WEBVTT - Cambridge Analytica: Facebook's Big Data Scandal - Part II (with Kevin Roose and Casey Newton) 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:03.600 I think it's important to have both virtues advices. 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:07.200 All right, Oh, elaborate, Kevin, what are your favorite advice? 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:11.080 He's a huge candler. Of course, we contain Volta Zudes. 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:25.639 Hello Snaffoo fans, and welcome back to snaff Who, the 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.880 podcast about history's greatest screw ups. I am your host 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:33.200 ed helms, and today we are diving into part two 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:37.239 of our Cambridge Analytica story, because this one was just 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.239 too insane to try to squeeze into one episode. It 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:43.280 is just absolutely bonkers. And of course I am still 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:47.440 joined for part two by my incredible guests, the brilliant 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:51.040 Kevin Russe and Casey Newton of the New York Times 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:56.480 tech podcast hard Fork. They are two of the most delightful, hilarious, 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:59.480 brilliant and insightful people you could ever hope to have 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:03.600 on a podecas. And they're also incredibly well informed on 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:04.720 this particular story. 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:07.760 Because they both covered it as reporters when it happened 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:12.800 back in the mid twenty tens. All right, so I 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:15.399 highly suggest if you haven't already go back and listened 0:01:15.400 --> 0:01:17.800 to the previous episode just so you're fully up to speed. 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:19.920 But you know what, you don't have to. I'm going 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:23.360 to give you a quick little recap here, so we're 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:26.600 all in this together, all right. Previously on Snafu, a 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:29.720 seemingly harmless Facebook quiz turned into a full blown data 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:33.560 exploitation scheme, as millions of users had their information quietly 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:36.520 scraped from Facebook and handed over to a nefarious political 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:41.400 strategy operation called Cambridge Analytica, which then used said data 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:44.920 to build psychological profiles of nearly eighty million users and 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:49.280 then target them with manipulative political messaging. This very sketchy 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:52.720 firm was employed by both the Ted Cruz and Donald 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:58.080 Trump campaigns during the twenty sixteen presidential election. Kevin Ruce 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:04.080 actually landed an inn with zuck in the immediate aftermath 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:09.600 of this giant scandal, and it's a wild story. Kevin 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:11.760 was given like in his colleague. They were given like 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:15.440 twenty minutes to prepare for this epic interview, which was 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:19.280 probably something of a psycho power play on Zuckerberg's part anyway. 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:23.480 Cambridge Analytical whistleblower Christopher Wiley also had some very choice 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:28.120 words when he described the operation as targeting people's quote 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:34.080 inner demons, and he described the entire endeavor as quote 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:41.839 Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mind fuck Tool. Yeah, Yeah, that's 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:44.320 that's some good quote. I mean, that's what it is, 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:46.839 all right. So whether you're just joining us or you're 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:49.160 back for more, you are now fully caught up. So 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:52.280 let's dive right back into it. We've just heard about 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:57.880 Wiley's quotes the psychological warfare mind fucked Tool. Very soon 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:00.280 after this, Channel four in the UK aired under cover 0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:04.280 footage of Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, who had recently 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:07.919 told Parliament that the company hadn't used Facebook data, which 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.480 is a statement that did not age well. In the recordings. 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:13.840 Captured over a series of meetings with a reporter posing 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.360 as a wealthy prospective client, Nix laid out a menu 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:20.760 of tactics that sounded less like campaign strategy and more 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:26.760 like a rejected Bond villain, pitch honey traps with sex workers, bribery, blackmail, 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:30.000 the works, and just around things out. He also casually 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:34.760 discussed using data to influence elections across the globe. It 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:38.520 went further than that. Wiley's documents revealed that Cambridge Analytica 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:41.800 had even pitched its services to Russia in twenty fourteen, 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:45.040 they met with representatives from Luke Oil, a Russian oil 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:47.920 company that often acted as a surrogate for Putin. The 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:51.960 topic on the table was unsurprisingly psychographic messaging to help 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:56.040 Russia interfere in foreign elections. Now, it needs to be 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.040 noted they didn't end up doing any official work for 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.000 Luke Oil or the Russian government, But the fact that 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:06.640 this meeting was taken is dark. We're used to operating 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.600 through different vehicles in the shadows, and I look forward 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:12.760 to building a very long term and secretive relationship with you. Now, 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:16.159 I believe that was the perspective, wealthy perspective client meeting, 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:18.800 not the Luke Oil meeting. But you just get a 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:19.760 sense of this guy. 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:22.680 Opening line on Tinder. 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:25.080 I think, yes, yes, I would love to have that 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:27.680 very long term and secret of relationship. I as have 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.039 a long term and secretive relationship with Ed. But he said, no, 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:31.600 you have to come on the podcast. So we're going 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:32.200 to release. 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:36.320 It publicly, but it can be long term. Okay, good. 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:40.480 So by March. By March and April of twenty eighteen, 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:43.240 this story was everywhere. You couldn't open news apps without 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:47.280 bumping into cambrage. Analytica the idea that your memes and 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:51.280 likes and casual quiz results might have been repurposed in 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:55.040 political targeting. It just hit people hard. I think it 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:57.880 hit all of us in this like visceral way. It 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:01.400 just felt like suddenly what we thought harmless internet background 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:06.840 noise was not It was more insidious. Perhaps outrage followed 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:10.680 hashbag Delete Facebook started trending. Tens of millions of accounts 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:14.680 were implicated in the data exposure or included in the 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:18.719 data exposure, and users were not happy to discover that 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:21.760 they had been participating in a system they didn't realize existed. 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:24.480 Did that backlash affect Facebook? 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:29.200 I think it was a devastating blow to the trust 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:33.280 that Americans had in Facebook that the company has truly 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:37.360 never recovered from. When you look at polls of trust 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:42.719 in American companies, Facebook typically ranks around the bottom of 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:46.960 that And while it hadn't been a particularly popular company 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.720 before then, it still had a much better reputation than 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:54.120 it did before that. So yeah, I think Cambridge Analytica 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.680 was the beginning of the moment that Americans said, this 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:01.360 company seems kind of shady and it's sucks now. Interestingly, 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:03.800 that did not stop Americans from continuing to use all 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:06.279 of its products for many hours a day. But it 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:11.080 is also true that reputationally camera j analytica was just 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:13.240 huge for this company well. 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:16.800 And I think it also brought Facebook more into the 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:23.400 political sphere because people, I think in politics have kind 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:28.680 of a varying level of sophistication and familiarity with technology, 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:32.280 but like political campaigns and political influence is something they 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:35.480 do understand, and so I think, you know, Zuckerberg spent 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:39.120 most of the next couple of years like testifying before 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:44.080 various legislative bodies and answering angry questions from lawmakers, and 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.880 this became like a huge headache for them politically, and 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:50.680 so I think that was maybe the biggest sort of 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:53.400 long term consequence of this for Facebook was that it 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.320 just it made them into a political actor in a 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:58.839 new way, and I think that ended up being very 0:06:59.320 --> 0:06:59.920 hard for them. 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.480 That makes a lot of sense. Now, the million dollar 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:08.920 question did anyone in power actually face any real repercussions? 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:13.000 And the answer is kind of but also not really. 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:18.920 So let's dig into that. First off, Facebook executives apparently 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:21.240 knew all this was happening on their platform. They found 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:23.840 out in twenty fifteen that cogan'sapp had been mining data, 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.440 but when they looked into it, Cambridge Analytica claimed that 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:29.760 all the data had been deleted. You guys have been 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:33.240 mentioning this so far, and so Facebook just kind of 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:37.000 let it go. Now did they tell any of their 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:40.080 users that their data had been taken? Of course not. 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:42.400 There was no need to do this, I guess. I 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.280 feel like the scale and complexity of these platforms just 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.080 makes it really easy to sweep things under the rug. 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:51.440 Like you just you don't have to you don't have 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:53.720 to own up to things so much like to what 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:57.960 is the percentage of healthy activity versus unhealthy activity in 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:00.480 a Facebook office? 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:04.920 Yeah, I think that the way that the company thinks 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:10.680 about its core business would really shock people. They sort 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:14.960 of dress it up in a lot of like metaphors 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:18.400 and they don't always say out loud exactly what they're doing. 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.640 But like, make no mistake, like the longer that you 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.800 stare at the app, the more money that company makes, 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:28.200 and so like that is what that company is built 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:31.320 to do, is to like get you to stare at it. 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:36.400 And yeah, that's had maybe a lot of negative downstream 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:37.679 consequences over the years. 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:41.560 When the Cambridge Analytical data leak was revealed, of course, 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:46.920 Facebook CEO Zuckerberg went silent for five whole days. Kevin. 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:49.520 On March twenty first of twenty eighteen, you wrote a 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:53.680 New York Times article called missing from Facebook's crisis colon 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:57.880 Mark Zuckerberg, where you said that since the scandal broke, 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:01.600 neither mister Zuckerberg nor Cheryl sam Berg, Facebook chief operating 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:05.000 officer has made any public appearances. I'm now quoting you 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:08.840 to you, but I love it. Mister Zuckerberg's last public 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:11.600 post on Facebook was a March second photo of himself 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:13.559 and his wife, Priscilla Chan baking ham and tash and 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.800 cookies to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Porum. Miss Sandberg's 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:18.640 most recent post was a four day old photo from 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:22.679 her child's debate competition. It feels like they're terrified, like this, 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:29.640 this is four days of what Like what's in that 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:30.400 moment for them? 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:33.360 I mean, I think they were trying to figure out 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.640 what had happened. They were clearly surprised by this. They 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:44.079 were looking into the various actions they had taken against 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:47.640 Cogan and Cambridge Analytica. They're trying to figure out how 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.559 this had sort of slipped through their systems. But they 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:56.040 were also just on their back feet and they were 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:00.280 you have to remember this was coming just shortly after 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:05.400 all of the Russia stuff which sort of swirled around 0:10:05.440 --> 0:10:09.200 them in the aftermath of the twenty sixteen election, and 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:12.840 there were you know, investigations and congressional hearings and the 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:15.680 Mulla Report. Like all this was happening, you know, roughly 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:18.720 in the same period of a couple of years, and 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:22.000 I think for them, they were just trying to figure out, okay, well, like, 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:25.440 is this sort of an all hands on deck code 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:28.480 read incident or is this going to blow over soon? 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:32.760 I'm going to jump now into Zuck's testifying in front 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:36.080 of Congress. This is this was a wild media circus. 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:40.760 He gets obviously pulled in to answer a lot of 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:45.640 questions and there's some kind of interesting moments. We've got 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:47.960 one here to take a listen to. Thank you very much, 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:48.680 mis chairman. 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:51.640 Mister Zuckerberg, would you be comfortable sharing with us the 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:53.400 name of the hotel you stayed in last night? 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:06.559 No, I'm just loving Congress's approach here. They're making Zuckerberg 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:14.040 feel like his privacy is maybe that he holds it 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:16.679 at a different level than those of his customers, and 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:18.960 that that's not real. Chill chill. 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:21.400 Maybe he was just embarrassed because it was like a 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:27.120 best Western. Yeah, the Four Seasons was all full. 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:33.240 So yeah, somehow I doubt that, but I do. Yeah, 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:35.520 I just think that there were some ways in which 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:39.280 this hearing was was pretty effective and just sort of 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:44.560 channeling the bad will of what's afoot here. In later testimony, 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:48.679 Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook probably should have banned Cambridge Analytica 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:51.719 back in twenty fifteen. Instead of accepting their assurances that 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:56.120 they had deleted the harvested data. Zuckerberg took responsibility, saying 0:11:56.200 --> 0:11:59.400 it was my mistake and I'm sorry. I started Facebook. 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:02.680 I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens here. 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:06.720 And just reading that, I also I realized that in 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:10.199 my cadence it sounded like I said and I'm sorry 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:14.920 I started Facebook, which is not what he said. He said, 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:18.679 I'm sorry period I started Facebook. But I kind of 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:21.600 like the other interpretation. Well, Zuckerberg, this is all well 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:24.360 and good, but sometimes a simple apology doesn't cut it 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.400 when the personal information of eighty seven million people is 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:31.040 stolen on your Watch, Casey. On June seventh, twenty eighteen, 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:34.480 you wrote a column in The Verge called Congress roasted 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:39.520 Facebook on TV, but won't hear any bills to regulate it. 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:43.840 So did Zuckerberg testifying accomplish anything? Was it all just 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:45.720 kind of a dog and pony show. 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:49.640 My view is that the congressional hearings really did not 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:53.000 accomplish very much. I got frustrated because he wound up 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:55.760 doing a bunch of these hearings over the next few years. 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:58.679 Typically somebody would ask him a question, he would get 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:00.760 five words, undo the answer, are they interrupt him and 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:02.560 move on to their next question. So it all just 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:06.760 sort of felt useless. And you know, one of the 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:11.040 really sort of funny things that emerge was that the 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:15.600 main product of these hearings was that the congress members 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:19.400 would ask him their gotcha question. They would you know, 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:21.439 interrupt him and try to look tough and sort of 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:23.760 push back on him, and then they would clip that 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:25.960 and then put that on Instagram, you know. So it 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:29.280 was like they were sort of using his platforms to 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:33.560 like burnish their own reputations but not actually address any 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:36.360 of the underlying issues that they were allegedly mad about 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:36.800 well and. 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:40.680 Critically like Congress didn't do anything. You know, they didn't 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:45.200 pass a federal privacy law. There was no lasting change 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:48.000 that came out of this that made anyone's data any 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:51.440 safer that originated in Congress. 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:57.320 Yeah, that's what that's that's unusual for Congress. That feels 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:06.680 weird that they didn't do anything. Let's get back to 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:10.080 your interview in those days right after Kevin, where you 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:14.480 did have you and your colleague did have that chance 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:17.280 to talk directly to Mark Zuckerberg. There's a pretty poignant 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:19.640 moment in that interview where you asked Mark if he 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:22.240 felt guilty about the role Facebook is playing in the world. 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:25.360 He said, I don't know that it's possible to know 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:27.400 every issue that you're going to face down the road, 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:29.720 but we have a real responsibility to take all these 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.560 issues seriously as they come up and work with experts 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:34.440 in people around the world to make sure we solve 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:38.000 them and do a good job for our community. At 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:41.120 another point in the interview, he reiterates that the primary 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:45.440 mission of Facebook is to connect people. Now, I think 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:48.760 at this point we all feel that that's a pretty 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:53.880 tired canard, but I'm curious at that time and being 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:57.000 on the phone and hearing the tenor of his voice, like, 0:14:57.480 --> 0:15:00.320 did you believe that he was being sincere year in 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:03.800 that moment about Facebook's larger mission, about their sort of 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:08.240 sense of integrity and this quote real responsibility to take 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:09.120 these things seriously. 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:12.240 I don't know what response I had at the time, 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:15.440 but looking back on it now, I see that this 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:19.200 is just what he does or what he did. You know, 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:24.040 for many years since the start of Facebook, basically there 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:26.880 was a pattern where Facebook would do something, whether it 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:31.280 was changing the news feed or taking away some feature 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:34.800 that people liked or implementing some new feature that people 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:41.680 didn't like, and he would say, sorry, I'm sorry, I 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:44.320 feel a real responsibility to get this right or something 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:48.400 like that, and then nothing would change, or they would 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:51.760 walk back part of the change but keep the rest 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:55.280 of it. He did this a lot, and this was 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:59.360 a particularly high stakes example of this, but I think 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:00.600 it fit with the pattern. 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:03.440 Do we need to go to couple's therapy with Mark 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:05.240 Zuckerberg as a population? 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:11.760 I mean, I think we know who Mark Zuckerberg is 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:14.640 at this point. He is a man who wants to 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:19.000 win and will do almost anything to do that. But 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:21.680 like that is the thing that is important to him. 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:25.000 It is growing a big thing. His legacy is very important. 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:26.480 He wants to be remembered as like a sort of 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:30.080 you know, very important inventor. All the other details are 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:34.880 you know, negotiable. And I think that's actually quite scary. 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:37.840 And as the years have gone on, we've sort of 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:40.360 seen that, Like the explanation that he gave Kevin, he 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:42.120 gave it because that was what the world wanted to 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:44.480 hear at the time. But then as long as but 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:47.440 then when the sort of world moved on, his explanations 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:48.160 could move on to. 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:53.800 Well, despite everything, Zuckerberg got away basically scott free. But 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:56.760 what about Cambridge Analytica? So the fallout for them was 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.400 more straightforward. The FTC sued the company in by May eighteen, 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:05.160 it had filed for bankruptcy. Alexander Nicks, the CEO, didn't 0:17:05.200 --> 0:17:08.080 exactly walk away clean either. In twenty twenty, the FDC 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:11.760 barred him from holding directorships or working in similar data 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:15.840 driven political operations. The list of conduct attached to that 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:23.280 ban included bribery, honeytrap schemes, voter disengagement tactics, and covert 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:27.280 information operations aimed at discrediting political opponents. The fine print, 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:30.920 of course, is that the ban is time limited, which means, 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:33.320 doing the math, he is set to be eligible to 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:36.560 return to this field in September of twenty twenty seven, and. 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:38.440 We're all rooting for him to get back in the game. 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:39.920 You got this, Alex. 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:45.800 He paid his debts to society. Come on, I'm sure 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:49.359 he turned around. He learned a lot of lessons. Casey. 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:53.720 In your article from The Verge titled Cambridge Analytica died 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.160 because it couldn't stop playing the victim, you wrote, Cambridge 0:17:57.160 --> 0:18:00.440 Analytica was nothing if not consistent. After nearly two months 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.440 of scandal, the Trump campaign's one time data analytics firm 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:07.000 died as it lived, denying it ever did anything wrong 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:11.119 and excoriating the journalists who reported about the ways in 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:14.840 which it misused data. No one at Cambridge Analytica was 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:17.439 sorry for what the company did, and few will be 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:19.960 sorry to see it go. I love your writing, both 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:24.040 of you guys. I truly it's like there's just a 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:28.879 it's like a little chippy, you know, but also just 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:34.480 deeply honest and like attached to I think you guys 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:36.800 are coming from a place of deep integrity, and I 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:41.560 really appreciate that. This is obviously the classic deny, deny, 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:45.080 deny move which we see so much in the political sphere. Now, 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:47.720 do you think it's just as prevalent in the tech world. 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:50.040 I don't have a sense of that. I mean, obviously 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:53.439 it's the it's de rigueur in the political space. 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:57.640 What specifically just this kind of just like can deny everything. 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:00.560 Take no responsibility. I mean, we were just talking about 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:02.600 how Zuckerberg is a little bit of sort of like 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:04.840 pablum supplier. 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:07.920 But I mean my view on this is that Silicon 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.520 Valley at the very least used to pay more lip 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:14.240 service to corporate responsibility. You know, I started covering tech 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:16.359 in twenty ten, and I you know, spent the first 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.800 decades hearing companies talk endlessly about all of the good 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:21.439 that they were doing in the world and how they 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:23.440 were going to sort of change everything around us for 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:27.600 the better. I think the moment that changed was when 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:31.080 Elon Musk bought Twitter. Because Elon Musk did not really 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:33.720 pretend that he I mean, he would you know, make 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:37.520 noises sometimes about you know, Twitter saving civilization, but it 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:40.880 was also sort of like lofty and ridiculous. I think 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:43.760 no one took it seriously. But then in the meantime, 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:45.960 you know, he would like fire the team doing the 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:50.119 content moderation. He would post incredibly offensive things online all 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:52.880 the time, he would laid off many of his employees, 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:55.600 and a lot of the other CEOs in Silicon Valley 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:57.880 took a look at the fact that no matter how 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:00.840 outrageous Elon musks behavior was, value of his company has 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:03.280 kept going up, and they said, why have I been 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:05.720 paying lip serviced all this corporate responsibility stuff. 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:06.879 I don't have to do that. I'm just gonna do 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:07.399 what I want. 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:10.320 And so we're now sort of living in like that 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:14.879 dark world where no one feels any like like the 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:17.359 like they can sort of get away with the stuff 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:19.359 that they have been wanting to do the whole time. 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:21.480 Well, and it's i would say, it's even like it's 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:23.639 even gone further than that, to the point where you know, 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:29.160 if these CEOs used to be virtue signaling, they are 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:30.320 now vice signaling. 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:30.640 Right. 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:33.480 They want to be seen as sort of care free 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:36.719 bad boys who don't play by the rules, because that 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:40.400 is sort of the vibe in this class of executives 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:44.600 Now it's not cool if you're a CEO to be 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:48.560 bossed around by your employees or to take cues about 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:52.960 how to run your company from from anyone else. What 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:56.560 is in is founder mode and the idea that you 0:20:56.680 --> 0:20:58.280 just have to sort of rule with an iron fist. 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:00.520 So I think there's been a real cultural shift in 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:03.120 Silicon Valleant and Mark Zuckerberg is a great example of that. 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:06.399 You know, you will notice that he no longer apologizes 0:21:06.440 --> 0:21:10.080 for things when he went when you know, meta as 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:12.720 it's now called, does something that gets a lot of 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:15.040 people upset. You don't see him doing these sort of 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:19.320 apologetic press tours and saying, oh, I feel so much 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.440 responsibility over this, because that is not the it's not 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:28.560 required de ragur to borrow your French phrase that that 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:29.880 CEO should do that anymore. 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:31.480 Can we go back to virtue signaling? 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:32.200 Yeah? 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:36.640 Like, can we just what's like? Virtue signaling is mildly annoying, 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:41.040 but the but vice signaling is like deeply unsettled. 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:43.520 Right Also, like I would hope that even the people 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:46.480 complaining about virtue signaling would admit that it's still like 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:49.960 good to have virtues, you know, thank you, We should 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:53.840 still like have basic principles that we operate by that 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:56.400 you know, create a better world. So yeah, I would love. 0:21:56.280 --> 0:21:59.119 To see if the accusation is that you're not living 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:02.880 up to the virtue is that you're espousing. I can 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:06.720 deal with that a lot more than just espousing horseshit 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:09.959 as like your value system anyway. 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:12.880 That's I think it's important to have both virtues and vices. 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:16.639 All right, Oh, elaborate, Kevin, what are your favorite vikes? 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:20.159 He's a huge scambler. Inside every person, there's a you know, 0:22:20.200 --> 0:22:21.440 there's of course. 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:27.640 We contained multitude. This has sort of emerged throughout our discussion, 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:29.640 but it's worth putting a fine point on the fact 0:22:29.680 --> 0:22:32.400 that it came out later that Cambridge Analytica's efforts may 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:35.240 not have had nearly as much impact as they intended 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:40.280 or claimed, which perhaps it really was just a giant scam, 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:45.160 a scam of a scam. But Cambridge Analytica's shuddering wasn't 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:47.640 the end for this case. Finally, in twenty twenty two 0:22:47.680 --> 0:22:52.200 came the drum roll please class action lawsuit Facebook I'm 0:22:52.200 --> 0:22:55.200 sorry now. Meta agreed to pay seven hundred and twenty 0:22:55.200 --> 0:22:57.200 five million to set a legal action over the data 0:22:57.200 --> 0:23:01.000 breach of victory. But you know, a record twenty eight 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:03.879 million people had staked their claim, equating to an average 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:08.240 payout of thirty dollars. Was this a win? Yeah? 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:09.200 This was huge. 0:23:09.480 --> 0:23:12.680 I think everyone who was really upset about Donald Trump's 0:23:12.680 --> 0:23:16.480