Speaker 1: In some very real ways. Cambridge Analytica changed my life.
Speaker 2: Casey is the only person in America who benefited from.
Speaker 1: This was great for me.
Speaker 3: Welcome to SNAFU, the podcast about history's greatest screw ups.
Speaker 3: I'm your host ed helms and each episode, as you know,
Speaker 3: I cover an enormous grew up from history to see
Speaker 3: what we can learn from humanity's biggest mistakes. My guests
Speaker 3: today are truly two of like just the most awesome people. Truly,
Speaker 3: I am so excited. We have Kevin Russ, who is
Speaker 3: an award winning tech columnist for The New York Times,
Speaker 3: frequently covering Silicon Valley, social media and tech developments. He's
Speaker 3: also the author of several books, including The AGI Chronicles,
Speaker 3: the inside story of the Race to create an Artificial Superintelligence,
Speaker 3: releasing later this year. Welcome Kevin Ruse.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: And we also have not just Kevin, we also have
Speaker 3: Casey Newton, who is the founder and editor of Platformer,
Speaker 3: a publication about the intersection of democracy and tech, and
Speaker 3: was previously a senior editor at The Verge. Together these
Speaker 3: two come together in a podcasting voltron as the podcast
Speaker 3: hard Fork, which is brilliant. It's hugely popular. It is
Speaker 3: incredibly successful. It is a New York Times podcast, and
Speaker 3: it is about the rapidly changing tech world, and somehow
Speaker 3: it's it's incredibly grounded and informative even when these things
Speaker 3: feel dark and scary, and it's also insanely funny and entertaining. Welcome,
Speaker 3: Casey and Kevin.
Speaker 4: Thank you, ed, it's great to be here. Thank you
Speaker 4: for those kind words. And I'm sorry Kevin's bios so long.
Speaker 4: We're trying to cut that down a little.
Speaker 1: I just keep adding fake things to it.
Speaker 2: Olympic Gold medalists, Nobel Prize winner.
Speaker 3: That's all good. I think I think anyone can claim
Speaker 3: a Nobel at this point. What is it? I'm just
Speaker 3: so curious as a fan of hard Fork, like, and
Speaker 3: I'm sure you get asked this a lot, but were
Speaker 3: you guys friends before hard Fork or did you sort
Speaker 3: of come together? Was this sort of like a more
Speaker 3: of a business venture that and then because you do
Speaker 3: have the dynamic of people who seemed to just have
Speaker 3: known each other a long time, it's a very easy vibe.
Speaker 4: I think that the answer is that we were friends
Speaker 4: who have become much closer friends since we started doing
Speaker 4: the show. Like Kevin and I knew each other from
Speaker 4: San Francisco tech reporting circles. We would see each other
Speaker 4: all over town as we were, you know, covering this
Speaker 4: Google event, that Apple event. But both of us really
Speaker 4: wanted to start a podcast, and when we looked around,
Speaker 4: and the truth is, both of us tried very hard
Speaker 4: to find someone else to do the show with, and
Speaker 4: we just kept coming back to each other. We were
Speaker 4: just kept coming back, like, I think this is honestly
Speaker 4: the only person I could imagine doing this way. And like,
Speaker 4: almost five years later since we started having that conversation, like,
Speaker 4: I feel exactly the same way.
Speaker 1: He's the only one for me.
Speaker 2: Ah, it's a charade. We actually hate each other. This
Speaker 2: is just a sort of kabookie theater bit we do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is the first time we've talked outside of
Speaker 4: a hard Fork taping and sels.
Speaker 3: Oh, well, you're you're putting on a good show. I'm
Speaker 3: I'm definitely buying it. I think one of the reasons
Speaker 3: hard Fork works for me just as a fan is
Speaker 3: that I just trust you guys. I feel like you're
Speaker 3: incredibly well informed, but you also have this uncanny ability
Speaker 3: to stay calm and steady when things feel so terrifying,
Speaker 3: and I'm just wondering as a non super tech person,
Speaker 3: I just feel so confused so much. And you guys
Speaker 3: are such a steady calming force. How do you do that?
Speaker 3: How do you you're in the middle of it. It would
Speaker 3: seem like you would just be running around with your
Speaker 3: hair on fire all the time.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think both of us are optimists by nature,
Speaker 4: where both people who have observed that like, for the
Speaker 4: most part, technology has been good for people, Like we're
Speaker 4: not people who wish that we could go back to
Speaker 4: an agrarian economy and sort of do subsistence farming, like
Speaker 4: I like having an iPad, you know, And so we
Speaker 4: want to believe that as uncertain and scary as the
Speaker 4: world often is, we are going to muddle through somehow.
Speaker 4: And so, you know, while we pay a lot of
Speaker 4: attention to the many, many things that are going wrong
Speaker 4: with snawfoos, if you will, we also think there's like
Speaker 4: some pretty cool stuff happening in the world, and we
Speaker 4: like pointing that out whenever we can.
Speaker 2: I think we try to be skeptical without being cynical. Great,
Speaker 2: it would be the way I put it, you know.
Speaker 2: I think we try to be reporters and question authority
Speaker 2: and the official narratives. But we're also not sort of
Speaker 2: knee jerk reflexively cynical about the fact that some of
Speaker 2: this technology is quite good and improving in ways that
Speaker 2: should make us both excited and fearful. So that's the
Speaker 2: balance which to strike. We try to just be really honest.
Speaker 2: Some weeks we're really terrified, and you can hear that
Speaker 2: in the show. Some weeks were more excited, and hopefully
Speaker 2: you could hear that too.
Speaker 3: Well. That is very well said. And I love the
Speaker 3: distinction between skepticism and cynicism, and I feel like that's
Speaker 3: not a distinction that is made often enough, and sometimes
Speaker 3: in our own guts, like I know, I crossover. I
Speaker 3: like to think I'm just a sort of healthy skeptic,
Speaker 3: but sometimes that cynicism creeps in, and boys that get dark,
Speaker 3: oh boy. But that's why you're here, That's why hard
Speaker 3: work is there to uplift all of us, and it's
Speaker 3: why I am so thrilled to have you both on today.
Speaker 3: I've picked a doozy of a snaffoo to discuss, and
Speaker 3: it's one that you both know inside and out, which
Speaker 3: is kind of interesting. Because that's a little bit of
Speaker 3: a a flip of our typical format. Usually I'm telling
Speaker 3: the guest a snaffoo that they may or may not
Speaker 3: know anything about, and either way it's a surprise, whatever
Speaker 3: the story is. And in that way, I'm sort of
Speaker 3: the professor. They're the student. But in this case, this
Speaker 3: is a story that you both deeply reported on at
Speaker 3: the time it was happening, and you are deeply well
Speaker 3: informed about. So I am very much the student. I'm
Speaker 3: excited to I'll still be the narrative anchor. I'm going
Speaker 3: to kind of walk us through the story, but I'm
Speaker 3: so eager to learn from you, guys, and hear from
Speaker 3: you the sort of details and color that we just
Speaker 3: ordinarily wouldn't get in an episode like this. So thank
Speaker 3: you for being here, and we're about to dive into
Speaker 3: the story of Cambridge Analytica right off the bat. Guys,
Speaker 3: what is that conjure in you? Tension, excitement, humor? What
Speaker 3: is that?
Speaker 4: It makes me honestly a little bit nostalgic. Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 4: was honestly really important in my life. I had started
Speaker 4: writing a newsletter just a few months before that scandal,
Speaker 4: and I was mostly at the time writing about the
Speaker 4: backlash to Facebook that had to be gone after the
Speaker 4: twenty six US presidential election, and my newsletter was getting,
Speaker 4: you know, a little traction here, a little traction there,
Speaker 4: and then Cambridge analytic happened, and all of a sudden
Speaker 4: it felt like, to some people, the biggest story in
Speaker 4: the world. And so my newsletter grow. It wound up
Speaker 4: enabling me to like quit my job, start a podcast.
Speaker 4: So like, in the very real ways, Cambridge Analytica changed
Speaker 4: my life.
Speaker 2: Casey is the only person in America who benefited from
Speaker 2: the Cambridge.
Speaker 1: Like this was great for me.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: I have distant memories.
Speaker 2: I mean, I have the memory of a goldfish, so
Speaker 2: I forget things that I reported about last week. But
Speaker 2: when you say the words, I am filled with a
Speaker 2: kind of yeah, mid twenty tens nostalgia. I started thinking
Speaker 2: about the Harlem Shake, you know, and other the ice
Speaker 2: bucket challenge sort of exactly other phenomena from that era.
Speaker 3: Of course, Well, just to give the audience a little
Speaker 3: bit of grounding, the Cabridge Analytica data harvesting scandal of
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen was is considered one of the most massive
Speaker 3: and possibly worst data misuse cases in history. This was
Speaker 3: eight years ago or more. No, like what it was
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen? Just twelve years ago? What year are we in?
Speaker 4: Well, so this actually gets to a really interesting eighteen Yes,
Speaker 4: where do you start it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 4: One of the reasons why Cambridge Analytica wound up being
Speaker 4: a really weird scandal was that most of the details
Speaker 4: were known years before it turned into this conflagration, and
Speaker 4: it was only in the aftermath of Trump's election that
Speaker 4: a lot of Americans said, wait, what exactly was going on?
Speaker 1: And then it blew up.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, all right, let's dive in to kick off
Speaker 3: our snapfoo, We're going to travel back in time, like
Speaker 3: we were saying, to the mid twenty tens. So just
Speaker 3: to help reset your culture clocks. Obama was in his
Speaker 3: second term. Russia has annexed crimea. Everyone's freaking out about
Speaker 3: a bola. In the tech world, apple watches and other
Speaker 3: kinds of wearables are on the rise.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. As Kevin mentioned the ice bucket challenge, we were
Speaker 3: all boring ice water on our heads, and Instagram was
Speaker 3: primarily just photos of eggs, benedict and sunsets. The good
Speaker 3: old days. AI still felt like sci fi. Back then,
Speaker 3: chat GPT wasn't even a blip. We were young, optimistic,
Speaker 3: and really maybe a little too casual about clicking. I
Speaker 3: agree on terms and conditions that no one read. How
Speaker 3: naive we were. Was a better time now. While we
Speaker 3: were happily posting memes and baby photos, we didn't even
Speaker 3: think to worry about what was happening to all the
Speaker 3: data that we were putting out into social media or
Speaker 3: what someone could possibly do with it. But I'm kind
Speaker 3: of getting ahead of myself. Let's start with something innocent.
Speaker 3: Facebook quiz apps. Do you remember these, the harmless time
Speaker 3: wasters like what is your ice cream? Iq? Or what
Speaker 3: carb are you emotionally?
Speaker 1: Or which Harry Potter House?
Speaker 3: Exactly which Harry Potter House? Did you take any of
Speaker 3: these quizzes? Do you remember any results? I remember that
Speaker 3: I was. I was all of the carbs. Actually it
Speaker 3: turned out that I identified equally with all of them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: do we know any what was anyone in Gryffindor?
Speaker 4: I feel like heaven is definitely a slather.
Speaker 1: That's such a tough thing to say.
Speaker 3: That's a burn too.
Speaker 1: No, I love the scheme.
Speaker 3: I took one and it turns out I was. It
Speaker 3: was like which bagel are you? And I'm in Everything Bagel,
Speaker 3: which I think was supposed to be flattering, but I
Speaker 3: don't like everything Bagel. I think they're kind of gross.
Speaker 3: So these all these quizzes, they seemed kind of innocent
Speaker 3: and fun, but at least one in particular we now
Speaker 3: know was quite nefarious. And this was an app called
Speaker 3: this is Your Digital Life. Seems harmless enough, and it
Speaker 3: claimed to be for academic research. This is Your Digital
Speaker 3: Life was a personality quiz produced by a data scientist
Speaker 3: named Alexander Cogan and his company Global Science Research, which
Speaker 3: right away, I just don't trust Global Science Research. It's
Speaker 3: too much going on there.
Speaker 4: I think that's the same company from the Alien movies exactly.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Paul Reiser is an executive and he's just he's
Speaker 3: a little smarmy, weird vibes. So this was in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: and here's where it starts getting icky. It wasn't just
Speaker 3: collecting your answers. It was also quietly scooping up data
Speaker 3: on your Facebook friends, who definitely did not sign up
Speaker 3: for that. So, thanks to a handy Facebook API loophole,
Speaker 3: the app could access information on jobs, education, location, relationship status,
Speaker 3: and liked pages. So while you were figuring out which
Speaker 3: pasta shape matched your vibe, this app was building a
Speaker 3: surprisingly detailed dossier on you, your psychology, and that of your
Speaker 3: entire digital entourage. Question, do you think that the average
Speaker 3: American at that time had any sense of how this
Speaker 3: kind of personal information that everyone was sharing just exhaustively
Speaker 3: could be turned against them or were we just high
Speaker 3: on digital narcissism? No?
Speaker 1: I mean an American.
Speaker 4: Americans are very interesting in that they will say that
Speaker 4: privacy is very important to them, but they will give
Speaker 4: up their privacy for almost anything.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: It's like they will tell you, you know, that they
Speaker 4: don't want to, you know, put the name of their
Speaker 4: children online, but if it got them ten percent off
Speaker 4: at ross dress for less, they will absolutely give you
Speaker 4: all that and more.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 4: Companies are always sort of doing this weird dance where
Speaker 4: they're trying to get you to reveal as much as
Speaker 4: they possibly can without it accidentally blowing up in their face.
Speaker 2: Well, and this was also an era that was called
Speaker 2: sort of the open graph era of Facebook. Basically, they
Speaker 2: were trying to turn Facebook from an app where you
Speaker 2: would go and you know, stock your crushes from college
Speaker 2: or whatever, to a platform where other apps could build things.
Speaker 2: There were apps like Farmville that you could play inside Facebook.
Speaker 2: You could use Facebook to log into Spotify or any
Speaker 2: other number of services, and that was part of this
Speaker 2: quiz push was like you could build things on top
Speaker 2: of Facebook, and then Facebook would actually send some of
Speaker 2: that data to the developers of the quizzes. This was
Speaker 2: the same protocol, the same process that they used to
Speaker 2: connect people with Farmville, games and Spotify.
Speaker 3: The best case use of that data would just be
Speaker 3: for that app to reach more users or at this point,
Speaker 3: what's their reason for being just so give and take
Speaker 3: with this data.
Speaker 1: So Facebook used.
Speaker 4: To have this very permissive what they call an API
Speaker 4: and Application programming interface. It's essentially just a piece of
Speaker 4: software that other lets other pieces of software talk to
Speaker 4: each other. And there was a time when Facebook invested
Speaker 4: really heavily in that because they wanted essentially every other
Speaker 4: software to connect whatever they were building to Facebook. Facebook thought,
Speaker 4: this is the way that we are going to grow
Speaker 4: and take over the world is essentially everything runs through this.
Speaker 4: And the way that Facebook was able to attract so
Speaker 4: many of those people to its platforms was by saying
Speaker 4: we will give you data that you can't get anywhere else. Right,
Speaker 4: there aren't a lot of other places where you can
Speaker 4: go if you're a legitimate researcher, a shady researcher, somebody
Speaker 4: who's making a mobile game, and immediately get not just
Speaker 4: my name and my email address and my phone number,
Speaker 4: but also at the time, the names of all of
Speaker 4: my friends and their phone numbers and their email addresses.
Speaker 4: So for people like the ones who wound up building
Speaker 4: the app that led to Cambridge Analytica, this was a
Speaker 4: gold mind. It was an absolute bananza and it really
Speaker 4: benefited Facebook until it did.
Speaker 3: And do you think we've gotten just back to that
Speaker 3: initial question about how you know we share information online?
Speaker 3: Have we gotten any better at this or I mean,
Speaker 3: in casey, I love your analogy, Like if we get
Speaker 3: a discount on something, we're just like, yeah, take whatever
Speaker 3: whatever you want. Here's here's my mother's maiden name. But
Speaker 3: are we just that lazy, Like we're just our brains
Speaker 3: are just wired for heuristics, like we just want the
Speaker 3: shortcuts everywhere.
Speaker 4: I think there have been some major changes and you
Speaker 4: can see it when you log onto social media, right,
Speaker 4: you used to log onto Facebook and Instagram and you
Speaker 4: see your friends and family. Now you see a clip
Speaker 4: from a podcast you've never heard of, right, And that's
Speaker 4: you know, has several causes behind it, but one of
Speaker 4: the big ones is that Americans are sharing less. The
Speaker 4: whole bargain that they struck with Facebook of Hey, I'll
Speaker 4: give you all my information in exchange for you keeping
Speaker 4: up on the divorces of my high school classmates. That
Speaker 4: bargain doesn't feel like that's as good anymore. And so
Speaker 4: all the real sharing is happening in these private group chats,
Speaker 4: and all the public stuff is kind of more you know,
Speaker 4: creator content and you know, celebrities and all of that.
Speaker 4: So in that respect, I really do think things have
Speaker 4: changed now. At the same time, can I get you
Speaker 4: to give up information if I give you something of
Speaker 4: relatively low value? Yes, I think that is still broadly
Speaker 4: the case across you know, many different dimensions.
Speaker 2: Well, and I also think like AI has become the
Speaker 2: sort of next frontier of this because people are sharing
Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff which have spots. People are having
Speaker 2: therapy sessions. Yeah, they're confessing their crimes. They're they're like
Speaker 2: people are doing people are having these conversations that are
Speaker 2: very intimate in some cases, and I don't think they
Speaker 2: know or particularly care what's happening to that data on
Speaker 2: the other end.
Speaker 3: Wow, yeah, I don't know. I just I've gotten much
Speaker 3: more anxious about this over the last few years, kinds
Speaker 3: of I'm.
Speaker 1: Just doing it.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Well, I mean the stuff I've already
Speaker 3: told to chat GBT, it's all. That's all just in
Speaker 3: the murder category. All right, let's get back into this story.
Speaker 3: So the app we're talking about this was collecting all
Speaker 3: this data and according to Facebook's rules, you're not allowed
Speaker 3: to repurpose this data in anyway. But Cogan was. He
Speaker 3: was selling this data to a little political consulting firm
Speaker 3: in the UK called Cambridge Analytica. In fact, it turns
Speaker 3: out Cambridge Analytica had actually paid Cogan to create the
Speaker 3: app in the first place. So what is Cambridge Analytica.
Speaker 3: Well founded in twenty thirteen, the company's mission was to
Speaker 3: take mountains of online data from potential voters and turn
Speaker 3: it into political leverage. The playbook borrowed a page from
Speaker 3: the US military's idea of psyops and applied it to elections,
Speaker 3: using targeted ads and so forth. They referred to this
Speaker 3: as quote, psychographic messaging. This is so Orwellian like it's
Speaker 3: it just sounds like big Brother hired an ad agency
Speaker 3: to come up with these terms.
Speaker 2: It does make me wonder whether if all of the
Speaker 2: things in this scandal had had like different names, it
Speaker 2: would have like Cambridge Analytica just sounds spooky. It's psychographic
Speaker 2: messaging just sounds spooky. It's like they have been called
Speaker 2: like political hot trends one oh one.
Speaker 1: Who wouldn't have been a scandal? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that one would have grabbed hold Kevin,
Speaker 3: but yeah, uh no. But you're right, and global science
Speaker 3: research is part of that too.
Speaker 4: And I think it's important to say, as we start
Speaker 4: to get into this looking back, I think many of
Speaker 4: the claims that were made by all of the players
Speaker 4: here were just wildly overstated.
Speaker 3: Right, it is both.
Speaker 4: True that Americans were very, very concerned about this psychographic
Speaker 4: targeting that was, you know, going on during election. It's
Speaker 4: also true that it almost certainly had nothing to do
Speaker 4: with the outcome of the election.
Speaker 3: Right, we'll get to that. We'll get to don't get
Speaker 3: ahead of me case. I'm sorry, geez.
Speaker 1: He's always doing this microphone.
Speaker 3: Okay, good to know. We'll just cut Casey out of
Speaker 3: this podcast. I think we can do that. We have
Speaker 3: the technology, or we'll just create an AI Casey that's
Speaker 3: way more compliant and just easier. Back to Cambridge Analytica.
Speaker 3: Running the show was CEO Alexander Nix. There was, also,
Speaker 3: of course, Steve Bannon, who you may know as Trump's
Speaker 3: former chief strategist and general architect of chaos. Bannon was
Speaker 3: one of the founders of Cambridge Analytica and later it's VP.
Speaker 3: Now bankrolling the whole operation were hedge fund billionaires Robert
Speaker 3: Mercer and his daughter Rebecca, longtime backers of conservative causes,
Speaker 3: they were also the founders and part owners of Breitbart News,
Speaker 3: where Bannon was executive chairman for several years. So, using
Speaker 3: the data from Cocanza app, Cambridge Analytica put together a
Speaker 3: robust se pychological profiles and personality scores for Facebook users.
Speaker 3: They then matched these profiles with US voter records, and voila.
Speaker 3: They now had a custom data set designed to predict, target,
Speaker 3: and potentially sway people's votes. Now, despite only about two
Speaker 3: hundred and seventy thousand people downloading this app and using it.
Speaker 3: The API loophole at Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica to mine
Speaker 3: data from eighty seven million people. Holy shit, Holy shit.
Speaker 3: Who bears the responsibility here? Like? Is it the users
Speaker 3: for sharing the data? Is it the bad actors collecting
Speaker 3: and manipulating? Is it the platforms like or all of
Speaker 3: or is it just an holy toxic three way?
Speaker 4: I think it is a bit of a toxic three way,
Speaker 4: you know, Like I imagine that you ed and most
Speaker 4: of your listeners have had the experience of you install
Speaker 4: an app on your phone and it asks you, do
Speaker 4: you want to share your contacts with this app? For developers,
Speaker 4: that can be a very effective way of finding other customers,
Speaker 4: or if you're trying to grow a social network, that
Speaker 4: can help to grow a social network. And if you
Speaker 4: think that some social networks are good, maybe there is
Speaker 4: some value there. But it's also true like if you're
Speaker 4: one of the people whose information is being shared, like
Speaker 4: arguably it's kind of being shared without your consent by
Speaker 4: like one of your friends, and it's being used in
Speaker 4: ways that you have no real control over. And so
Speaker 4: I do think that was bad and it is why
Speaker 4: you know, that practice has been dramatically curtailed in more
Speaker 4: recent times.
Speaker 3: Amen. All right, well it's about to get real. Cut
Speaker 3: to twenty sixty. The American presidential primaries are approaching, and
Speaker 3: there were a couple of big name politicians who caught
Speaker 3: wind of this Cambridge Analytica spicy operation and said, give
Speaker 3: me some of that. One of them, of course, was
Speaker 3: the Ted Kruz campaign, which, on the advice of the Mercers,
Speaker 3: or perhaps the insistence, it's not quite clear. The Mercers,
Speaker 3: were one of of the campaign's biggest donors. The Cruise
Speaker 3: campaign paid a cool five point eight million dollars for
Speaker 3: Cambridge Analytica's services. This did not work out well. Basically,
Speaker 3: Cambridge Analytica scammed the campaign. They pitched as soon to
Speaker 3: be finished software platform called Rippon, named after the Wisconsin
Speaker 3: town where the Republican Party was born, meant to be
Speaker 3: an all in one command center for the campaign, and
Speaker 3: there was just one issue that software didn't exist. There
Speaker 3: was nothing there. All of the money was just going
Speaker 3: towards trying to build the software and not actually implementing it.
Speaker 3: The campaign was understandably furious, but firing them outright would
Speaker 3: upset the Mercers. So instead they went with the least
Speaker 3: dramatic option, just kind of a slow fade out, just
Speaker 3: kind of gradually sidelining the firm. It's just it's funny
Speaker 3: to me how entire institutions revert to full on middle
Speaker 3: school conflict resolution just slowly ghosting. Cruises campaign fizzled out,
Speaker 3: as we all know, and Cambridge Analytica did what any
Speaker 3: determined contractor does after a breakup. They found a new client.
Speaker 3: Enter Donald Trump in the middle of what was widely
Speaker 3: considered a long shot run for the Republican nomination at
Speaker 3: the time, his digital operation was basically non existent, so
Speaker 3: Cambridge Analytica saw on opening and they moved fast, pitching
Speaker 3: themselves as the high tech edge the campaign needed. Before long,
Speaker 3: they were brought on to handle all of the digital
Speaker 3: responsibilities for the campaign, and from there they got to
Speaker 3: work shaping what voters saw online. The strategy was simple
Speaker 3: in concept and unnerving in practice. They'd figure out what
Speaker 3: worried you, what scared you, and then feed you content
Speaker 3: that leaned into those concerns while positioning Trump as the solution.
Speaker 3: So basically, anxiety and uncertainty custom tailored just for you,
Speaker 3: just a spigot of fear. I don't know, it feels
Speaker 3: like a horror movie. It's how cynical is this?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's so cynical, But also like this just
Speaker 4: is how we have built our social networks. They're optimized
Speaker 4: for engagement. So whatever it gets you to open the
Speaker 4: app more, to spend more time there, to do more
Speaker 4: things in the app, that's what you'll see. And it
Speaker 4: turns out that if you scare and upset people, they
Speaker 4: look at the app more. So, like that kind of
Speaker 4: brutal calculus is one of the reasons why we're in
Speaker 4: this mess we're in today.
Speaker 3: This is the first place that I've seen or heard
Speaker 3: about fear and terror being like a deliberate effort on
Speaker 3: the part of a campaign, of a social media campaign.
Speaker 3: And yet we have heard a lot about how algorithms
Speaker 3: have sort of naturally steered things in that direction. So
Speaker 3: which is it or what's the bigger force at work here?
Speaker 3: Do you think is it the built in programming or
Speaker 3: is it like bad actors?
Speaker 4: So, I mean, look, negative political ads have existed for
Speaker 4: a really long time. You can go back to like
Speaker 4: the Daisy ad and you know, do you really want
Speaker 4: this guy's finger on the button and you know, vote
Speaker 4: for him and we're all going to die in a
Speaker 4: nuclear holocaust. So that kind of stuff has a proud
Speaker 4: tradition in American politics. I think where Cambridge Analytica felt
Speaker 4: really different was that was this suggestion that they could
Speaker 4: essentially micro target and add to your particular fears and
Speaker 4: neuroses and they would manipulate you into voting for somebody
Speaker 4: without you even understanding what was happening to you, right right, So,
Speaker 4: and you know they could do this at like a
Speaker 4: massive scale. But you know, because the vast majority of
Speaker 4: Americans were on Facebook, they could just sort of reach
Speaker 4: all of those people instantaneously in a way that they
Speaker 4: would not have even been able to do with a
Speaker 4: TV ad.
Speaker 2: Well, I think there's some additional nuanced at here, which
Speaker 2: is that it's not clear that what Cambridge Analytical was
Speaker 2: offering to do actually worked right, worked really well. President
Speaker 2: Ted Cruz would have been elected. They have just been
Speaker 2: a sales pitch that they were giving. I think it
Speaker 2: is also true simultaneously that the Trump campaign appears to
Speaker 2: have done a very good job of using Facebook as
Speaker 2: a way of getting voters to engage with whatever they
Speaker 2: were sharing to inspire people to go to the polls.
Speaker 2: They ran a very sophisticated, essentially marketing operation on Facebook,
Speaker 2: but it's not clear to me that they did that
Speaker 2: like using the tools and techniques that Cambridge Analytica gave
Speaker 2: them rather than just the advertising and marketing tools that
Speaker 2: are available through Facebook's own ad platform.
Speaker 3: Sure, and also the incredible instincts of Donald Trump right,
Speaker 3: like his just unbelievable ability to tap into cultural tides
Speaker 3: of anxiety and his humor, like the way that his
Speaker 3: I think his undeniable charm was just feeling so so
Speaker 3: fresh and kind of unbelievable to people at this time.
Speaker 2: I think he's like a human newsfeed algorithm. You can
Speaker 2: sort of see him as he's giving a speech. He's
Speaker 2: just like sort of testing out stuff, and if it
Speaker 2: gets a laugh or people get excited about it, he
Speaker 2: like does it again, and if people don't seem to respond,
Speaker 2: he doesn't do it again. He's sort of like running
Speaker 2: the ab test in real time on his audience.
Speaker 3: As we all know, Trump won in twenty sixteen, leaving
Speaker 3: a lot of people wondering how the heck did he
Speaker 3: pull off one of the most surprising upsets in US
Speaker 3: political history. Now, obviously the answer to that is a
Speaker 3: very complex constellation of cultural and political factors. But that
Speaker 3: analysis got a lot more complicated in March of twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen when Cambridge Analytica ex employee Christopher Wiley went full
Speaker 3: whistleblower and shared a cash of documents that immediately exploded
Speaker 3: across world, headlines in The Guardian, The Observer, of the
Speaker 3: New York Times, and many more. This was absolutely nuclear.
Speaker 3: Here's a few choice quotes from Wiley, and it is important, Kevin,
Speaker 3: you made a great point in case you've hinted that
Speaker 3: too already, which is that the effectiveness of Cambridge Analytico
Speaker 3: is debated and debatable. But what we're speaking to in
Speaker 3: this moment, I think is more just their intent, like
Speaker 3: what they were selling on the assumption that they weren't
Speaker 3: selling a scam, but that they were selling the intention
Speaker 3: and the hope that they could execute on these things.
Speaker 3: So here are some things that Christopher Wiley, former employee
Speaker 3: of Cambridge Analytico, was saying. Quote, we exploited Facebook to
Speaker 3: harvest millions of people's profiles and built models to exploit
Speaker 3: what we knew about them and target their inner demons.
Speaker 3: That was the basis the entire company was built on.
Speaker 3: Wiley also said of Cambridge Analytical leadership, quote rules don't
Speaker 3: matter for them. For them, this is a war and
Speaker 3: it's all fair. And here's one more because this guy
Speaker 3: really has a way with words. Wiley told The Guardian
Speaker 3: that that Cambridge Analytica's operation was quote Steve Bannon's psychological
Speaker 3: warfare mind fuck tool, which is I mean, it's pretty great,
Speaker 3: as they say, guys, gives good quote. Yeah, this is
Speaker 3: March of twenty eighteen. Take me back to this moment
Speaker 3: for you, guys, What was it? What was it like
Speaker 3: this this story falls in your laps. You both wind
Speaker 3: up becoming like very important reporters in this whole affair.
Speaker 3: And also given the context that you mentioned earlier, Casey,
Speaker 3: that that a lot of this wasn't necessarily a surprise,
Speaker 3: what made this moment so tectonic?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So my first thought was like, oh, like, people
Speaker 4: want to talk about Cammebra's analytica because I had covered
Speaker 4: it a little bit at around the time that Facebook
Speaker 4: had first closed its API to doing exactly this sort
Speaker 4: of thing. You know, the company decided to shut down
Speaker 4: its platform in part over privacy concerns, right, because, like
Speaker 4: years before Cambridge Analytica happened, Facebook was getting flack for
Speaker 4: how easily it was making it for developers to collect
Speaker 4: massive amounts of data on people, and Facebook's like competitive
Speaker 4: priorities change, and so they.
Speaker 1: Sort of shut it down.
Speaker 4: So when people start talking about Cambra Johnalyltica again, I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, like, I'm sort of surprised this is
Speaker 4: becoming a thing. But I think it's really important to
Speaker 4: remember that in March of twenty eighteen, Americans, some significant
Speaker 4: portion of them were still asking themselves how did Donald
Speaker 4: Trump get elected? Like you cannot overstate the degree to which,
Speaker 4: to some healthy chunk of the country it all felt
Speaker 4: like a fluke, and people were searching for an explanation
Speaker 4: that would make it make sense that the United States
Speaker 4: had elected Donald Trump, And so there was a real
Speaker 4: appetite for some narrative that could come along and explain
Speaker 4: how this guy was able to get.
Speaker 1: Into the Oval office.
Speaker 3: Very very good point. What did it feel like to you, Kevin?
Speaker 2: So I was trying to remember my own Like I
Speaker 2: was not one of the sort of main reporters that
Speaker 2: the New York Times who was doing the story, but
Speaker 2: I did end up interviewing Mark Zuckerberg about this, and
Speaker 2: I remember about that interview that we got a call
Speaker 2: my colleague, Sheer Franklin. I got a call that was
Speaker 2: basically like, Mark Zuckerberg is available to speak to you
Speaker 2: about this in twenty minutes.
Speaker 3: And this is right after this is like just a
Speaker 3: couple of days after this story broke, right.
Speaker 2: This was one of the first times he had sort
Speaker 2: of addressed this, and I was like in the middle
Speaker 2: of something.
Speaker 1: Shiro was in the middle of something.
Speaker 2: Neither of us had expected or prepared for this, and
Speaker 2: we had twenty minutes to prepare for this very important interview,
Speaker 2: and I just remember feeling very stressed about that. And
Speaker 2: what was so interesting to me was that he was
Speaker 2: obviously very defensive. He understood, as Zuckerberg did, that this
Speaker 2: was going to be a big political liability for him
Speaker 2: because people were very mad about Facebook and its role
Speaker 2: in the twenty sixteen election, and they you know, even
Speaker 2: the day after the election, people were raising questions about
Speaker 2: whether Donald Trump's victory had been sort of Facebook's fault
Speaker 2: or whether Facebook had been primarily responsible for it. So
Speaker 2: he was clearly on the defensive. He made a bunch
Speaker 2: of points about how they were restricting access to this data.
Speaker 2: They were going to do a full forensic audit of
Speaker 2: Cambridge Analytica to figure out what had happened, and he
Speaker 2: sort of said that they regretted not having gone after
Speaker 2: Cambridge Analytica harder and this app, this quiz app that
Speaker 2: had collected all this data, and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: we wish we had done more to make sure that
Speaker 2: they had actually deleted the data when they told they did.
Speaker 3: His team alerted The New York Times that he could
Speaker 3: talk in five minutes?
Speaker 1: Is that how think it was twenty minutes? But it
Speaker 1: felt like five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's that's just a power move to put
Speaker 3: you on your heels.
Speaker 4: Right, and like, yeah, and Kevin, I fire my correctly.
Speaker 4: I had to cut his lunch short and he was
Speaker 4: like super mad. He's like, you wanted to get to
Speaker 4: Zer and then he couldn't get to Zer. It was
Speaker 4: the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, he can call me in forty
Speaker 2: five minutes. Yeah, I didn't say that, all right.
Speaker 3: I think that's a good place to hit pause and
Speaker 3: let's pick it up in the next episode. Thanks so much, guys.
Speaker 3: SNAFU is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snaffo Media,
Speaker 3: a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company.
Speaker 3: Post production and creative support from good Egg Audio. Our
Speaker 3: executive producers are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner,
Speaker 3: Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by
Speaker 3: Alyssa Martino and Tory Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis.
Speaker 3: Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering
Speaker 3: from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our
Speaker 3: creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt
Speaker 3: Gosson and the collected works Legal from Dan Welsh, Meghan
Speaker 3: Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn,
Speaker 3: Lane Kline and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson,
Speaker 3: Kerry Lieberman and Nikki Ator. While I have you, don't
Speaker 3: forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snaffoo,
Speaker 3: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available
Speaker 3: now from any book retailer. Just go to Snaffoo dashbook
Speaker 3: dot com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.