which is
Speaker 1: related to the last discussion about AI and how Meta
Speaker 1: had missed out on this moment in part because they
Speaker 1: were distracted. Imagine how scared people would be right now
Speaker 1: about AI if Mark Zuckerberg and Meta were the leading
Speaker 1: AI companies in the world, as much as people are
Speaker 1: terrified of this stuff taking jobs and you know, creating
Speaker 1: cyber attacks and blowing up the world. I think we're
Speaker 1: in a better place now because Meta fell behind during
Speaker 1: that moment than we would be if they had really
Speaker 1: recognized that something was shifting and moved to act on
Speaker 1: it faster. So that's not exactly optimism, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a it could be worse moment.
Speaker 2: Well, my only pushback on that is that I don't
Speaker 2: feel like Sam Altman is any better than Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 2: and in some ways scares me even more to say
Speaker 2: that there's you guys have seen these these trending videos
Speaker 2: where people kind of catch chat ept either being overconfident
Speaker 2: or or or not able to spell, or not able
Speaker 2: to use a timer and things like that. I love those.
Speaker 2: They're very they're very funny and entertaining, but they're also
Speaker 2: they're they're also incredibly revealing that these ais are just
Speaker 2: not operating the way we think they are at all,
Speaker 2: and we've fully anthropomorphized them at this point. But but
Speaker 2: they're they're flawed, They're deeply flawed. These incredibly simple like
Speaker 2: intellectual tests are failing. And also the thing that's scaring
Speaker 2: me about those is that is the confidence with which
Speaker 2: it pushes through them, And it pushes through with an
Speaker 2: arrogance and a kind of like this reassuring thing that
Speaker 2: you're wrong. It's like the tone is that you're wrong
Speaker 2: and you've asked the wrong question, or that you've done
Speaker 2: by by catching them your sort of your and I
Speaker 2: I find that deeply unnerving and weirdly reflective of the
Speaker 2: leadership of chat GPT. And I don't understand the technology,
Speaker 2: but but in the ways that institutions often can reflect
Speaker 2: their leaders that feels like such a literal way in
Speaker 2: which chat gpt is reflecting Sam Altman, who is now
Speaker 2: widely reported to be a very untrustworthy person. So and
Speaker 2: also a bullshit artist, which is what the app is
Speaker 2: doing in those moments.
Speaker 1: So I was trying to lend a note of optimism,
Speaker 1: but you took us right back down to hell. So I.
Speaker 2: I tried, I'm gonna pull you down in this whirlpool.
Speaker 2: Uh No, But I I don't know, did that even
Speaker 2: make sense to what I'm saying there?
Speaker 1: I think I think that. I think it's a fair point.
Speaker 4: Now, It's also true that like all of the apps,
Speaker 4: you know, hallucinate in this in the same way. But like,
Speaker 4: is there a sort of general over confidence and cockiness
Speaker 4: and bullshit about the tech world?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Well, guys, this has been an absolute delight and
Speaker 2: I truly have learned a lot from you, which is
Speaker 2: really exciting for me. And I just want to thank
Speaker 2: you for being so damn delightful and brilliant. Thanks for
Speaker 2: coming on.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: This was so fun.
Speaker 2: SNAFU is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snapfu Media,
Speaker 2: a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company.
Speaker 2: Post production and creative support from good Egg Audio. Our
Speaker 2: executive producers are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner,
Speaker 2: Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by
Speaker 2: Alyssa Martino and Tory Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis.
Speaker 2: Our video editor is Jared Smith, Technical direction and engineering
Speaker 2: from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our
Speaker 2: creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt
Speaker 2: Gosson and the collected works. Legal review from Dan Welsh
Speaker 2: Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horne,
Speaker 2: Lane Kline, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson,
Speaker 2: Kerry Lieberman and Nikki Ator. While I have you, don't
Speaker 2: forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snaffoo,
Speaker 2: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available
Speaker 2: now from any book retailer. Just go to Snaffoo dashbook
Speaker 2: dot com. Thanks for listening, and see you next week.