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- [00:02]
Cecilia Kang
Campsite Media.
- [00:09]
Natalie Robomed
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campsite Media. This is infamous. I'm Natalie Robomed. So I don't know if you've seen a picture of Mark Zuckerberg lately, but he's looking a little different in recent photos. He's got this boyish, long, curly hair. He's wearing a gold chain and these oversized, thick cotton T shirts. These the expensive kind. The overall look is more relaxed, more youthful, cooler even. Like he's just another guy you might see on the Internet recording a vlog or posting workout tips or dropping a new single, which Mark Zuckerberg actually did in November when he recorded an acoustic version of Get Low.
- [00:51]
Cecilia Kang
Til sweat drops down my balls Til all these bitches crawl oh, skeet skeet.
- [00:58]
Natalie Robomed
Motherfucker no, that's not. Not AI. That's actually a real song that Zuckerberg released in honor of his wife, Priscilla Chan. Apparently, Get Low was playing when the pair met at a college party some two decades ago. And this new styling is just part of the evolution of Mark Zuckerberg, one of the richest men in the world, the CEO of Instagram and Facebook's parent company, Meta, and its single largest individual shareholder. Over the last few years, Zuckerberg has been embracing a more masculine image, getting really into jiu jitsu, a form of martial art, and ufc. This is a guy who has long been obsessed with the Roman Empire, like that trend on TikTok. A few years ago when women were asking their boyfriends how much they thought about the Roman Empire.
- [01:46]
Cecilia Kang
How often do you think about the Roman Empire? Pretty consistently.
- [01:52]
Natalie Robomed
Mark Zuckerberg apparently thinks about the Roman Empire so much, he named his kids after important figures from the period. His children's names are Maxima, August, and Aurelia. This is a guy who thinks on an epic scale in terms of empires and millennia and conquering the world. His favorite video game is Civilization, which is literally about building an empire. And now Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's emperor, if you will, is changing as a leader and a public figure. To understand why, we're talking to Cecilia Kang, national technology correspondent for the New York Times. She co authored a book with Shira Frankel called An Ugly Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination. It's a fly on the wall look at Facebook, which is now called Meta, and it dives deep into Zuckerberg and his relationship with his former coo, Sheryl Sandber, who actually recently found herself in the news thanks to a new memoir from a former Facebook employee. According to that book, Sandberg reportedly spent $13,000 on lingerie for herself and a young female assistant. A Meta spokesperson has said the company is pursuing immediate legal action due to the false and defamatory nature of the allegations. We get into all of that and more in this conversation. And by the way, you'll hear Vanessa come in at the end of this interview to share some of her personal experiences writing about Facebook. I mean, I think to the casual observer where we are right now in 2025, it sort of feels as though Mark Zuckerberg has undergone a pretty epic transformation in the last year or so. Whether it's sitting up front at Trump's inauguration or wearing a gold chain and long hair and looking a bit like a YouTuber. Has this version of Mark always been there, or is this something new?
- [03:54]
Cecilia Kang
I think that there was a seed, if not bigger than a seed, of this that's always been there. And I think he feels comfortable now to just let it all fly. You know, Mark Zuckerberg is somebody that the public knows pretty well. If you are a millennial or older, then you have really watched his evolution from a teenager into who he is now, which is a middle aged man. He's 41 years old. And I think that he's grown up in front of our eyes. I think the climate right now in Washington D.C. and in the nation has given him permission to explore this part of him that he's been afraid of expressing and really looking into more.
- [04:37]
Natalie Robomed
When he first came into our public eye, he was this hoodie wearing hacker. Can you walk me through the Mark Zuckerberg we've seen?
- [04:46]
Cecilia Kang
So Mark Zuckerberg as a college student, the one that was portrayed in the Social Network and by the way, it was pretty good and spot on actually.
- [04:55]
Natalie Robomed
What do you think it got right?
- [04:56]
Cecilia Kang
I think it got right the competition, just the bare knuckle fighting over the technology, being first, trying something really big. His ambition as well as his personality, he's a lot better these days, and especially one on one, from what I hear from people quite close to him. But he's always been a little bit awkward. And that was something the movie really explored was that, you know, ironically, he was creating the biggest social gathering place in the world and he was socially clumsy. So when we saw him as a college student, he was somebody who just was excited about the tech. He was really psyched about creating something that people all wanted to be part of on college campuses first and then high school campuses and then broadly in the US and then to the world. And that was a big rush, if you will, for him psychologically in every way to see the impact of the technology. And he's somebody who really thinks in terms of big historical, long term impact. He's a huge fan of the classics and he's a big fan of the Roman Empire and he thinks of himself with those still with those similar huge historical, never forget descriptors like those of the Roman Empire and the emperors. He was just excited to grow it to scale, scale, scale, which is the term that you hear all the time in Silicon Valley, just to grow the company.
- [06:22]
Natalie Robomed
Totally. The next really big evolution of Mark Zuckerberg seems to have been post 2016 Russian interference in the US presidential elections. And this was the time when we were seeing Mark Zuckerberg visiting all 50 states as he said he wanted to do on this kind of all American tour kind of grilling.
- [06:44]
Vanessa
Hey everyone, we are live from my backyard where I am smoking a brisket and some ribs. I actually was not previously aware that there were multiple kinds of sweet baby rays.
- [06:57]
Natalie Robomed
Talk to me about that Mark Zuckerberg and how the 2016 election interference kind of set the table.
- [07:05]
Cecilia Kang
Yeah, so I would say, and I think that's a really good description, Natalie. I would say that post2016 election and even a little bit before Zuckerberg was forced into the public light, he was in the spotlight. And if you describe the pre period as hoodie Mark, I would describe this as diplomat Mark. That period Mark Barbie. Yeah, exactly. He has scrutiny coming from Washington, from all over the world, regulators all over the world as well as the public for the first time thinking about, oh wait, you know this, this platform isn't just to connect with Auntie Jane and so and so and uncle so and so. It's this, this platform has real power to, to bring people together, but also for bad actors to manipulate, to sow chaos, to spread misinformation, all the things that came to light during that 2016 period. So he was in repair mode. And so I would describe this period also as Mark with the very, very short, in fact awkwardly short haircut that really looked like Caesar Augustus, actually one of his role models, his heroes. And also the suit wearing Mark where he was coming to Washington, having to testify, meeting with world leaders and going on doing really glossy image sort of PR appearances, including his tour around the country where he was meeting with farmers, he was milking goats, he was doing all these things to make him seem like a real human being, first of and relatable. And they put an army of PR people behind this effort. It was like a government leader you know, he was like a government leader at that point with the same sort of staff.
- [08:50]
Natalie Robomed
I think some people are still confused about whether Russia actually interfered in the elections via Facebook.
- [08:57]
Cecilia Kang
What.
- [08:57]
Natalie Robomed
What is the truth?
- [08:58]
Cecilia Kang
So I think there are competing reports. Absolutely. The ira, Internet Research Agency, it's a Russian group out of the Kremlin. It was almost like a propaganda mill that was just like pushing propaganda on the site. That was absolutely true. Buying political ads that were like fake, Bernie ads, like all kinds of misinformation advertisements just to get different political views out there and to inflame opinions on the site. So. Just to get people to engage more on that. So, yes, that was absolutely happening.
- [09:31]
Natalie Robomed
Because extreme opinions and inflamed opinions are what are preferred by the algorithm. What are uplifted by the algorithm of the newsfeed.
- [09:40]
Cecilia Kang
Yeah. I mean, if you are trying to spread propaganda or you're trying to sow chaos, the algorithm is probably your best aid, because the site makes money through engagement. The more you go on, the more you come back and the longer you stay, the more data is collected about you and what you're doing and thinking. And that's what's then in turn sold to advertisers who want to place their ads on this site so they can personalize advertising. So what the incentive then is to get you to be emotional or agitated on the site. And that agita is what really is the secret sauce of getting people to engage more. And the algorithm, the news feed is what I'm talking about, that is absolutely designed and engineered in a way to get you to engage more and more. And in other words, the algorithm is all about getting you angry, sad, happy, whatever it may be, agitated, emotions. So emotions. And when it comes to political news, it's usually anger. And that's just sort of the natural, like, people's natural reaction. And so if you are the ira, or if you're a foreign government or a bad actor, and you're trying to get people really riled up and angry, or to sow chaos and spread propaganda, it's just the perfect platform. Unlike, say, if you're trying to put an ad on local radio station, you know, it comes and goes, and there's no interaction with that ad. So that is the great innovation, and that's the great harm, frankly, of the social network.
- [11:24]
Natalie Robomed
You had this fantastic line that Facebook has this purported mission to advance society by connecting people, but it's also all about profiting off of them. And that's its kind of original sin or sort of main dilemma. Basically. And so Zuckerberg had this phrase that I think really speaks to this, that he used to say in meetings early on. Company over country.
- [11:49]
Cecilia Kang
Yeah, yeah.
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Natalie Robomed
So that's. I mean, I think that's something that kind of might explain his worldview.
- [11:55]
Cecilia Kang
Right.
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Natalie Robomed
I mean, what does drive him?
- [11:57]
Cecilia Kang
So I think, I mean, Mark Zuckerberg cares about big historical impact and having a lasting, enormous, changing technology that will go down in history as formative for whole society and civilization. So it's actually less about making money. Yes, he is one of the wealthiest people in the world and I'm not going to say he doesn't care about money, but I think it's the impact and the growth, I think it's the grandeur that he cares about most. So that that phrase. And he would run down the hall with his fist to say company over country. I think what it shows is that he sees the technology and the company that he runs as bigger than any individual government or country. And he truly believes that it's a force for good and for impact. And I wanted to stress that it's almost neutral how he thinks about whether it's good or bad. It's about impact.
- [12:57]
Unnamed Speaker
How much does he personally share on Facebook? Do you feel like he keeps himself relatively hidden, or is he Elon esque where he's showing his drugs, allegedly, and also tweeting every single thought that comes through his mind?
- [13:11]
Cecilia Kang
No. No. So he posts a lot. They're very thoughtful posts, oftentimes long. He posts personal things on his public profile. He has a private profile as well. His posts are highly curated and edited and they're of his family, they're of. Product launches are sometimes about his thoughts on the world. Very rarely they're about policy issues. Now they're about ultimate fighting, they're about jiu jitsu and all the things that he's interested in these days. This particular kind of sail, hydro. I think it's hydrosurfing. I'm getting the term totally wrong. Like all of his sports, like, he's just into all these new hobbies and he posts a lot about that and videos of himself. He posts photos of his kids and he always blocks out their faces. He's very concerned about their privacy, which is ironic because kids privacy has been perennially a huge issue for them. So for his own children, he's incredibly guarded about their personal information, including their faces and any other identifiers about them. But he's careful and thoughtful. And again, he has a group of people who really, you know, make sure that his post aren't like Elon's, which are often at all hours of night, and they are stream of consciousness. We don't know if they're sober or not. We don't know, you know, where they're coming from. They're quite reactive and emotional. That is so totally not Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg is probably one of the most controlled and disciplined people you'll meet in Silicon Valley, and I think that's a huge part of his success.
- [14:44]
Natalie Robomed
Yeah. And I mean, I think it's interesting that he at least has the appearance of sharing a lot, but then in real life, he seems to be very concerned about his privacy.
- [14:54]
Cecilia Kang
Like, absolutely.
- [14:55]
Natalie Robomed
Yeah. Like he didn't he buy the house next to his house in California so nobody would be overlooking it?
- [15:02]
Cecilia Kang
That's exactly right. I think he, as well as other top leaders, including the former COO Sheryl Sandberg, are really out there in the public, but you really don't know them. There's a real veneer, like a glossy veneer to who they are and an image that they cultivated with the company as well. But what truly motivates them, who they are, is pretty closely guarded. And actually, that's why Shira and I were so interested in doing an insider book, because it's a company that purports to be open about bringing the world together, and yet there was a level of opacity about them as leaders and how the company runs.
- [15:43]
Natalie Robomed
I mean, part of the problem it seems here is that Mark Zuckerberg is the leader like he is Facebook. Facebook is him. Nobody wants to piss him off. And so for all these appearances of transparency and everything else, it's really not that transparent. And then time and time again, we've seen the dangers of misinformation and the problems with putting growth over everything else. So I actually wanted to ask about Myanmar and Facebook's Internet.org project. Facebook has been so focused on growth and getting to the next billion.
- [16:19]
Cecilia Kang
Right.
- [16:20]
Natalie Robomed
That it has focused on spreading the Internet, I mean, meaning Facebook, through developing nations via its Internet.org projects. And I mean, I don't know. This is my personal opinion, but it seems like one of the most insidious parts of Facebook because it's profit under the guise of philanthropy and not moderated. And then that has led to a genocide.
- [16:43]
Cecilia Kang
Mark Zuckerberg reached a point more than 10 years ago where he realized, you know what? I've got a ton of users in the us I've got a ton of users in Europe, but Facebook really needs to be a more global platform, we want more users and that means going across the world and trying to get them on our platform. But here's the problem. The Internet isn't available all over the world, nor are smartphones or laptops, especially in developing countries where people just simply can't afford them. So he created this organization, we should call it a Non profit called Internet.org and the idea was to pair up with telecoms, telecommunications providers in different countries and offer Internet service for free over really basic feature phones that the company supplied. And when you flip open that phone or turn on that phone, the way to get onto the Internet was through Facebook. So really it was a Facebook phone. And so in Myanmar, the Internet was first introduced as Facebook on a phone and for free for many people. And the idea was that if you get people on the Internet, you're going to get them to use it and you're going to jumpstart these economies and get people to use all kinds of other parts of the Internet, et cetera. And that was the purported mission of Internet.org but the most important thing to keep in mind is that their gateway, the portal to the Internet, if you will, was Facebook. And so Facebook, quite literally for a lot of people, and you hear this in the Philippines and Myanmar, people will say, you know, they use interchangeably the word Facebook with the Internet. And what happened was in Myanmar was the military, the Burmese military began spreading disinformation against the Rohingya Muslims on Facebook pages. And they were spreading wild rumors, untrue, about violence perpetrated by the Rohingya. And as a reaction, the broader non Rohingya population reacted with violence towards the Rohingya. And that resulted and it really perpetuated the killing of many Rohingya Muslims and genocide. And you can trace it back to, and world leaders have said this to disinformation that began and ended with these free services through Facebook. And I think the really important thing about that is, okay, that in itself is completely tragic what happened, but it's an example of how Facebook doesn't think about the consequences of their technology until later.
- [19:33]
Natalie Robomed
It's this move fast and break things ideal that you.
- [19:36]
Cecilia Kang
Exactly. They just didn't put the safety of their users before they did trying to get the growth, getting all the users online.
- [19:43]
Natalie Robomed
Right. And how Mark Zuckerberg has, it seems to me, defended these instances is just sort of under the guise of, of free speech in a lot of ways.
- [19:55]
Vanessa
Hey everyone, I want to talk about something important today because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I started building social media to give.
- [20:05]
Natalie Robomed
People a voice, and then he's kind of flip flopped on that. So, like, what. What is going on? I mean, does Zuckerberg actually care about free speech?
- [20:15]
Cecilia Kang
He cares tremendously about free speech and his definition of free speech. So Mark Zuckerberg is a free speech maximalist. And what I mean by that is he truly believes that more speech will drown out bad speech. And that's a particular view of speech that is very popular in Silicon Valley. The idea that if you just, if you flood the zone with more commentary, that the public will naturally weed out misinformation, hate speech, because there won't be tolerance for this bad speech. They'll weed out the disease, in other words.
- [20:48]
Natalie Robomed
But that completely disregards the role of algorithms in promoting the most outrageous.
- [20:55]
Cecilia Kang
So I think you put your. That is at the nub of the problem. If you have an algorithm that is constantly churning out and putting in your newsfeed content that's going to agitate you and get you to come back and make you want to engage more and more and more. It's a counterforce to that force of this idea of the public trying to weed out bad speech.
- [21:18]
Natalie Robomed
Right. Because it's not the point, it strikes me is that like these news feeds and Facebook, et cetera, like, it's not actually a platform for free speech. It's very much filtered and promoted speech.
- [21:29]
Cecilia Kang
Yeah. And I think what we're seeing right now, and before we were saying that we saw like hoodie Mark, then there was like diplomat Mark. I would say now we are sort of in the gold chain mark phase, which is the Mark Zuckerberg who is really like trying to be more what he believes is authentic to himself. I don't want to take credit for the gold chain Mark description. I heard that directly from an executive, this idea, gold chain Mark. What we understand is he's disregarded a lot of the counsel of the people around him, the advisors and PR people. And he's also enabled by people like Elon Musk and other men in what's known as the manosphere. Right. Who are expressing their masculinity. Mark Zuckerberg himself said that he thinks it needs to be be more masculine energy in business. He feels safer to do things like shoot off the hip, show himself in very macho type of sports and fashion wise, express himself in the way he has. And along with this is a return to what he's, from what I understand in my reporting is what he's always believed, I think he feels that he was convinced by advisors to try to make content moderation and fact checking work because he got so much criticism during the first Trump administration for allowing misinformation and then during the COVID crisis for allowing Covid misinformation to be on the site. I think we got a real glimpse of this in 2019 when he gave a speech at Georgetown. I was there when he expressed that some people believe giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing us together. And he was panned immediately after that speech. It was just civil rights leaders. So many people said that is so dangerous, Mark, what you're saying, no, it's really important that that speech is moderated. And he feels like he was over censored by the civil rights community. The left is what he would say. It's like sort of the woke left. And so in comes Maga and people in Silicon Valley, the sort of the tech right wing, if you will, who are saying, you know, actually the left went too far. They became the party of censorship is what they would say. So now he feels his version of the story is, we're level setting right now. We overdid it with content moderation, with fact checking. So I'm disbanding fact checking and content moderation. From what I understand, he truly believes it. He truly believes that he was convinced to go along with a kind of policy on speech that he didn't really think was the right way to go in the first place. And so he's quite happy with this new stage.
- [24:09]
Natalie Robomed
Gold chain mark is that is gold chain mark. I mean, I. It's honestly incredibly alarming to me to hear. And, you know, I mean, I think it's very interesting that he's in this current macho appearance and you know, as you said, he's got this gold chain, he's doing jiu jitsu. He's incredibly shredded. And yeah, I mean, I do also want to note that he still owns the majority of shares.
- [24:35]
Cecilia Kang
He does. So the buck stops with him.
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Unnamed Speaker
I actually went to Facebook many, many years ago when I first got on it and I wrote a story for New York magazine. It was 2009. It was a small, at least the part that I saw. Relatively small, small cafeteria. The office is sort of like designed with, I wouldn't call it graffiti, but street sort of sprayed different paintings and things like that. And I went there with the pitch that I couldn't believe that I was being connected with all my friends from elementary school and high school. And this was like this magical time machine. And that was the truth of what I was going to write. And I sat down with them and they gave me like Christopher Cox, who was very high up at Facebook, but it said, mark and Charles are not available for you and a parade. I must have met with six or seven, seven people. And every time we sat down they said, so Facebook is going to protect your data. And I was like, well, I'm actually writing about what strange and surreal experience it is to see how all these people are doing who I never would have known for the rest of my life. I would have died not knowing what 90% of these people were doing. And they just wanted to talk about that so much and was really early. So 2009 was really early, before the war.
- [26:05]
Cecilia Kang
Interesting, Vanessa.
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Unnamed Speaker
Super interesting. Right. But that was the thing that's the Achilles heel before all the political stuff.
- [26:13]
Cecilia Kang
Absolutely. It was almost like they had the wrong talking points for the Vanessa conversation. But in fact they were. They had that of mind. They knew that it was coming. And our reporting shows that from the beginning. It was such a leaky ship when it came to people's data from the very beginning. And they're truly putting the consumer user safety and well being. It was not a priority. It was an afterthought. And so that is really funny. That was probably a year after Sheryl arrived. Actually 2008, it was a year after Sheryl arrived. So you must have been in the Palo Alto. They were on University Avenue and they also were moving to pagemill Road. It was around that time when Obama came and gave a town hall at Facebook. And again, it shows the sort of attitude Vanessa toward Facebook was so different then. I mean, the Obama administration chose to give a speech at Facebook because they wanted to be part of that. They wanted to be on that rocket ship and be associated with it, of technology and growth and what was viewed as this transformationally good technology.
- [27:17]
Unnamed Speaker
And there was something just sort of folksy about it. And I mean, they continue to want to say, like, we're basket weaving over here, but let me ask you a question. How do you feel about putting your information on Facebook or Instagram or things like that and your. I don't know if you have kids, what's your tolerance for all that?
- [27:33]
Cecilia Kang
I post so little. So I'm obviously on all of Facebook's apps because I have to understand how they work. And I was also an early adopter. I think I joined Facebook in 2007 or 2008 and I had the same reaction wow. I'm even finding distant relatives on this platform, and I'm learning all about different kinds of groups. And I was just excited about it, and I was pretty optimistic and enthusiastic. So I posted a lot, frankly, in the beginning, and I thought that. I just didn't think too much about the data privacy implications. I would say it was probably when I had kids that I slowed down and I stopped. I stopped posting photos of my children really early on. My policy with my kids was they couldn't join until they're of age, which was 13 in terms of the legal. The terms of service age. And then I gave them the big tutorial about how it works. And I also explained to them, look, this platform is designed to make you want to come back. It's just all about. It's like a salty snack. It's like salty peanuts. You just want to keep going back and back and back for another handful. And you need to know this. And the reason why they do this is because they're making money. It's a business model. It's a business decision. And the more you come back to eat peanuts, the more you're putting money into their hands, and they're not necessarily looking out for you. And, like, whether those peanuts are toxic or there's any problems with it. So be really careful. And then, of course, other. I gave them all kinds of warnings about don't do anything that's untoward or post any photos of yourself. They're basically. Once they're on, the settings are so tricky to really lock them down into private. Private. They just go out on the Internet. Yeah.
- [29:21]
Unnamed Speaker
I mean, the funny thing is that in the Facebook offices is it's still this case that they work in basically bullpens. Like, nobody has an office even. Sure, the big, big, big execs have, but maybe not even the big execs.
- [29:35]
Cecilia Kang
They don't. In fact, in the middle of Menlo park, their office they call the mpk is what they call their headquarters. It's just a massive, huge floor. There are multiple floors and multiple buildings, but where Mark Zuckerberg sits is in the middle of it. His conference room is all glass walls, so it's known as the aquarium, because anybody that passes by can look in, and he sits in his office. I mean, I think things have changed since COVID People don't return as often, and he's often in Hawaii or in Tahoe in one of his many mansions around the world. And the idea is, and a lot of Silicon Valley companies are like this, that everything is transparent and open is what's the idea? They had an internal message board for people to weigh in and ask questions and talk and discuss and even debate things within the company. But once the company was receiving a public scrutiny and a lot of criticism post 2016 for disinformation, privacy abuses, et cetera, things started to change. They started shutting down and locking down those message boards. You know, meetings were much more private. There were a couple meetings where they'd paper up the aquarium before so other employees couldn't see what was actually happening culturally. This whole open office thing was meant to be highly symbolic and show openness and transparency.
- [31:01]
Unnamed Speaker
It's just so funny because it's not really such a transparent situation.
- [31:05]
Cecilia Kang
Exactly, exactly. So that contradiction is something that we just really want to explore in this book. And I think that's what makes the company such a curiosity, is because it's always saying one thing and really living another experience. It's just like in the same way they always say, we're sorry, we're sorry, we'll do better. And then they repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
- [31:26]
Unnamed Speaker
And so your book, An Ugly Truth Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination chronicles a lot of this. And then more recently, there's been a book written by an insider at Facebook. Can you talk a bit. Had you come across her? And can you talk a bit about what you think of that book, which has quite a bunch of shocking details and has been somewhat quashed, you know, on Facebook, in terms of like, she can't give interviews.
- [31:52]
Cecilia Kang
I will say that I don't think there could be a better ad for this author than Facebook suing her to keep her from promoting the book. And so that was just a. It was just a heavy handed miscalculation, I think on Facebook's behalf, I will confess I'm halfway through the audiobook and I think it's fantastic. I think it's an incredible, incredible read. I think the same basic. And she has different stories and different anecdotes, but the themes are the same, frankly, as our book, which is that over and over you have people in charge of a company that are willfully blind to the harms of this thing that they have created because they're making so much money and they're growing and they're just so successful. And so there is a growth and profits over safety focus that she chronicles and that we did as well. And it grapples also with how this company, because they aren't looking around corners for trouble ahead, not just for the company, but for its users and for democracy. They find themselves in these knots, these really difficult, gnarly situations where they just can't find clear solutions, which is, how do you handle content and speech on the world's biggest speech platform when you have bad actors spreading propaganda and disinformation and hate speech, et cetera. And the company has not fully grasped how to do that. And we've seen the evolution of one policy after another to where we are right now.
- [33:32]
Natalie Robomed
What do you think is next for Mark Zuckerberg? I mean, he seems to have gotten really obsessed, obsessed with the metaverse. But what is his big AI play gonna be?
- [33:42]
Cecilia Kang
There have been some different stages of the company's growth where they've been caught behind and there's a panic to catch up. That was the case when it came to the smartphone, and we're seeing that right now with AI. So they're behind, they're behind Google, they're behind Microsoft, OpenAI and all the startups like Anthropic. And so just this week they announced that they're going to invest billions in scale AI company that does generative AI and they're going to put tons of resources and focus on an AI lab. The one thing that they may have an advantage over their competitors with is that they've built their model to be like a version of what's known as open source. So they believe that all AI models should be open for other developers to use and copy, et cetera, and that could help their growth because startups like that, and they'll want to sort of piggyback on what Facebook is doing right now, but they're behind and hopefully this big investment in their minds hopefully will help propel them. The thing is, is that any of the biggest tech companies, and I'm talking about Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple, the five big ones, they're still so cash rich that they can buy their way through these investments in AI startups to stay ahead and to compete. These five companies are poising themselves and if not already poised to dominate AI in the way that they dominated the last wave of technology. So that's where Mark Zuckerberg's mind is.
- [35:17]
Unnamed Speaker
What does that really mean? It, does it mean that like, suddenly there are going to be, you know, pictures of us doing all the things we did in the past, but we just forgot, like, what is it?
- [35:27]
Cecilia Kang
It's such a great question. So AI has transformed search shopping. It's just going to keep people on their platforms. But I was covering the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust Trial against Meta, against Facebook, and an executive said something that was just like, ding, ding, ding. The alarm bells went off in my mind. Like, this is. I think I get it, what the idea is. He was saying, like, look, before Facebook and Instagram, your feeds were created by users, right? Like, people post photos of their vacations and they write their thoughts, they share news stories and videos. Just imagine this executive said in this antitrust trial. He said, what AI is going to do is it will personalize and create content for your feed. In other words, you as a human, Vanessa, or Natalie, do not even have to create your own content. The AI will create content that it thinks you want to see in your feed to keep you on constantly. It was my big takeaway. They use the word engagement. That's sort of the euphemism for like, just like constantly being on. Right. So imagine it. It was just like, whoa, that's the future going to be synthetic. Exactly. Synthetic manufacturer content that keeps you on and on and off. And they know you because they have the data about you and they know how you interact and what you like, your history. So, yes, maybe Vanessa, photos of you when you're really young, but also just like a deluge of content that's created by AI.
- [37:10]
Natalie Robomed
Just slop.
- [37:12]
Cecilia Kang
Well, yeah.
- [37:14]
Natalie Robomed
What a thing to look forward to. Can you tell people where to find you?
- [37:18]
Cecilia Kang
So I'm on the New York Times website and I. I'm not really on X. I actually was kicked off and I don't know why a lot of journalists were, but I'm on Blue sky and I'm on Threads, but I don't really post on any of these places, but I'm on LinkedIn and. But please just read our stories on the web. And our book, I feel, continues to hold up. And my colleague Shira and I, my co author, so we're. You can get our book at all the usual places. Thank you.
- [37:53]
Natalie Robomed
That's it for Infamous. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and review and tell your friends. If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at Natrobe. That's N A T R O B E. And if you want to support Vanessa's work, you can buy her book, Blurred Lines, Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus. See you next week.