Big Technology Podcast - Should Facebook and Twitter Have Banned Donald Trump? A Conversation With Ryan Mac of BuzzFeed News

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

Over the past week, both Facebook and Twitter suspended President Donald Trump’s account. These companies don’t take such aggressive action lightly, and it took Trump sending a mob toward the U.S. Capitol, which they eventually breached, to force the issue.  For years, BuzzFeed News senior reporter Ryan Mac and I have been watching these companies’ every move. Previously as colleagues at BuzzFeed. Ryan joined me this week on the Big Technology Podcast for a discussion on whether the social platforms’ moves were merited, where they go from here, and how he thinks about all the internal Facebook communication he’s obtained in his reporting. 

Hey, Ryan. How's it going? Hey, man. Been quite a week, hasn't it? It's been a century, I feel like. Yeah. All right. Well, we will get into it. I will just start the music and we'll get rolling.

Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. And ladies and gentlemen, we have a great show on the way for you. Joining us today is Ryan Mack. He is a senior reporter at BuzzFeed News, a former colleague of mine. And I would say the man who has the best access into Facebook's internal communications. It seems like he knows things that are going on inside Facebook before the Facebook employees know them. So welcome to the show, Ryan. Thanks for having me.

Nice to be back in touch. I miss our daily conversation. so hopefully we'll be able to do a lot of catching up our daily walks too over the next hour yeah big walks uh you were a star in the bus feed office you are famous for when we used to be in person microwaving salmon so i just want to give you an opportunity to apologize oh man i thought we're going to get like 30 minutes into the podcast before we started going to the fish no we're going to go i mean the the just for all the listeners out there oh my god ryan was responsible for making the entire office smell like microwave fish that is almost daily basis that is that is

And this is your opportunity to apologize for your sins. So I'm just going to put it out there. That is just defamation. You should apologize. You should apologize to your coworkers and to anyone who even now has to process the thought of this. Does subsect cover the legal fees of your podcast because I'm going to sue over that? Because for one. First of all, yeah, this is not associated with substack.

This is just a big technology production. And I'm going to countersue you. Oh, wow. And I'm going to. win. Okay. Let's do this. Let's throw hands. So for one, there was a lot of leftovers in our office. As someone who hates to see food go to waste, I mean, I'm a man of the people. I eat leftovers. So yeah, so if there was fish, that would go in the microwave. In my defense, it did not make the office smell that bad. I asked many people. Okay. I feel like this is going to

be one of many times. You're asked to apologize for an obvious wrong during the show, and you decline, which is fine, which is your prerogative. But it was a missed opportunity. Let's talk about how much access you have into the Facebook employees' communications just to start off. You got to yell that on Twitter for how much stuff you tweet. I get yelled that all the time. I get yelled at all the time. I get yelled at for microwave fish, yelling at first. Yeah. Doing my job. Yeah, so what's, so how do you do it? How do I piss people off? No, I mean, with the access to Facebook, it's really funny because I can literally see messages that happen about the access that I have on workplace.

Facebook users use a thing called, or Facebook employees use something called workplace. It's kind of an internal social network, an internal Facebook for employees where they post, they talk about things, they chat, they flag things in groups for other people. And when they flag, like, for example, hey, Ryan Mack is, I can't believe I talk to myself in the third person, that Ryan Mack just is live tweeting our all hands meeting, do we know about this? I think it's kind of funny, and I see that stuff almost in real time. How do you make a decision what to share with the public and what you think is worth, you know, keeping closer to the chest? Because, you know, do you go through a calculation each time you share something from internal Facebook communications?

Does this, you know, benefit the public interest? Yeah. Or is it sort of, you know, everything's fair game? Like, how do you make a decision about what you're going to put up? Because there's stuff, you know, I'll just say there's stuff that I read that is like, okay, that's important to get out there. you know, that whistleblowers are sharing. And then there's others that it's like, oh, kind of like, well, you know, this is something that I'm just going to share because I found it on, you know, from someone who sent me about

what was going on inside Facebook. Well, I would think I would differentiate between what we put in stories versus what I tweet. And, I mean, tweeting, when you're tweeting in the moment, things can go by really quickly. You kind of want to catch everything. And sometimes I do have a kind of tongue-in-cheek kind of tone to my tweets as well sometimes. That's one way to put it. But I'm not going to put in a story. So we've had a lot of stories.

My colleague and I, Craig, me and you when you were here and Charlie and Joe. Charlie Warzel now at the New York Times, Joe Bernstein. Shout out, Joe and Charlie and Craig. I mean, we've gotten these internal memos and we read these things. We're like, holy shit, this is an incredible story. And we know right away, that's a story. When we got a memo from an employee's data scientist named Sophie Zhang, where she writes, I have blood on my hands.

The decisions that I made at Facebook were life and death decisions in places where we didn't even pay attention in places like Azerbaijan or Central America or in places we didn't action political interference. And you're kind of reading these things. this is an incredible story. This is newsworthy. You immediately drop everything. You start writing it. I mean, you kind of have that sense.

But, like, not everything rises to the level. I'm not going to, like, compare, like, everything to that. At the same time, we don't write a story about everything that we see internally. A lot of it makes it into tweets. A lot of it is on the cutting room floor. A lot of it I save for later. But, yeah, there's always that kind of discussion of what's newsworthy and what's not. Do you ever see something from like an internal employee when they yell at you on Twitter?

You know, maybe they say, I think there was one this week, accusing you of corporate espionage, corporate espionage, which I think was a little bit overboard. But I think the point was that they were trying to make was you tweet everything that said inside Facebook, even the stuff that's not important. And therefore, there's less transparency inside the company. Do you ever worry about that effect? I think about it. I think a lot. Yeah, I mean, more than people probably think I do. And I get their perspective. I mean, the perspective is the more reporters write about our company and what's said internally, the less people are going to be willing to share it in the open if they know it's going to be written about. The less our executives are going to engage with us if they know that a reporter is watching. I understand those sentiments. At the same time, I don't think it's my responsibility to cater to those sentiments when there is a general population that are of people that, I think, whose interests outweighs, I guess, individual or internal corporate privacy,

you know, internal corporate environments, I guess is probably the better word. But I get that. I mean, these people are, they're still working on Facebook. They're embattled. A lot of them are so proud to work there. A lot of them still think they're making a difference. And it's annoying when a reporter is reporting out things that are said from their colleagues. On the flip side of that, I've seen internally at Facebook a lot of people defending the reporting process. A lot of people understanding why things are leaked. I think things are leaked because there's a frustration that executives are not doing enough. They're not getting, they're not paying attention. They're not listening to what mid-level or low-level employees are saying

about and what they're seeing on the ground. And you get that, we've heard that sentiment multiple times actually. Sophie Zhang's memo is one where she mentions that the company doesn't react to a task that's filed by a low-level employee. It's really when there's a PR crisis. And that's when there's a PR crisis, all hands are on deck. Yeah. And you're the PR crisis. And I am the valve of the PR crisis. People come to me to, I don't know, start a PR crisis. Not like that's not how they phrase it, but they know that things will get attention. Things will get attention. I'm a report. I hold companies accountable. And they know that that's the way. Facebook acts, you know, look at this week, you know, what did it take to suspend Donald Trump? A riot, you know, and a lot of coverage. So do you think that was the appropriate move to suspend the president?

Um, I do. I do. In that moment, yes. So it's interesting that you put it the way that you did, you said that they waited until this moment to suspend the president. when would you have done it? Oh, man. I mean, I don't know if there's a day that I would be like, oh, this is the day I could point to where they would have done it. But as someone who's tracked the sentiment on what he said, I mean, and I think there's a difference between banning him completely

and then also banning the algorithmic spread of his statements. You know, there's ways to keep him on the platform without allowing him to be reshared or engaged with. or likes or commented on, you know? There's like, I think there's like that level of gray area or that granularity where it's not just up or down, you know. But in that moment where there are literally people in the capital building, they're attacking police officers, their storming offices, people are literally fearing for

their lives and you have someone posting on Facebook. I don't know what he, I don't even remember what he said. I mean, he did say he had a mixed message. He said, I, you know, he said, I love you. You're special, which is astonishing giving the fact that they were trying to overthrow a democratic government. But he also said go home. He eventually said go home. He eventually said go home. Yeah. That was not in the same video. Yeah. Anyone who's watching that might have gotten a message that might have gotten a message that might have gotten a message that might have gotten a message. I should go home from the capital. But he probably doesn't care. if I stick around too much, given what he's just said about me. On top of the fact that that that video said, and we're talking about the video that was a lot on Facebook, that was letting later take him down, it said the election was stolen. So, feeding into that the sentiment of why they were there, right?

The reason why they were there is, oh, he's saying it's still stolen, you know. So would you have banned him like a week before or, you know, a couple months? Because he's been saying since he got an office that the election results, even in 2016, weren't legitimate. So, you know, it's kind of, and yeah, I just like to talk to you about this a little bit because it is easy for people on the outside to say, you know, why did they wait until now or they should ban him? But it's also a pretty difficult call to make to ban the president of the United States from your platform. I'm glad I don't make the millions of dollars or whatever the billions of dollars in stock to make these calls, right? No doubt. But putting the money aside, what's the line in the sand for you?

It's got to be the incitement of violence. And you can go back to that May looting and shooting tweet, you know, not tweet. I mean, it was a tweet, but I was also a Facebook post, you know. Yeah. And that just, I'm looking, I just remember how. that the sentiment that caused internally at Facebook, I wasn't even like paying attention internally at Facebook that much, you know? I was, I had other stories I was covering. I don't cover Facebook, it's not my mandate to cover Facebook on a day-to-day basis. I cover other

companies. I read about Tesla, Twitter, Google. It's more of like a corporate accountability thing, but like when that happened in May, everything just kind of switched and you're like, holy shit, like these employees are pissed. They are very mad. And they were so, mad that they did a virtual walkout, which in retrospect is like kind of silly. You know, like they didn't show up for work one day. They changed their avatars to a black and white fist. But like, that has never been done before at Facebook. You know, these people are like, we're pretty happy for the most part for the last, I don't know how many years. Yeah, I mean, forever. I totally agree. I mean, speaking with Facebook employees, this is unlike

any other time that I've ever spoken with them. It did seem there was definitely like a real Kool-A drinking and still exists where, you know, Facebook is the best thing in the world. But I think something did switch when you saw that tweet where Trump, I mean, sorry, that we keep calling it a tweet. It shows where our brains are at. Yeah. But you saw that Facebook post where, where Trump was like, when the looting begins, the shooting begins in the middle of the Black Lives Matter. The looting starts. The shooting starts. Yeah. I mean, right, right. It has great historical context. Yeah. And so that's when things really shifted inside the company. And that's when I actually started to pull at threads at the company. We got these, um, these poll surveys. Facebook kept that

post up? Facebook kept that post up. And Zuckerberg defended it. And, uh, he said there's, it's not clear what he meant. Um, it could be interpreted this way. Yeah. We know people, we hear people are hurt. Yeah. I mean, there was a whole, there was, I think there was like multiple posts that made about it. No doubt. Like, right as the ban went into effect on Trump after the storming of the Capitol, I went back and read the blog post about Zuckerberg's. We Stand for a Free Expression, you know, stand at the Georgetown speech. And it was like, well, it worked out differently. Or, you know, you might have tried to stick with this as long as you could. But at a certain point, they did draw that line. So funny thing about that Georgetown meeting is that same trip,

he had dinner with Trump at the White House. Yeah. Well, I mean, I feel like everybody who saw the election coming, not everyone, but a good number of people. I certainly have felt over the years that, you know, if Trump lost, there was going to be a situation like this. And it did sort of put Zuckerberg in this losing position after his previous statements. One of the things I wanted to talk about also was like, I mean, at Facebook, there is this idea to, like, like assume good intent. Like there's always this.

I don't know if you've ever seen this or had anyone that ever talk about it with you. But it comes up every now and then on the forums or on workplace. Assume good intent from the people. Never assume like the worst, you know. And with Trump, they just continue to assume good intent and assume good intent. And like at some point, like how many times is that, is that person going to buy you? You know, like that comes back to by you multiple times, maybe that presumption is just wrong, you know, or maybe you shouldn't, you shouldn't start with that operating principle. Well, yeah, it is. It's been an issue for the company. They have been notoriously techno optimistic for a long time. And I did cover this a little bit in my book, where they actually brought in people who did start from a standpoint of maybe you don't assume good intent. But.

The question is, like, you know, having those inputs in your feedback system, you know, they're important, but they only really count for something if you listen to them. And I remember, I mean, so for people listening, I mean, Alex and I reported on this memo that was written by a vice president of Facebook named Andrew Bosworth. He'd think he's like the number three or four person in terms of rank at Facebook. And that memo was called The Ugly, right? and it detailed this idea of like connecting the world makes it a better place, no matter what happens. And the examples he used are like, if we connect people and terrorist attack happen on our platform and what was the other shit, he said, or in suicides are broadcasted on our platform, connecting, effectively said it doesn't matter, connecting the world makes it a better place. Yeah, he said we believe connecting is de facto good. A fact of good, right. Right. And then, but then after we, so that was from 2016, we found that in 2018, we published it. He said to us, oh, I was, I was just saying that in jest. It was, it was meant to be controversial in spark debate.

Well, I think what he was trying to say, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, was that he was putting that memo out there as a caricature of some of the belief that he saw on Facebook in order for people to, reckon with the fact that, you know, if this is the extreme of where our beliefs can go, that connecting people's de facto good, no matter the consequences, then perhaps that's something we should reckon with. So whether he believed it or not. Yeah. But the point is whether he believed it himself or whether he saw it was painting this as a caricature, it pointed to a very serious problem inside the company, which is that that belief was there. Yeah. And I've talked to employees who said that they built products under that belief, you know? Like, even if it's like you throw something out there as a, let's say, let's assume good faith here. Let's assume good intent

that he threw that out as a joke or as like a devil's advocate kind of post. It doesn't matter because people ended up believing that anyways, you know, people on the chain of, under his chain of command or within Facebook who joined, who maybe read that later, believed it. And we reported that in 2018. And I remember Zuckerberg giving us like a statement that's that was like a condemnation of that post. And then soon after that, you kind of saw his tone change around connecting the world. And then I followed his public statements, but he's like, he's, he's kind of acknowledged that connecting the world is not always a good thing. Like there's, there's bad things that happen in connecting the world. And treating it as this like kind of plus minus column or like a weighing the

scale of as long as there's more good, we're fine here because it's a net good. The world just doesn't work like that. And I think they've started to recognize that that's just not a position they can take. It's not one that's ten of one. Well, I mean, it's weird because it is their business model to connect people, but they are trying to, I guess they have to figure out they have to put safeguards in. I want to get your take on why you think Zuckerberg finally did ban Trump. Was it the employees? Was it pressure from outsiders? Was it his own conscience after watching it happen? I think it was a combination of all the above and also seeing other companies react. You can never underestimate how the role of other companies' decisions play into these.

Sure. I mean, Twitter did suspend Trump for sure, Twitch banned him, but, you know, nothing with this. I mean, Facebook had stood by Trump's ability to post for a long time, and then it goes out and takes, you know, the strongest action of any of the major platforms saying you can't access your accounts or you're black from posting for at least two weeks until the new administration comes in and then maybe longer. So it is definitely a break from, I mean, even, you know, Twitter, which is like the ultimate copycat network, you know, waited for Facebook and Apple to take actions. until they banned Alex Jones. They didn't even follow suit. Apparently, this is too extreme, you know, for them. And honestly, I think it merits a discussion of whether this was the right move or not to ban for that long. But he did. He definitely did.

You know, take, sorry, I didn't mean to try to rebut you, but this is some serious action. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. I'm going to let you talk more. I talked to Alex Damos this week about that. Alex Stamos, former chief security officer at Facebook, who's now at Stanford teaching. And we talked about this.

And we were like, okay, why now? Like, why, what happened here? What changed Mark's mind, Mark Zuckerberg's mind? And for Stamos, it was the realization that like, okay, well, the reason why we have these principles of standing for free expression here. We want to kind of hem to as closely to standing for free expression as possible is to uphold liberal democracy, basically, and the principles of liberal democracy. But if you're upholding that principle for someone who is going to undermine liberal democracy with his statements, then it kind of just falls apart, right?

If you're holding up this kind of free expression ideal and the person that uses that free expression ideal is going to say, well, we should just tear this whole thing down and we should de-legitimize the vote and we should doubt everything about this process, then you're kind of at you're nowhere, right? You're at square one, I guess. Yeah. Sort of doesn't make sense to preserve. Well, I guess, yeah, there's an argument that doesn't. It makes sense to preserve free expression if the result of that is going to be the loss of free expression. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. That's a really good way of putting it. And I was like, that makes sense. Like, that's a good, that's where you arrive at that, I don't know, I don't know where you make the decision on that. Like, I've kind of like danced around the idea of when I would have banned him. But like, that assessment probably should have been made. Or at least for Facebook should have been discussed out in the open.

They have this oversight board, right? that was supposed to go into place. I mean, it is going in place, but we kind of have heard very little from it. Yeah, they've been incredibly ineffectual, very disappointing. It's kind of third-party board that's supposed to be Facebook Supreme Court in terms of decision-making. They could have had a public debate about this. They could have argued this in public.

They could have gamed this out. They could have really been out in the open with us and discussed, okay, if this happens and this happens, if this happens and this happens, you know, like, they play out these scenarios, you know, these people that work at Facebook are supposed to be some of the smartest people in the world. They're hired from top universities around the world, you know? Why can't they think about this? There's 50,000 people that work there, you know? And so when it comes to a decision like that, when it actually happens in the moment, it just looks so reactive. And so even if they have Kevin Ruse at the New York Times had a great tweet about this, but like they had

the scaffolding in place, like they were preparing for this, like, it still felt extremely reactive in the moment, and that's all people are going to remember, right? They're not going to care about the processes that got them there. Yeah, no doubt. I mean, it is, you know, I feel like it will always feel a little, like, you're going to have in the rulebook. If you encourage, you know, the overthrow of a democratic government, then you cannot have

Facebook. Like, it's kind of crazy to put that in the rulebook. But, well, I'm kind of curious what you think about this, too, the, um, a, Another theory has been, you know, the Senate was surprisingly won by the Democrats that morning when Ossoff took the second seat in Atlanta. And then Zuckerberg is looking at the fact that you're going to have a Democratic White House, a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House. And he just makes this decision what's best for Facebook right now and then takes this action. Do you think there's any merit to that? oh man i don't know if i should speculate on that one that one's i've seen that a lot i've seen

people talk about that a lot um i mean i will i will speculate i think that that is definitely the case okay uh that that played into his decision making it's it you know it's i mean you ryan you've done all this reporting about how he is conservative he's courted conservative power over the past four years so it doesn't seem like out of the realm of possibility that that was on his mind when he made the choice that never made that was like i was like for me me, the moment where I came to that realization was, like, we reported the story out where he, like, made a secret phone call to Trump, like, right after Trump had won the election. Like, he was, he had stayed away, remember that Trump Tower meeting? They sent, they sent Cheryl Sandberg instead.

They're like, oh, Mark's busy. But like, Jeff Bezos went, Larry Page went. Yeah, I mean, it is the President of the United States. Like, what's he doing? Reviewing the latest iteration of Messenger. Yeah, and they all went up the golden elevators in Trump Tower in New York. And Zuckerberg was like the main person who didn't go. And, like, it was like, oh, shit, like, he's, he's taking a stand, you know? But then we, like, found out he, like, placed a phone call to him to congratulate him, you know? And we reported that out. And I was like, dude, like, he's like a savvy political actor.

Like, he's main. Well, this was his top user and a good job. I mean, it seems like conservative content performs really well on Facebook. So. Yeah. And then you get the stories about him, like, texting with Ben Shapiro and having dinner with, you know, and hosting grievance meetings with the Glenn Becks of the world, you know?

But he should be hearing from both sides of the political spectrum. But he doesn't hear from the other. You don't, I mean, you don't, I mean, you're not. He hears from it from his employees, for sure. I know, I think it's one thing to, like, meet with Glenn Beck and have Ben Shapiro over for dinner and get yelled at by, like, color for change, for example, which is an activist group.

you know one is like I think those are just two different settings you know yeah you don't think Zuckerberg meets with any left-leaning uh personalities or I don't know if he's in those meetings I know the the person I usually sent out for those is Cheryl Cheryl does those meetings um I'm sure he takes a couple when there's like an extremely bad moment for the company like after um the George Floyd stuff. And like, during the, what is that, that Facebook ad boycott, you know, I'm not even sure where he was in those moments. But he, I mean, it's weird because he used to hate that stuff. I mean, the reason why he hired Cheryl was to deal with that stuff, you know, and hired like a whole political arm in D.C. so he didn't have to touch it. And now,

he transformed into a political actor for the last four years. And his first main task as a political actor was to court the right. I mean, I guess the other example, of course, is China when he was like, he became like diplomat, the diplomat for the company and like went to China and learned Mandarin and spoke at universities there. I mean, he's a savvy political actor when he needs to be. Yeah. I was going to ask you if you think he's good at it. Is he good at it? He's, I don't he shows up. I don't know. Learning Mandarin is pretty fucking great.

But Facebook's not in China. Yeah, I mean, that didn't work, right? It just seems like an impossible position to begin, to be at the helm of one of these companies. I mean, not to comment on his performance or even Dorsey's performance in particular at the head of Facebook and Twitter. But one of the things that I found amazing was, you know, after sharing the news of Facebook blocking Trump it was my my mentions just became a stream of people calling him a fascist and a Nazi and I was like struck by the fact that like who is that Trump was or that no just just people

were calling Zuckerberg a fascist and a Nazi from the right and I was like wow Democrats and Republicans both call Zuckerberg a fascist and a Nazi and it doesn't seem like any of the decisions that he's made have made anybody at happy at all he's kind of fallen into this like awful middle right where he is a bogey man on the right he is a bogey man in the left and yeah it's where did I see this but it's like internally if Facebook someone wrote like this must be a good thing we're hated by both sides you must be just we're pissing off both sides we must be doing something right I'm like I don't know if that's like how you want to cool but cool like sure, if that's how you want to play your cards, but like, I thought that was just very funny.

Yeah. Do you? I mean, that's, that's, you know, I once wrote a story that that made everybody mad. And I was like, oh, I'm doing something right. And Ben Smith told me, or you're a troll. And I was like, okay, maybe that's not an outcome I should. What story was that? I really did. I don't remember. It was like five, five years ago at this point. It was the very early days at BuzzFeed. And then I very quickly realized, like, that shouldn't be a goal. you got news to break. All right, it seems like Ryan has something going on. So why don't we just go at a break and then we'll return right when he gets back.

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Okay, we are back here on the second half of the Big Technology podcast. We had to go to break. You might have heard some typing and Ryan feeling exasperated because as we were recording this on Friday, January 8th, In the middle of this recording, Twitter just banned Donald Trump from its service. We were saying in the first half that it sounded weird. The Twitter wouldn't follow or it was surprising that Twitter wouldn't follow and lo and behold, Twitter followed. So we're going to get back into the discussion of Facebook, but Ryan just we'd have to let you talk about this. What's your thought about it?

Well, I mean, we're like the oracles. It's pretty amazing time. Okay, but go ahead. I think my stream blacked out and, like, good sense of disturbance in the force and then had to check Twitter. There was. Yeah. And there was. 75 million followers silenced. But, no, I'm joking.

But talking about yours or his or 80? I don't know. Okay. Yeah. Wow. That was not, I mean, I guess it was expected. I mean, you know, Friday, Friday, Friday. I thought they would follow soon after Facebook.

I mean, it's just the pattern with these companies. that they go one right after the other. Again, it's going to be the indecisiveness that people talk about, right? So, suspended him for 12 hours, let him back on. He put a video up yesterday, went kind of quiet, tweeted a couple times again, and then got knocked out again. So, yeah. That's the end of an error.

Look, we're going to play this a couple days afterwards. But it does sort of tie into what we were just talking to, which is that Zuckerberg, obviously, hated by both sides. Jack Dorsey will certainly be. in that camp after this move. So I guess the question I was about to get to before we went to break is, does it, does this, does the fact that these companies, you know, are hated by so many people, does that mean they're just making all the wrong decisions?

Or is it that being in charge of a platform with hundreds of millions or, you know, a couple billion people is just an impossible job? and there's no right way to go about it. I think that's a... Because we all like to play armchair quarterback, so... Armchair C. Billion Air CEO. I think that's kind of the wrong way to look at it, to be honest to you. Like, liked, like, liked and unliked, I think is like, is not the kind of Y axis

that I think we should be grading these X, X, X, X, Y, X, I've never even good at math. Access, let's just go to access, yeah. or the spectrum that you should be grading the CEOs on. I mean, you want them to be principled. You want them to have firm principles that they stand for and that they adhere to in spite of essentially public pressure or whether or not they're going to be perceived as liked or not liked. You know, you're always going to piss off someone,

at least if you adhere to your rules or your standards that are clear and open. then hopefully you'll you'll garner some respect. And I think the problem with these companies is that their rules change on a weekly, monthly weekly basis, right? There's this kind of moving the goalposts here, shifting that there, you know, and it's never clear. Like, I report on Facebook for a living.

I couldn't tell you what their rules are around. political actors, you know? Like, there seems to be some kind of new wrinkle every week. And it's just frustrating, you know? Yeah, but it's interesting that you say they shouldn't be responsive to public pressure because in the first half, you talked about how you are the public pressure. So do you want them just to not listen to you and kind of, you know, stand by? I'm not saying I listen to me, but it's, the reason why they listen to me is because, I mean,

employees have realized that the only thing that these CEOs listen to is, it seems to be public shaming, right? Bad stories in the press. But like, if they adhered to those principles

and stuck to their guns more, maybe there would be less of that, you know, I don't know, it's like a kind of like a chicken and the egg problem. But, yeah, I don't know. Maybe, yeah, maybe if Zuckerberg

just stopped listening to me, you know, that sounds so, I'm stuck up. But like, or just like stop, you know, and just led based on the principles set out by his company. Yeah. And I'm certainly not going to make any excuses for either of these CEOs. But I also wonder if it just points, pushes home about how like, you know, there's kind of no, no easy decisions on this stuff. And, you know, You try to set principles, but you're challenged in directions that in many ways, you might not have anticipated. So, you know, I wonder if the act of even setting the rules is impossible. But you seem to think that there is a way to do it. And I mean, this is something that I'm still trying to figure out myself.

I mean, Twitter's approach is like, our rules are living, breathing document. I think they've used that. Yeah, you're not into that because that basically means they can do it. whatever they want. I mean, I guess is it a living, breathing document? Like, I don't, yeah, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like open to changes, but whenever, when it, when these things seem to change every week, you know, or there seems to be no standard. For example, we reported earlier this year at Facebook that, okay, there's these conservative pages. Prager You, which is puts these videos together and often have misinformation. Charlie Kirk, the head of Turning Points USA,

these pages can be fact checked by third party fact checkers. And in certain instances, they did share misinformation that was fact checked by third party fact checkers. And under those strikes that get assessed after those fact checks, after a certain amount of strikes, you get penalties assessed to your page. You get demotion in terms of your reach. You can't, You're not read as widely as many people. The algorithm doesn't serve you up to as many users as normal. And sometimes you get prevented from running ads. What we reported is those strikes were being assessed.

They were actually sharing misinformation, some about climate change. I forgot what some of the others were. But then these Facebook executives, who were on the policy team, went in and advocated that those strikes should be removed. Not clear why. but there's just kind of this tweaking of the rules there. I mean, and that allowed these pages to kind of continue to persist and act as if nothing had happened. And that's, I think that's a prime example of Facebook not sticking to its guns.

Their statement to us in that, in that story was insane, by the way. It was like, yes, fact checkers have the ability to deem things as misinformation and to label them, but only we can assess the penalties. We decide the penalties, which means that their whole third-party fact-checking process is kind of a sham. It's a farce. Yeah. Yeah. And I was just going to ask, like, why is it important to have standards?

Because maybe you do want some judgment. Maybe you want to have the ability for a platform to stand back and say, okay, well, we don't have a rule for this, but, you know, certainly this is. But I think what you just said, though, is a pretty good counterpoint to the argument of, And that's like one of, yeah. Maybe lean on judgment. Because people tend to get, you know, caught up on rules and stuff like that. And, you know, I guess like that, you know, rules for rules sake to me sometimes seems a little ridiculous when you're talking about how social media companies enforce their platform. Sometimes I think case by case makes more sense. But what you're talking about here is a really serious issue. I don't think many people pay attention to. And they come full circle on that. I mean, the reason why we reported that story is because someone, people internally were pissed. about that, you know? They were mad. They came to us, you know, to illustrate your point of governing by PR crisis, you know? Yeah, which has always, it's always been the case for Facebook. And it's interesting because at the beginning of this year, Zuckerberg very explicitly said I'd rather be understood than liked. I don't think he's either. And, yeah, strike on both

counts. So the second order, let's talk about these bands for a second, because there are going to be a huge issue of the week this comes out. Second order effect of these bands is that people can end up, I mean, it's pretty clear to mean that there's going to be a large segment of, you know, MAGA Twitter that's going to move over to parlor, gab, and, you know, maybe a third yet to be named platform that's going to come up in place because that audience, you know, they don't just, you know, when Donald Trump's account goes away, they don't just leave the internet, they go somewhere. So, you know, these platforms can be, I just wrote about this in big technology this week, they can become echo chambers and you might end up having people, you know, being even

less able to see, you know, people they disagree with as people versus, versus memes and caricatures. So, so what is your take on that? See, I don't know, but like, yeah, and the funny anything is right before we started recording this we just published a story about parlor um we got apple sent parlor a letter to essentially start moderating content better stop preventing violence from being incited on parlor or face expulsion from the app store um so i don't know how like parlor is going to be in the app store people can leave well it's going to be up to apple whether that don't trump can have a account on that which is an interesting kind of out of left field content moderation decision we didn't expect. But like you're asking, are people going to moderate

to these places and are these places going to exist and how are they going to act and how is it going to interact with Twitter? Well, yeah. Is it going to be like some kind of upside down Twitter? What are the second order effects going to be? Which is important to discuss. I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be, you know, not making a value judgment on it. I'm just saying we need to think about it. I don't know what Trump looks like on not on Twitter. If Trump goes to parlor and starts, like, going crazy on there. Because so much of his Twitter is about owning libs. Owning the libs. You know, owning the libs, you know, that's, that's like his, that's the brand. That's the brand of a lot of people on Twitter. And when they get banned,

you don't have that same, like, I tweeted something bad. I'm now going to let the, let the engagement roll in, which then creates an anger wave cycle thing. And then, like, we go around again, you know? So like... But there's got to be more to it than that. I mean, some of the, you know, these platforms get... Yes, I would definitely say so. I mean, you know, I don't think Donald Trump's account is, you know, is used to communicate

with his supporters, for sure, you know, which I think you pointed out, talking about how we rallied them over the past couple of months. So that's definitely another use case. And then there's, of course, You know, the major factor of losing access is, is not having that, you know, immediate key into any, you know, newsroom who would just drop his tweet and slack and then start to, you know, build a second. But there's also the other effect of him no longer being president, right? Like, the reason why we paid attention to his Twitter is because he could start war with North Korea with the tweet. But if he no longer has that power anymore and he's on parlor, you know, like, do I care?

Like, do I, do I, if he's like, end section. In 2.30, we will destroy the, you know, and he's doing it on parlor, but he no longer has the time anymore. Do I? Look, the thing I think that we should be thinking about is the fact that there's lots of supporters. You know, we saw many of them march into the Capitol over the past week. And they will be listening. Sure. And what happens when it becomes, you know, an echo chamber. And it is all like-minded folks. You know, we've talked over the past a couple of years about how the we don't have a shared sense of reality anymore. And that was when everybody was on Facebook and Twitter. So now now we certainly are going to have that

problem. And, and, you know, in multiples, given what's going on right now. Or it's possible at the Republican Party just, and conservatives just move beyond Trump. And we all get back together and can live in the same world again. Wow. That's very optimistic. I said, it's possible. I didn't say it's going to happen. Assume good intent. There was no assumption there. Come on, look, the fact that I'm even throwing that out. I'm just playing the advocate, yeah.

Yeah, just asking questions here. Yeah, I'm just asking. But no, I'd like to, don't you think this is an important thing to discuss, though? Like, I'd like to get your thought on it. Yeah, I mean, that that is a concern that a place like parlor or gab can be like a breeding ground for, I think we're all thinking about that. That's already starting to happen in private places like telegram that aren't relegated. regulated or regulated or monitored as much as a place like a Facebook would be or a Facebook group, you know, things like Discord.

Do I think like Donald Trump is going to start a Discord channel and 70 million people are going to be in that? I don't know. No, it definitely won't be the same amount. 30 million people, 20 million people. That's a sizable amount of people. Look, man, I didn't anticipate people storming the capital to this week. and I can't tell you what's going to happen next week.

That was surprising to you? I mean, I should rephrase that. I mean, we saw, yeah. I mean, as someone who like saw these groups, I mean, it was on the car. Like, it was in the realm of possibility. Did I think they would actually do it? And it's supposed to like LARP, you know,

and like, like walk around in camo and, um, carry, don't tread on me flags, you know, and actually like break death through the windows. Right. Well, they did it in Michigan in the middle of these anti-lockdown protests. They did it in Michigan, but they didn't actually like, yeah. I mean, and they did it with guns, actually, which is more terrifying. But like, yeah. I mean, the scenes this week, we're just, let me put it this way. Pretty, I mean, even if you're, even if you're monitoring it, we're just shocking, you know. Totally. Yeah. I mean, that was how I felt shocked, but not surprised, but shocked. Yeah. It's weird because, yeah, you're like thinking. about it. You're like, could this could. That's why we're monitoring it. Will it happen?

I don't know. Hopefully not. And it did. I mean, at the end of the day, it's just a building, but it is also the democratic process. And, you know, had they got on hold of those electoral votes and burned them, you know, which is not out of the realm of possibility. That could have been an issue. That could have been a real big issue. Because those are the actual votes. Like the ceremony would have had to kind of been paused and delayed. You have an inauguration week, so. You're just so sad. Yeah, it is.

It's sad. It's a dark moment in the country's history. I mean, this is definitely one that they're going to have in the history books and we'll look back on and, you know, you and I will have to explain to our kids one day. And, you know, they'll be like, but did that really happen? Sure did. So, yeah. In terms of taking action, the counterpoint to these platforms taking action.

We talked a little bit about the second order effects of where people are going to go. You know, there's some people who also would say they shouldn't do these bans because what's going to happen now is that, you know, after they set that precedent, they're just going to be subject to pressure campaigns, you know, from their employees, and from the outside of people who have seen them, you know, take this action. and try to get them to do it again to their political opponents in the future. So what do you think about that? I think that's a worry. Yeah. I think there's now a precedent that's set, not just for the U.S.

You've got to think of, like, other places around the world. What happens to Duterte's account, you know? Like, what happens to Modi? And I'm just thankful I'm not in the position to make those decisions, right? like there's there's going to be very difficult decisions on the line and this is no doubt this is not going to be the last time we see something like this happen yeah it is sorry go ahead no but i just was going to say like they kind of dug them this hole for themselves you know yeah well yeah i'm going to agree like it's also like uh it's pretty remarkable that a large percentage of the world's speech has migrated to two websites essentially two websites and apps And I would say, I mean, Facebook more so than Twitter, but yeah. Facebook, the Facebook universe, yeah. So let's end the show.

I mean, yeah, we've covered a lot of ground. Let's end the show with a little bit of a discussion of what happens next to Facebook. I mean, I was writing up some notes to send over to CNBC today. I wrote that Democrats hate Facebook, Republicans hate Facebook, the FTC is suing Facebook and looking for a breakup and 48 state attorney generals are doing the same. And I said, oh, and also the Democrat Congress made past new antitrust laws that take him directly at Facebook's business. So for years, I've been confident that Facebook could weather any storm.

And now I'm not so sure. So what do you think happens here? I don't know. And you, I don't know. Like, you have a president who went into the election saying he doesn't like Mark Zuckerberg. He's on record saying that. At the same time, the administration is hiring former Facebookers left and right, people that have worked in various capacities at the company.

I think these antitrust lawsuits mean a lot. I also paying attention to the Google antitrust lawsuits that are led by the Texas Attorney General because that has a lot of Facebook stuff in there as well, which is an awful PR for the company. if you, the, the, the collusion on ads allegation. Yeah, cooperation, alleging that Facebook and Google made a secret deal that Facebook would win a set number of ad auctions, which if it's proven out in court, is very bad for both companies. I mean, beyond the legal challenges, this is just going to be an awful PR year for Facebook.

Like, if, if, if, why is that? Because, I mean, they're going to be constantly in the news with these, with these legal challenges, with. Yeah, they have the anti-trust. Yeah, I mean, 2020 was bad for them. 2018 was bad for them with the Cambridge Atlanta cycle. 2019 was kind of a respite and then

it was back into it with the election in 2020 and like it just seems to be never ending for them. So, yeah, I mean, I'm sure they have a plan or like some kind of process in place to how to deal with this stuff. But, I mean, yeah, I mean, we reported, for example, they went through and did this training course for all employees to how to handle anti-trust discussions and not to put stuff in writing.

There was actually a training course at the... No way. They did like an online training thing that everyone had to complete. Like how to deal with antitrust issues, which I thought was very funny. And just like a side of the times. Don't do crimes. Step one, don't do crimes. step two repeat step one yeah

step two but it was literally like don't put stuff in writing when you can get on the phone if you need to put stuff in writing have a lawyer on it it was just like I was like what like what

yeah how to evade accountability yeah and then like Zuckerberg has said multiple times on workplace and so a bunch of other execs do not talk about antitrust stuff like on workplace you will be it will be removed

like because I mean they're just terrified of discovery on all this stuff I mean they've created a platform where employees post their every thought you know and and argue and argue every point you know and now they're telling them to shut up and it's just like kind of antithetical to their ethos how do you think the the antitrust stuff plays out do you think they get broken up or is it just a ceremonial fine from the FTC? I think there'll probably be some settlement. It feels like there always is some settlement. A meaningful settlement or another one that they can shrug off? Oh, you mean like like does Instagram get split off or it's just like. No, like obviously, yeah, yeah, actually, yeah, I'd like to hear your answer on that one. I don't know. I don't know what the government has.

I wish I did. Man, I'm definitely going to try and find out, you know. I don't know what they've happened from. discovery. And honestly, the stuff that has come out in the Google stuff, like those Googles, that Google stuff has been a lot juicier than what has been revealed in the Facebook antitrust suits. In Texas.

In Texas, yeah. Yeah. That, to me, was the most surprising because no one had ever heard of that. Not only that, right now, it must be said, it's an allegation based in the lawsuit. But it came after Cambridge, General. I think the timing was like, it was like late 2018, right? So it's like in the middle of all these scandals and they know the FTCs, they knew they're getting examined by the government regulators.

They still did it, you know? Yeah, this is sort of where I go with this is that it's not just the FTC. And it's not just the DOJ in Google's case. It's all these state attorney generals. And it's a lot of stuff. And it's easy to maybe settle with one federal agency. But when you're looking at all these state agencies as well, it's like, or the state attorney generals, it's like, that's pretty overwhelming.

And that's where I was sort of looking at my perspective in the past about how these companies were basically going to weather whatever it took and started to think, maybe not. So, yeah. Maybe Facebook just becomes like, like, its innovation is to become a conglomeration of law firms this year, you know, like. Is that your 2021 text? I would, that, that sounds pretty good to me, you know. They're going to employ like half the freaking law firm in this country.

Half of DC's anti-trust defenses. I mean, because that's the biggest threat where like Facebook reacts to threats, right? Like they buy threats, they kill them, they out-compete with them, they copy their functions, and now the threat is the government, right? And so they're going to throw everything they have at this. I mean. Yeah, and they have a lot. I mean, they have much more, the FTC's annual budget is like 350 million a year.

Facebook makes $3 billion last quarter. Well, I think they make more than that. And profit, but yeah. And profit. In revenue, they do $16 billion or something like that. Yeah, they're going to do $80 billion this year. In a year versus $330 million, which is, I mean, of course, they'll have expenses and stuff like that. But tough fight.

It's going to be a good time to be a lawyer in D.C. right now. Seriously. Now, in terms of the product, we don't talk about that often, but they have been losing teenage users. TikTok is ascendant. And, I mean, I spent a good chunk of time on TikTok over break. And it's extremely addictive. And I'm going to delete it. But I had to know it.

I deleted mine. Because of security fears or because? Yeah, I got creeped up by the key logging. And then I just couldn't. I couldn't do another platform. Like, I like it when people post TikToks on Twitter. Like, I think it's, and like to, on it ironically to Instagram, I think they're funny. But I don't want to go, like, seek them out anymore.

I'll see the good ones that get posted. Yeah. I mean, there's going to be people that are going to be wary of it. But the bottom line is that it's picking that momentum and a real challenge to Facebook. So, you know, what do you think is going to happen with that business? I mean, it's trying to find stuff that could be exciting about Facebook. Maybe what they're doing in virtual reality from like a, you know, a standpoint of something that could catch on with people. We reported.

But I'm curious what you're thinking about. stuff. I reported out their year-end meeting in December where they had this like product roadmap for everything. And they really talked up virtual reality, Oculus. They had, they've had a lot of successful portal. They are. Which is run by your, your friend Baz, who we mentioned for. He's, he's, he's with that division, you know, say what you will about his perspective on the world, but that division has thrived on that. Oh, Portal has, I mean, I mean, in part because of the pandemic, but according to Katie Nautopoulos, my colleague and your former colleague, it's a lovely product. It's a great product.

I think she might be the number one fan of portal. She's definitely the number one fan of portal. I don't even think it's a discussion on that. We're going to get this podcast, a Facebook portal, this sponsorship. I don't take ads from Facebook. So unfortunately, Ryan, that's another dream. Well, after the discussion that we've had. on this podcast. I doubt they'll everyone have fun anything with this. But I think we've been

fair. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. No, they're they're they like VR. They're talking about AR. They've, they've made acquisitions of control labs that augmented reality startup. They've talked about their innovations in AI. I don't know if you saw this, but I reported out that they had this tool that they were going to, like, deploy to, like, summarize newspaper or long, of course I saw it. Yeah. Ryan, you should know I read all your stories. I appreciate that.

No worries about that. Sometimes I don't even know if my mom does because there's so many of them. Oh, yeah. But I appreciate that. Yeah. I don't know. I think they'll continue to keep chugging along as, as they can. But, like, yeah, the blue app is dying.

Instagram is. I wouldn't say dying. I mean, it's growing across, but it has less luster than it had in the past. So, I mean, there's the numbers, but don't you get like those notifications that are like, oh, such and such did this on Facebook three days ago? And like, you get these email, like, whenever I start to see email notifications from them, I'm, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, Jimmy just posted a three-minute song that he recorded, you know, it's like, it's just like, I don't need to see the shit.

Like, you're just getting desperate. Wow. Jimmy made a song just for you. And here in front of the thousands of listeners just slang Jimmy. Seld him down the river. Jimmy, your song suck, man. Sorry.

Wow. Brutal. Brutal. Yeah. Not getting a sponsor. Okay, sorry. Jimmy's band is out. No sponsorship from that.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, it is. It'll be a, it'll be, I see what you're saying, though. The, the, the, the, the, the flagship apps are, are definitely losing their WhatsApp. They're leading in a WhatsApp. You can talk about WhatsApp at all, but they're starting to do the business stuff on there, starting to enroll payments, especially in India. Yeah. I mean, I'm reticent to declare I'm dead from the product standpoint, because they have, they have reinvented themselves and they have, yeah, you're right. Yeah, they have scale. They have scale. They have two billion users, right? And I think. think you get to a point where you protect that scale by copying, killing, and legaling, and they're going to have to focus probably more on the legaling front this year. Well, no doubt. They're going to have to spend more energy on the legal stuff than ever before. I always say last question. I'm not sure if this is, but let's like make an attempt at it.

What do you think about Facebook? Do you think it's good for the world? What's your perspective? Like, if it went away tomorrow, how would you feel? I would have nothing to report on. It would be so boring. You'd be out of work. I'd be out of work.

I'd be out of work. I know Matt Honan and John Pachkowski would find something to assign you to. I'd be just twiddling my thumbs, just tweeting dumb shit all day, microwave and fish. Yeah, this is, you're talking about your day to day to day anyway, so. What would happen if I would think something probably replaces it? right um people have been conditioned to spend a lot of their time online now uh for better or worse their activity will probably go elsewhere is if it's in that same form i mean that's a given right like but what i'm getting at though is is how would you feel how would i feel like yeah

why don't you weigh in on like whether it's good or bad i don't use facebook that much like okay i know from your personal perspective but like talk about the way that it impacts the world and sort of your belief on that? I think it has different impacts in different places. And at different times. I mean, that seems like a dumb answer. But like, I mean, we remember how, like, and this is the example everyone uses,

but Arab Spring, you know, like how good everyone felt about, like, showing everyone democracy and, like, posting about it, you know? And that was, like, a great time for this whole network. And then, like, fast forward a couple years later and you have genocide in Myanmar, right? And that felt pretty shitty, you know, it was awful. I don't know if I answer that question. I don't know.

Like, how would I feel fine? I guess it's hard to say. I just don't know where people would focus their time, where their energies. Like, what would they throw themselves into next? they're going to throw themselves into something. Is it TikTok? Are we just going to all start watching TikTok videos and then like start just... Talk about who controls that.

Yeah. Yeah. And then we're just going to start duetting with people and shit and like... You say duetting like it's the worst thing in the world. Actually, it's pretty great. Okay. How good someone. Someone said me duets of this like, they're singing this Irish song and they're just adding

like layers of like you've seen this it's i don't know they all blend together someone got in some corner of tic-tok and then this is what happened this is how i absorbed tic-tok as people send them to me and it's like someone they're just like adding like layers of harmonies and and stuff to the song it's like so funny but yeah maybe that maybe that's the end of the world like the next iteration we just start singing over each other's songs yeah you're just going to say end of the world and duetting you hate duetting duetting is the end of the world. I think it's better than like, I think it's better than like organizing a genocide or like storming

the capital on. Oh, it beats both of those things. It would be saying, we say that and then once like in 20 years that we're, there's going to be like over. The duet rebellion. Yeah, exactly. Do you, so I obviously was wrong on the last question because it sparks a new one. Do you, so a lot of time I think about giving, like, look, think about this.

dad state of affairs in our world today and wonder how much of that is actually social media's responsibility. And then I, of course, go back and think, well, this isn't the first time in world history that something like this, that bad things have happened, that people have killed people and people have, you know, given power democratically to evil folks. So how much of that do you think about? And I mean, yeah, your story was, you know, talking about how like the social media was used. President Trump used social media to orchestrate a coup. And yeah, I'm just kind of curious. Do you think that a lot of the negative stuff that we see in the world today is a direct result of social media? Or where do you fall on that one? Some of it is. Definitely.

Some of it is. I think we fall into this trap of like having to gauge social media again on this like the totality of it all or like like is if we add this thing to the positive side and take this thing to the negative side like where does this where does the balance lie you know and like is it a net good or is it a net bad and I think that's that's like as a reporter it's hard to look at like the totality of it but you can report on individual instances where I mean things are good for example

Those are the things Facebook puts out press releases for. A woman in India started a business and connected to local merch, like local buyers and built a business and is now out of her village and into the, like, made a living for herself. You hear those stories from Facebook all the time. Yeah, it sounded a lot like a Cheryl. Yeah, I think I probably borrowed it from her. I think I heard it from her at Davos or something. But like, but as a. It's such a flex.

I heard this story from Cheryl Sandberg. I kind of just made it as a joke, but I did actually see her at Davos. I actually did see her at Davos is awful, by the way. I'll never get invited back, I don't think. He's right. Jimmy and Davos. Okay, sorry. I'm just lighting up sponsor after sponsor.

World Economic Forum, later, dude. There we go. You'll never sponsor. They will not be in favor of the big technology podcast, Midrull. I wish I go after next like Coca-Cola. Gatorade Ryan, I got a business to run here. Okay, I'm not

you know, I know BuzzFeed's Flus was cash and just acquired the Huffington Post, but come on, this is a one-person business. Tell me who you want to light up. Tell me if you want to light up. I'll light them up. Okay. Sorry, get to your point.

To my point. But like, as a reporter, you can always find instances where something terrible happens on these social networks. A village in India lynches people because they believe that these people are child molesters because they heard a rumor on WhatsApp. We've written that story. You know, Buddhists in Myanmar, Buddhist mob chases Muslims out of their country because they're riled up because their leaders on Facebook Messenger spread rumors that Muslims are dogs. written about it at length, you know, like, so I, I, I, to my point is like, it's hard to like, be like, oh, like, this way here and this way to here, Facebook is good and Facebook

is bad, but like, I don't think that should be my role. I think my role should be to hold the platforms accountable in these instances where there are negative externalities. And in writing about those hopefully they can improve and prevent that from ever happening again or repeating is the ideal world in the ideal world but it just seems like it's a broken record at this point and things keep repeating over and over yeah and of course that shouldn't be your role but it's also sort of the podcast is a great place for us to hear a little bit more about your mindset and your mentality and how you tackle these things because yeah we're the way that you come in to it matters too but I

I will say, I have, I've been reporting on Facebook for years and years and years, and I have learned a ton about the company through your stories. Thanks, man. So, and it's been a pleasure collaborating with you on those stories back in the day at BuzzFeed, not too long ago. Back in the day. And I'm continuing to enjoy them as a reader. So thank you.

Thank you, Ryan, for the, really for the work you do. You know, it's, it's, it's. It's valuable to the public that we learn how these networks work, and I appreciate you coming on and talking a little bit more about your feelings about the company, your thoughts about where things are going to go. And again, letting us into your mindset to provide a little context for people that are reading out there. So, thanks for joining. Thanks for having me, man. Everyone can find you on Twitter, I'm sure, unless your account has been revoked. Yeah, maybe I'm going to sign off here and then just be like, oh,

along with Donald Trump, Real Donald Trump, R-Mac-18 has just been suspended. Yeah. Has been permanently banned from the platform. I'm just going to go change. There would be, yeah. There would be people happy about that. Oh, yeah, no doubt. As someone who's personally been dunked on by you on the platform.

Have I? You know, there were moments. Dude, come on. Basically throughout all BuzzFeed. You know, there were moments where I wanted Dorsey to ban you. But I think that you've shaped up in that regard, which I appreciate. Okay, but it's RMac 18 on Twitter. And then your BuzzFeed stories, people can find them where?

BuzzFeed slash Ryan-Mack, I believe. BuzzFeed.com slash Ryan-Dash-Mack or just Google me. Okay, good. I was waiting so you would actually give the URL. Just Google me. We'll end with one last flex. Well, anyway, Ryan, thank you, much for joining. And thanks everybody for listening. We drop these interviews every single Wednesday.

So we will be back here with another show next week. I'm pretty sure I'm going to play an interview that I recorded with one of Ryan's favorite journalists. I don't know if I can say that. Glenn Greenwald, who I had just interviewed for a story that you see on 100. So that show will be on next week. So stick around for that. If you're new to the show, please subscribe. If you are a longtime listener, and can rate us, that would be great. Ryan, once again, thank you for joining the show. I hope you're enjoying microwaving fish at home. Everybody else appreciates that. All right, everybody, that'll do it for us. We will see you next week.