David Remnick (2:51)

But isn't it? Because people in Silicon Valley, unlike people in the Eastern establishment, which are perfectly comfortable sometimes with seeing themselves as besooted, powerful commandos who run everything, people in Silicon Valley who are not wearing ties and suits like to think of themselves as good and nice and innocent.

Nicholas Thompson (3:10)

Yeah, that's very true and very astute at Facebook. They always sort of are a little self deprecating when you talk about the power they have in the news and you talk about the power they have in American democracy. And so during the 2016 election, they saw that Donald Trump was using the platform much better than Hillary Clinton to a certain degree. They saw all the fake news spreading that was helping Trump. They didn't say any of the Russia stuff yet. And the election happens and suddenly Trump wins. And it's this moment of, oh my God, did we do that? And that was a real moment of reckoning for Silicon Valley and for Zuckerberg.

David Remnick (3:48)

I had an interview with President Obama just before and then another interview just after the election. And the thing that he was obsessed with was not so much Trump himself, but obviously he was thinking about that. Was that the way social media was manipulated by so many factors, many of them stemming from Russia, you know, kids in Montenegro running a business out of the basement to pump out fake news, and that this was distorting the election. How did Facebook get exploited? What's the story of that?

Nicholas Thompson (4:21)

Well, so the way that Facebook has a pernicious effect on politics, it works in a couple of ways. First, there's something called the filter bubble, which means you become friends with people of the same political identity. And over time, you see more stories from people who think like you, and then eventually more extreme versions of stories of people who think like you. That's a discrete problem. Then there's something I call outrage amplification, which is that if you write a story and it says Trump is a monster or Hillary is the worst, it's going to get shared much more and it's going to spread through the platform because of the way the algorithm works much more than a more tempered story. And that gives an advantage to candidates on the extreme, whether it's Bernie Sanders on the left or Donald Trump on the right. It just means that those candidates tend to do better and build social networks. So you've got those two problems going, thrown into the 2016 election. There is this big problem that people Realized that you could just take malarkey and put it on the Internet. You could write a story saying the Pope has endorsed Donald Trump, and then millions of people would read it, and you'd be able to monetize the ads on it. Those are the kids in Montenegro who are putting up these fake stories. Then there's also the Russia operation. All of these things are happening. Now, it can be said that there are good things that Facebook does. It does connect you to people, but there's also a lot of bad stuff.

David Remnick (5:36)

What was Facebook doing or not doing about the. In other words, they see themselves as a platform and not as editors. That was their position. What did they do? They just did nothing.

Nicholas Thompson (5:50)

Yeah. So at its core, one of the fundamental problems and one of the mistakes or maybe decisions that led Facebook to where they are is that they very much decided that they're a platform, not a publisher, meaning they would not take responsibility for the quality of information. In fact, they would make everything in News Feed look the same. A New Yorker story goes up in newsfeed, it looks a certain way. A story from a publication that some kid far away makes up that publishes only fake news more or less looks the same. And Facebook did that as sort of a way to democratize information.

David Remnick (6:23)

Now, the word democratize sounds great, but what's the danger of it?

Nicholas Thompson (6:26)

Well, the danger is that without authority, without trust, and without that being shown in the packaging. Right. In the physical world, you get the New Yorker and has this beautiful cover, and you know that this is an established publication and it costs something. So you have to have a reputation. You can't just create a fake New Yorker and get it to a million people, but on Facebook, you can. And so they did it for what they thought were good reasons, and it led to these catastrophic consequences. So back to the previous question, which is, what were they doing? They were doing nothing. And they were doing nothing for a couple reasons. One, they had this really tricky situation, which is the beginning of the story. They get accused of being biased against Republicans, and they think the accusations are false. But it creates this massive storm in May of 2016. So shortly before Trump clinches the nomination. And after that, they're really worried about getting regulated. They're really worried about upsetting half the country. So they, according to at least a dozen people I spoke to, kind of had their heads in the sand about fake news and the Russia operations because they didn't want to see anything where they would have to act in a way that could be seen as biased against Republicans.

David Remnick (7:34)

And When Trump is finally elected and there are charges that Facebook somehow influence the election, Zuckerberg's initial reaction is to call that pretty crazy.

Nicholas Thompson (7:45)

Yeah, that was a big mistake on his part. What happened there, based on our reporting, is some of the people who work for him on the newsfeed team did some calculations and they're like, x percentage of all content shared is fake news. And it's a small number. Zuckerberg is very analytical, looks at the numbers and decides that couldn't really have had any influence. It was probably a misunderstanding of the way the news ecosystem worked. It was certainly a misunderstanding of the news, of the mood at Facebook. So Zuckerberg says that, and the people at Facebook say, whoa, whoa, whoa. One person told me that when they heard that, they were worried that Zuckerberg was, quote, gonna take Facebook down the pariah path that Uber was on and they had to flip them.

David Remnick (8:29)

They were that frightened that somehow Zuckerberg's public image would be as bad as.

Nicholas Thompson (8:33)

The guy running Travis Kalanick. That Zuckerberg's reaction to the election was so mistaken. That is going to put Facebook in that kind of trouble.

David Remnick (8:41)

He's no longer just a nice guy without a tie.

Nicholas Thompson (8:44)

Right. And I think that starting then, after that pretty crazy comment begins the education of Mark Zuckerberg, where he starts to think about these things much more carefully over the following year and a half, which is a lot of the arc.

David Remnick (8:57)

Of the story, but it's a long education and it doesn't come overnight. There's a rift that emerges in this article between Facebook's, the employee's vision of what Facebook is and should be, and Zuckerberg's vision.

Nicholas Thompson (9:12)

Yeah, that is the rift. That. One of the dynamics that's most interesting in Silicon Valley right now is that the place where you can put the most pressure on executives comes from the engineers. If Facebook becomes a place where 28 year old smart engineers don't want to work because they think they're harming the world, then Facebook's in really big trouble. So if the meme starts to spread, Facebook is making the world worse. Right? By making us depressed. By tearing apart American democracy.

David Remnick (9:48)

By distorting reality.

Nicholas Thompson (9:50)

By distorting reality. So nobody knows what's true and what's not. And in fact, once former Facebook executives start to directly say that that's a real problem for Facebook.

David Remnick (9:59)

The piece in some way is a fable, an exemplary fable about criticism and the ability or inability to listen to it. Certain kinds of critics don't seem to penetrate Facebook's consciousness Whereas different kinds of critics do. There's a kind of insider, outsider dynamic going on.

Nicholas Thompson (10:18)

Yeah. You know, it came up actually recently in a conversation with somebody where we're talking about an outside critic who's very eloquent, and the executive is like, they didn't build anything. They don't matter. And so there are a lot of people who Facebook kind of has dismissed. They don't know what they're talking about, and they don't listen to journalists and media executives. They don't pay attention to, with one exception, Mr. Murdoch, who we can get to, but they do listen to.

David Remnick (10:48)

Well, hang on there. Rupert Murdoch is a presence in this piece. Why is Rupert Murdoch somebody that Mark Zuckerberg listens to?

Nicholas Thompson (10:57)

Well, this is one of the more interesting things that we found.

David Remnick (10:59)

It can't be ideological.

Nicholas Thompson (11:01)

It's power and influence. So Zuckerberg, according to our reporting in 2007, became convinced that Rupert Murdoch had basically gotten sock puppets to lead Richard Blumenthal to lead a pedophilic investigation into Facebook. In other words, that Murdoch, who at the time ran MySpace, had gotten people to kind of pretend to be concerned parents, get MySpace executives to write letters to Richard Blumenthal in the New York Times, which then led to an investigation into Facebook, and that to Zuckerberg and his top management team. And very few people knew about this, convinced them that Murdoch was skilled in the dark arts. So then jump forward. So then it's the summer of 16.

David Remnick (11:42)

Even though Murdoch lost out to them and MySpace crumbled MySpace as Piers Zuckerberg destroys it.

Nicholas Thompson (11:47)

But they know that this guy, he plays at a high level. So in the summer of 16, Sun Valley, this had never been reported before. Murdoch goes into a villa with Zuck and Sandberg and Dan Rose, and he's there with Robert Thompson, and he says, you guys are killing the news industry, and you need to do much better. And there wasn't an explicit threat that they would use their newspapers and media to criticize Facebook and to say that Facebook should be regulated. In fact, News Corp. Would completely deny that and say, that's atroc. But Zuckerberg left thinking, wait, Murdoch is mad. Murdoch has all this power, and he controls all these newspapers. Who can write about, I don't know, antitrust regulation? Zuckerberg goes back in a panic. And that's one of the things that starts Facebook to start trying to reconsider its relationship to the news industry. And then Murdoch has continued to be an extremely articulate critic, as has Robert Thompson. Very tough. Tougher than almost Anybody. And we then reported a third scene that hadn't been reported, which is in end of last year, end of 17, where there's a big meeting at the News Corp. Headquarters, and Zuckerberg gives a toast praising Murdoch and saying, I've learned so much. And I read a biography and describing a tennis match where he started playing and kind of thought it would be a lot easier than it was and realized that, yeah, Murdoch's playing to win.

David Remnick (13:14)

Which I have to say, it was at that moment that I. I couldn't believe it.

Nicholas Thompson (13:18)

I couldn't believe it.

David Remnick (13:19)

He was kissing his behind like that.

Nicholas Thompson (13:22)

The influence of Murdoch is. I had no idea when I started reporting this story.

David Remnick (13:27)

So in late October of last year, Colin Stretch, the general counsel for Facebook, and other executives from Google and Twitter recalled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a subcommittee. And it was all about Russian interference in the 2016 election. And that didn't go so well?

Nicholas Thompson (13:46)

No, it didn't go so well. They didn't come across as open as they could be. But the Russia stuff really blindsided Facebook. They really didn't know the extent of the Russian propaganda operation on their platform until the summer of 2017, the stuff that had a huge influence on America the previous year and on the election.

David Remnick (14:09)

Until even after Obama confronted Zuckerberg.

Nicholas Thompson (14:12)

They knew about fake news, and they knew that there had been some Russian attempts to hack people's credentials. They did not know about the propaganda operation. They did not know that the IRA Internet Research Agency had created all of these groups to sort of spread lies and divide America. They didn't know that until there was a story in Time magazine in May of 17 where somebody says an unnamed intelligence officer said that Russian propaganda groups had bought ads, and Facebook said, what? And so then they looked at all of the ads that had been purchased. They started to dig into the ad data. And by digging into the ad data, they found all these groups from the Internet Research Agency, the groups that had been Heart of Texas and Blacktivist, that had been designed to divide us. And so it was only in June and July of 17 that they found this stuff. Then they find it, and they kind of minimize it, and then they get hammered for minimizing it. And that's the context in which we have those congressional hearings.

David Remnick (15:16)

Was there a decisive moment? Was there a breakthrough moment for Zuckerberg where he realized, no, it's not pretty crazy that we influenced this godforsaken election, but in fact, we have to own it and we have to change.

Nicholas Thompson (15:31)

I think that there is a Kind of a listening tour that he goes on in December, January after the election, where he really gets an earful and he starts to think. Then there's the revelation about Russian ads, and then there's the congressional hearings. And those moments all just pound home exactly what's going on.

David Remnick (15:51)

The overall impression here is of a really hard education for someone who is capable of shame. Not all executives are. In the history of American business, it seems like Zuckerberg was capable of learning and of shame. And how do you illustrate that?

Nicholas Thompson (16:09)

Well, maybe the best moment is every year he sets up a resolution. The first year it's, he's going to wear ties, and then it's, I'm going to run 365 miles or read a lot of books. And then this year he publishes his resolution and it's, I'm going to fix Facebook. I know we've caused all these problems in the world, and I'm going to dedicate myself to fixing it. And it was kind of a startling moment. He got mocked, right? Mark Zuckerberg's resolution is to do his job. But I read it and thought, this guy's really taking it to heart.

David Remnick (16:36)

So on your Facebook feed, do you see any changes that are substantial since a year or two ago?

Nicholas Thompson (16:42)

One of the big changes has been deprioritizing what are called pages, which are sort of public pages, so that's institutional pages, and reprioritizing individual pages. So on the Nick Thompson public page, where I blast out Wired stories a couple times a day, lower engagement. On the Nick Thompson private page, where I share stories with my friends about my children, more engagement. But I think in general, there's been a significant decline in traffic to the news industry through Facebook's changes over the last few years.

David Remnick (17:11)

And why is that great?

Nicholas Thompson (17:13)

Well, I think over time, what it will be is my hope and what has been told to me is that there will be a decline to news overall and there'll be an increase for high quality news.

David Remnick (17:25)

So as an editor, as the editor of Wired, and somebody who knows the news business very well, are you happier about Facebook now than you were a year ago?

Nicholas Thompson (17:34)

I'm happier about Facebook than I was three months ago. I actually think the last three months have been good. I think ultimately one reason why Facebook did allow us to talk to people, Dan, is they are proud of the story at the moment.

David Remnick (17:49)

But you've got midterm elections coming up. What can we expect to see from Facebook? Will it make any difference in the way it did last time?

Nicholas Thompson (17:56)

I think the real Test will be do the most hyper partisan candidates spreading the most outrageous statements win on either side. And if they do, it's a sign that Facebook is not helping. Because what you don't want is you don't want a country where everybody goes to the extremes, where the only information that gets shared is nasty content.

David Remnick (18:24)

What if ideology is changing in the country and it's only reflecting that? When you talked about extremes before, you referred to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. What if that's what people want? In other words, there's a chicken and the egg problem here.

Nicholas Thompson (18:34)

Yeah, it's a chicken and egg problem. My view is that it's due to lots of factors in American life and surely cable television, demographics, geography, where we live. There are a thousand things that play into it. But I also think that Facebook contributes. So I guess the proper study would be to see whether the news that spreads, the political news that spreads on Facebook is more partisan this time than last time. It's possible that that could all reverse. I mean, remember the candidate who used Facebook the best before Donald Trump was this guy named Barack Obama, who wasn't particularly divisive or radical. So it's unclear whether that, you know, Facebook will have this sort of ineluctable effect on how politics works. But we'll see in a year.

David Remnick (19:20)

Nick, congratulations to you and Fred Vogelstein. It's a terrific piece. And.

Nicholas Thompson (19:24)

Thank you.

David Remnick (19:24)

Cover story of Wired this month.

Nicholas Thompson (19:26)

Always a pleasure to come and talk with you. Thanks, David.

David Remnick (19:35)

Nicholas Thompson is the editor of Wired. You can also find him talking about technology on CBS and cnn. Now I come to the magazine business and the radio business, for that matter. As a journalist, that's what I know, and it's what I get excited about and stress about. So the time I spend with my colleagues looking at cover illustrations and cartoons and photographs is a real pleasure. I went to see the New Yorker's director of photography, Joanna Milter, thinking that she'd show me some cool pictures or some other kind of visual inspiration. But no, Joanna wanted to talk about one thing and one thing only. Pro basketball. More specifically, her team from her city, the Cavaliers.

Nicholas Thompson (20:24)

One go. Rebound tip taken by spades.

David Remnick (20:27)

Final second.

Nicholas Thompson (20:28)

It's over. It's over.

David Remnick (20:29)

The greatest moment of your life. It's going to take her 10 minutes to recover.

Joanna Miltra (20:35)

I actually get teary. I actually get teary every time I see it. Yeah, I really do.

David Remnick (20:43)

Well, I'm here with my colleague, Joanna Miltra. Usually we talk about photography, and I thought we were gonna be talking about an Henri Cartier Bresson show or Stephen Shore show. But no. No way. It's all hoop, isn't it?

Joanna Miltra (20:58)

All basketball, all the time.

David Remnick (21:00)

So what have you got on your mind?

Joanna Miltra (21:02)

So my first pick is a person, actually. Doris Burke. Doris Burke is the first woman to do color commentary for an NBA senior starting this season, actually.

David Remnick (21:13)

And I have to say, we once went to a Cavs nick game, and you saw Doris Burke eight feet away. It was like Elvis had entered the building.

Joanna Miltra (21:23)

That's the way I feel about Doris. She's my Elvis. And what I love about Doris is she knows her basketball. And she also is great in the moment, in the dramatic moment. She's got this amazing voice. Her voice kind of has this tremulous quality to it. And she did the interview with LeBron James after. After the Cavs won the championship in 2016. She was the first person to interview LeBron.

Nicholas Thompson (21:47)

LeBron.

Joanna Miltra (21:48)

As soon as that buzzer sounded, your emotions let loose. Can you describe what you're feeling right now? LeBron is. He's 6 foot 8, 250 pounds. He's sobbing, he's crying. He's on the floor crying. And then she does the first interview with him.

Nicholas Thompson (22:05)

Cleveland, this is for you. Oh, LeBron, you did what no other.

Joanna Miltra (22:12)

Team had been able to do coming.

Nicholas Thompson (22:14)

Back from a 3 to 1 deficit in the finals.

Joanna Miltra (22:16)

And to do that, you had to.

Nicholas Thompson (22:18)

Win twice in a place that proved.

David Remnick (22:20)

Too much for so many teams.

Joanna Miltra (22:22)

I think the genius of Doris is that she makes you believe that she's pro, your team. And in a way, because she loves basketball so much, in a way, she is. She's rooting for all of them.

David Remnick (22:34)

If I told you you could replace Doris Burke and no longer be director of photography at the New Yorker, I pretty much feel it's a foregone conclusion. Right?

Joanna Miltra (22:43)

I guess. Although I don't think I have her talent.

David Remnick (22:46)

Don't sell yourself short. Okay. Now, what is your second pick?

Joanna Miltra (22:49)

Okay, so my second thing is a Twitter account called Fear the Sword. It's part of a sports blog for Cavs fans. I love it. It's petty and funny, and they have some running gags that I think are hilarious. For example, Dwayne Wade played briefly for the Cavs this year. He's an amazing player. He won three championships with the Miami Heat.

David Remnick (23:11)

He's about, what, 52?

Joanna Miltra (23:13)

His knees are 52. So fear the Sword has this running gag where they act as if Wade has been with the Cavs his entire career. I should mention that the Cavs did just trade him back to the Heat. But while he was with the Cavs, they acted as if he'd been with the Cavs for his entire career, and his career in Miami didn't even exist. So, for example, during a game, they'll say things like, 15 years in with the Cavs and those Dwyane Wade floaters still feel like new is one. Yeesh. 15 years in Cleveland and Wade is still tormenting the Heat during a game where they're playing the Heat.

David Remnick (23:47)

I think it's. This is the ultimate inside joke. You might as well be reading Romanian. Four steals on four possessions. That's why it's called Wade County Emerit, folks. Yep, can't miss that stuff. What's your third pick?

Joanna Miltra (24:01)

My third pick. Okay. I am glad that I picked this because I've been trying to get you to watch this for years. So there was a documentary made in 2008, and it was about LeBron's high school team. The guy who made the documentary, he went to LeBron's high school. So he started shooting this documentary when LeBron was still in high school.

David Remnick (24:22)

What's the name of the documentary?

Joanna Miltra (24:23)

It's called More Than a Game.

Nicholas Thompson (24:24)

They totally hit the ground running and they instantly had a chemistry and they.

David Remnick (24:28)

Started blowing teams out.

Nicholas Thompson (24:30)

You can see the cohesiveness.

David Remnick (24:31)

It takes teams time to develop that. They had it as soon as they were fresh.

Nicholas Thompson (24:36)

Every time we go out on the floor, we want to play 110%, and.

David Remnick (24:39)

That'S what we did tonight. Now, isn't it true that if LeBron played with four mice in high school, he'd probably win every game?

Joanna Miltra (24:45)

Well, that's probably true, Joanna.

David Remnick (24:48)

Thank you.

Joanna Miltra (24:48)

Thanks, David.

Nicholas Thompson (24:49)

And the buzz is clicking. The Eagles fall from the ranks of the unbeaten while the Irish roll on. Saint Be proves worthy of that top ranking. We established who was the best. It's kind of cool, I think.

David Remnick (25:03)

Hey, guys. Joanna Milter is the director of photography for the New Yorker and one day, maybe point guard for the Cavs. I'm David Remnick and thanks for listening. Next week, don't miss the show because we're going to be handing out the film industry's absolutely most coveted and glamorous awards, the Brodies Only at the New Yorker Radio Hour. See you then.

Narrator/Announcer (25:27)

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Toon Yards with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Calla Leah, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfiel, Maitha Lee Rao, and Steven Valentino, with special help from Rhonda Sherman, dav, David o', Hanna, Hillary Leichter Griffin, Emily Mann and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.