Inside the notebook of a reporter on the Facebook beat.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lily Jamali. For reporters covering Facebook, getting the real story has only gotten harder since the release of the

Facebook files in 2021. The Wall Street Journal series based on documents provided by

whistleblower Francis Houghton exposed the inner workings of the company

now known as Meta from its lax rules for VIPs to internal research on Instagram's impact

on teens.

Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz writes about the challenge of covering the company

in his new book, Broken Code, Inside Facebook and the fight to expose its harmful secrets.

When we spoke, he began by explaining

how much has changed about Meta's platforms.

The products that Meta offers

bear no resemblance to Instagram and Facebook a decade ago.

That these are just completely revamped features.

They do not, you know, this isn't just sort of, oh you post things online and you follow your friends and you know, then magic happens. This is much more mechanical. It is heavily driven by recommendations

and what the company calls unconnected content,

namely things that it chooses to show you

rather than that you choose to see.

Looking at sort of how that has changed not just how we use social

media, but how we interact in line in general, how we consume news, how we talk to each

other about things like politics, these are, you know, sort of,

the ramifications are so much bigger than just, oh, they change social media in a way that,

...