Don't Be Afraid To Break Things

Land of the Giants

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Society & Culture, Business

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2022

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If our first episode brought you into the beginning of Zuckerberg’s vision for connecting at scale, this story is about the consequences of pursuing that vision at full speed. In the 2000s, Facebook made a big bet to become a platform for developers – and all social activity across the web. It would bring us FarmVille and “Log In With Facebook.” But years later, it would lead the company into one of its biggest scandals: Cambridge Analytica. Hosted by Shirin Ghaffary (@shiringhaffary) and Alex Heath (@alexeheath) Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear next week's episode by hitting the plus sign in your favorite podcast app Follow @recode and @verge for more coverage of Meta and Big Tech Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Music
0:14.0	In 2011, Mark Zuckerberg opened his company's annual F8 keynote with a boyish billionaire flex
0:20.8	by blasting DJ Khaled and pulling a prank on the audience.
0:24.8	Hey, welcome to F8. Okay, we're going to change the universe.
0:29.2	I say that every year.
0:32.1	Dressed in a hoodie in jeans with a very specific Caesar looking haircut,
0:36.2	this is Andy Sandberg. He was the go-to Zuck impersonator on SNL.
0:40.4	The bottom line is you get closer to your authentic identity when you share everything.
0:44.4	Andy, the hell are you doing?
0:47.1	Just a reminder, this was the same year Aaron Sorkins, the social network came out.
0:52.1	Zuckerberg, he wasn't quite a fan. But here with Sandberg, he seemed more
0:57.1	than comfortable being a parody.
0:58.9	The deal was I was going to feed you information through the earpiece and you were going to repeat me.
1:03.2	And anyway, even if the world thought of him as the robotic, ruthless Jesse Eisenberg,
1:08.0	the real Zuckerberg had plenty to boast about.
1:12.1	So just last week we had a pretty cool milestone at Facebook.
1:16.0	For the first time ever, in a single day, we had half a billion people use Facebook.
1:23.1	Half a billion people.
1:27.2	Facebook's user growth had exploded more than any other social network before it.
1:31.6	In a few months, it would have the largest tech IPO in history to date.
1:35.8	The company was doing a lot of things right.
1:38.7	But as the world would find out years later, it was also doing a lot of things wrong.
	...

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