Facebook's Former Security Chief on What Went Wrong
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2018
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s show, host Will Oremus will discuss the fallout from last week’s New York Times expose about Facebook with the company’s former Security Chief Alex Stamos.
The Times story was headlined “Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Leaned Out in Crisis.” Stamos has been at the center of this story both as a critic and an advocate. The story has revolved partly around reports that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg stifled or downplayed his revelations that their platform was still not free from Russian meddling months after the 2016 election. We’ll get his side of the story, as well as his perspective on Facebook’s missteps, and what he thinks the public and the media get wrong about the company. We’ll also talk about what some solutions to its problems might look like, including, potentially, government regulations.
2:15 - Interview with Alex Stamos37:53 - Don’t Close My Tabs
Don’t Close My Tabs:
Slate: Trapped in the Fire Zone
The New York Times: Are You Sitting Down? Standing Desks Are Overrated.
Podcast production by Max Jacobs
If Then plugs:
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If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future. |
| 0:09.1 | I'm Will Arreemes. |
| 0:10.3 | And on today's show, I'm going to be joined by a key player in the ongoing drama around Facebook, |
| 0:15.6 | the company's former chief security officer, Alex Stamos. |
| 0:22.4 | Hey, everyone, welcome to If Then. We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, |
| 0:26.1 | a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. We're recording this |
| 0:30.7 | on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 20th. My co-host, April Glazer, is off again this week. |
| 0:35.7 | She's been on assignment in Butte County, California, |
| 0:38.3 | covering the devastating wildfires there. Today, we're going to discuss the fallout from last |
| 0:42.8 | week's explosive New York Times expose about Facebook. It's a story that has changed the way many |
| 0:47.9 | people look at the social network and its leaders. The headline was, delay, deny, and deflect, |
| 0:53.6 | how Facebook leaders leaned out in crisis. |
| 0:56.9 | It painted CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Cheryl Sandberg, as by turns, |
| 1:01.8 | out of touch, image-obsessed, and mercenary in their response to the growing problems of misinformation |
| 1:07.1 | and foreign election interference on their platform between 2016 and 2018. |
| 1:11.9 | Details included how the company privately and publicly minimized the prevalence of Russian |
| 1:16.0 | misinformation even to its own board. As public opinion turned against it, Facebook employed |
| 1:21.2 | more ruthless corporate tactics, hiring a DC-based consultancy, specializing in campaign-style |
| 1:26.7 | opposition research to plant negative |
| 1:28.7 | stories about other tech giants, as well as to try and undermine anti-Facebook activist groups |
| 1:33.7 | by linking them to the financier George Soros. Alex Stamos has been at the center of this story, |
| 1:39.5 | both as a critic and an advocate for Facebook. The Times story revolved partly around reports |
... |
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