Book review of An Ugly Truth: an effective examination of every major Facebook scandal and shortcomings in Facebook's leadership, structure, and accountability
k, how did we miss this?’ An upcoming book reveals new details about the meeting where Mark Zuckerberg learned Russia had infiltrated Facebook Tweets: J.D. Vance / @jdvance1 : I can't get over how many weak-willed “conservatives” defend the right of “private companies” to censor US citizens. Wake up. J.D. Vance / @jdvance1 : Nick Fuentes has been a giant troll (and IMO dishonest) in his attacks against me. Don't care. Tech companies control what we're allowed to say in our own country. It has to stop. https://twitter.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : In @sarahfrier's review of @ceciliakang & @sheeraf's new book on Facebook, a grim anecdote that again confirms: Facebook absolutely knew what was going to happen on January 6. My question: did it tell the FBI? https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Glenn Greenwald / @ggreenwald : @DavidAFrench Do you agree with the House antitrust subcommittee that Facebook, Google, Apple & Amazon are classic monopolies and therefore not like regular companies? https://arstechnica.com/... Do you disagree with case law about providing obscure speech platforms while denying prominent ones? Ed Ludlow / @edludlow : A side-by-side walk past the camera by $FB Zuckerberg and Sandberg. Both declined to comment on Trump's lawsuit https://twitter.com/... Shauna / @goldengateblond : once again, for all the tedious troglodytes: he can say whatever he wants, but no one's obligated to give him a megaphone and a soapbox to do it https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : May I take you back to the SEC vs Facebook and the 2016 election? Read the highlighted text. This isn't a company with spine that puts democracy before profits and market cap. Not Zuckerberg. Not Sandberg. Not the Board. Not the leadership team. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : It's called a private tech company @JDVance1 — remember when you used to invest in them when you were doing the entrepreneur thing? Also Nick can still say whatever he wants on the street and on the Web and in any place that will tolerate him. But you know that. https://twitter.com/... Jesse Lehrich / @jesselehrich : .@sarahfrier on Facebook's January 6th negligence: “it's part of a familiar pattern: the social media behemoth does as little as possible to prevent disasters from happening, then feebly attempts to avoid blame and manage public appearances.” https://www.nytimes.com/... David French / @davidafrench : @ggreenwald I do not agree. The court decision dismissing the FTC's antitrust action against Facebook was quite sound as a matter of antitrust law. And this is a Twitter block. There's no credible argument that Twitter is a monopoly. Kim Zetter / @kimzetter : In 2010 Sandberg told FTC chair that Facebook gave users more control of data than any other company. He said his young daughter struggled to change default settings that exposed her. Sandberg replied, “That's so great.” New bk by @sheeraf & @ceciliakang https://www.nytimes.com/... Carol Leonnig / @carolleonnig : “An Ugly Truth” is “the ultimate takedown...the kind of satisfaction you might get if you hired a private investigator to track a cheating spouse: It confirms your worst suspicions,gives you all the dates and details” Great review! @ceciliakang @sheeraf https://www.nytimes.com/... Marietje Schaake / @marietjeschaake : Facebook makes public policy and does so badly, concerned with image and liability, not with the effects of its outsized power on people's safety and rights. Looking forward to reading ↘️ https://twitter.com/... Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : I reviewed “An Ugly Truth,” the @sheeraf and @ceciliakang book that takes you behind the scenes of Facebook's many scandals, for @nytimesbooks. The book comes out in a few days! https://www.nytimes.com/... Sheera Frenkel / @sheeraf : Pinch me. 🔥🔥Our first review!!🔥🔥 “An Ugly Truth” provides the kind of satisfaction you might get if you hired a private investigator to track a cheating spouse: It confirms your worst suspicions and then gives you all the dates and details you need."https://www.nytimes.com/ ... Cecilia Kang / @ceciliakang : Authors are kept in the dark about reviewers. Boy did they pick a Facebook expert: @sarahfrier, author of “Unfiltered” This makes the review even more satisfying https://twitter.com/... Alex Malouf / @alex_malouf : I can't wait for this book. But “at Facebook, being proactive was not always appreciated,” the authors write... https://twitter.com/... Crispin Sartwell / @crispinsartwell : Stipulate that disinformation had a bad effect on event X (the 2016 election, let's say), and that people were exposed to disinformation on Facebook. That's not at all sufficient to establish Facebook's causal role in X. @sheeraf https://www.nytimes.com/... Crispin Sartwell / @crispinsartwell : Facebook, with all its blandness and banality, is liable to take the blame for anything and everything that anyone doesn't prefer: the election of Trump, for example, or the disintegration of our very shared reality itself. https://www.splicetoday.com/ ... Cecilia Kang / @ceciliakang : OVER THE MOON right now as @sarahfrier, who knows Facebook inside and out, nails it and why we set out to write #AnUglyTruth https://twitter.com/... Cecilia Kang / @ceciliakang : 🚨👏1st REVIEW: “The Ultimate Takedown” “The kind of satisfaction you might get if you hired a private investigator to track a cheating spouse: It confirms your worst suspicions and then gives you all the dates and details...” https://www.nytimes.com/... Tim Sweeney / @timsweeneyepic : Not a fan of the ghoulish caricature thing. Analyzing organizations and their leaders is a complicated business, and oversimplifying it through graphical vilification does not help. https://www.nytimes.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : Recall that Trump's campaign was utilizing data it siphoned from millions of Facebook users and was at the same time getting preferable rates on its advertising spend based on Facebook's pricing mechanism while also running voter suppression campaigns targeting Black voters. https://twitter.com/... Julia Macfarlane / @juliamacfarlane : So excited for this book by two badass women. @Facebook already squirming: https://twitter.com/... Paul Bradley Carr / @paulbradleycarr : This piece is fascinating but, as usual with mainstream coverage of Facebook, only briefly/terrifiedly mentions Peter Fucking Thiel, who engineered every part of the Zuck and Trump relationship. *It was Thiel who set up the meeting, but anyway moving on...* https://www.nytimes.com/... Brandy Zadrozny / @brandyzadrozny : This book is going to be so good. The first excerpt offers a pretty complicated view of Sandberg's evolving role and the seeming acknowledgement that FB has tarnished whatever legacy she leaves. https://twitter.com/... Christine Emba / @christineemba : a lot of weird moments in this piece, but this line is memorably wretched: “Ms. Sandberg would go on to tell Dan Rose, a former vice president at Facebook, that she felt she had been “put on this planet to scale organizations."" https://www.nytimes.com/... Clara Jeffery / @clarajeffery : Three big takeaways from this piece: Sandberg is a moral coward. Facebook, along with its other sins, has a deeply sexist culture. Zuckerberg is a sociopath. But we knew that. https://www.nytimes.com/... @grifftheimpaler : I mean, Sheryl Sandberg is as guilty as Zukerberg, but hasn't gotten nearly as much attention. What really did not survive was America. America did not survive the partnership between Zukerberg and Sandberg. Curses on them both. https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : OK. This is news buried in excerpt of new book. Remember, this was one of Facebook' executives involved in covering up Facebook's role in having Americans' data illegally sold and used by a foreign political operative to help elect Trump with Facebook in the room guiding them. /1 https://twitter.com/... David McCabe / @dmccabe : Still thinking about this Don Graham quote describing Mark Zuckerberg's relationship to books a few hours later! https://www.nytimes.com/... via @sheeraf @ceciliakang & their book out next week https://twitter.com/... Julia Carrie Wong / @juliacarriew : Zuck has always been a sycophant but this is truly gross https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Scott Bixby / @scottbix : A master class in framing a no-comment: “Both executives declined to comment for this story, perhaps letting the company's performance speak for itself.” https://www.nytimes.com/... Sahil Kapur / @sahilkapur : “The indictments made it clear just how large a part Facebook had played, both in spreading misinformation about election fraud to fuel anger among the Jan. 6 protesters, and in aiding the extremist militia's communication ahead of the riots.” https://www.nytimes.com/... Drew Harwell / @drewharwell : Interesting details here about the corporate inertia inside Facebook around the obviously manipulated Pelosi video (which we first reported in 2019: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...). “Zuckerberg and members of the policy team pondered if the video could be defined as parody” https://twitter.com/...