Hello and welcome to decoder. I'm Neili Patel, editor and chief of the

verge and decoder is my podcast about big ideas and other problems. We're doing

something a little different today that I'm very excited about. We have a special

episode with an interview by platformer editor and verge co-conspirator Casey

Newton. Hey Casey. Hey Neili, thanks for letting me crash your podcast. So Casey,

you interviewed Nick Clegg, who is the VP of Global Affairs at Facebook. He's a

former member of the UK Parliament and deputy prime minister. That's a lot of titles, a lot of

history. How did you interview with Nick come about? So this morning Clegg posted a 5,000

word op-ed on medium where he sets about trying to take apart the biggest criticisms that get

leveled at Facebook. Everything from it's to polarizing, it's spreading misinformation and hate

speech, you know, and it's just sort of showing people terrible things and fraying the fabric of

society. And so he goes through those arguments, pushes back against them, and then unveils

some changes Facebook is making to give you as a user more control over things. There's

going to be a new feed slider that will let you decide if you want to see your feed in reverse

chronological order, for example, or you can create a new feed called favorites that just shows you

your very favorite people and pages on Facebook. So it's kind of a philosophical shift for the

company trying to get away from pure algorithms crafted in secret in Menlo Park to something that

you and I have more control over. That is a big shift, but it also feels like it's re-characterizing

some of the controls that are already there. That's right. This is putting a fresh coat of paint on

some things that they have done it before, but they are signaling that they're going to be more

of these things to come. I think they've gotten the message that no one trusts the algorithms

that they make. And so one thing they can do about that is letting you get rid of the algorithms

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