Tonight, heartwarming over tonight's special we face the number of important issues around privacy, safety and democracy frontline investigates facebook. We didn't take abroad enough view of our responsibility and it was my mistake and I'm sorry told by company insiders it's possible that we haven't been as fast as we needed to be in too slow to added it didn't see it fast. I think we were too slow and former employers everybody was pretty upset that we had caught it during the election. Our facebook was used to disrupt democracy around the globe. I don't think any of us market included appreciated how much of the fact we Might have had correspondent James to kobe takes a hard look at the man who wanted to connect the world is he not recognizing the importance of his platform. He didn't understand when you built, but is he accountable for helping divided. There is something wrong systemically with the facebook algorithms and polarization was the key to the model tonight on frontline the facebookdilemma Frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you, thank you and by the Corporation for public broadcasting. Major support is provided by the John and catherine t macarthur foundation committed to building a more just verdant and peaceful world more information is available at dot org the Ford foundation working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide at Ford foundation dot org additional support is provided by the foundation committed to excellence in journalism the Park foundation Dedicated to heighten public awareness of critical issues, the John and helen family trust supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires the wind coat foundation and by the frontline journalism fund with major support from Jon and jo Ann, hey cler and additional support from Chris and lisa kingdom's We get trump obier down not now actually I'm gonna mention the big part of it work. So I'm here in Palo Alto California with Mark zuckerberg of the facebook dot com and we're drinking out of a keg of heineken because what we celebrate March three million users, I don't know what happen well. It was no simply when the face. What is, I think, facebook is An online directory for colleges, I realize that because I didn't have people's information. I needed to make an interesting enough, so that people would want to use the site and wanna like, put your information up so launch of Harvard and within a couple of weeks, two -thirds of the school and signed up it's alright. This is pretty sweet like. Let's just go out don't just interesting seeing out of the box. We have a sweet office yeah was just just around the Dollar thanks, we didn't want cubicles. We got idea kitchen tables. Instead, that's what along with the whole five here that was raised some stuff. There severe down there. Cuz. I know how many people work but it's actually 20 right now get this shot. This one hand for the way you ready to hit ball oh nice touch I really, I got at the school and where you taking facebook this morning but um I've been there doesn't necessarily have to be more From the early days bark had this vision of connecting the whole world, so if Google was about providing you access to all the information facebook was about connecting all the people You just say your name and pronounce it so nobody messes it up and they have it on tape. Sure. It's Mark zuckerberg. It was not crazy somebody was gonna connect on those people. Why not him. We have our facebook fellow. We have Mark zuckerberg have the pleasure of introducing Mark zuckerberg founder of facebook dot com And Mark was at Harvard. He was fascinated by hacker culture. This notion that software programmers could do things that would shock the world and a lot of times people just like to careful. I think it's more useful to like make things happen and then, like apologize later than it is to make sure that you got all of your eyes now and then, like just not get stuff done so it was a little bit of a renegade philosophy and a disrespect for authority that led to the facebook Move fast and break things never heard of facebook, just going crazy from facebook to create his own world. That you get sucked in to start, adding things like status updates and photos and groups and apps when we first launched, we were hoping for you know, maybe 400 500 people The first hundred million and the next hundred million Cool so you're motivated by what building things that have changed the world and in a way that it needs to be change. Who is morocco but the answer is right. There on my facebook page mister sub stuck those days move fast and break things didn't seem to be so see path if you're building a product that people love you can make a lot of mistakes. It wasn't that they intended to do harm so much as they were unconcerned about the possibility that harm the results so just to be clear you're, not going to sell or share any of the information on facebook we're, not gonna share peoples, information except for with the people that they've asked her to be shared technology Ism is so deeply ingrained in the value system and in the believe some people in silicon Valley are here for activities. Let's get started that they come to believe it is akin to the law of gravity that of course, technology makes the world a better place. It always had it always will and that assumption Essentially mask ' set of changes that were going on in the culture that we're very dangerous from jay z in sacramento on Monday June, 27 Mark zuckerberg's quest to connect the world would bring about historic change and far-reaching consequences in politics. Privacy and technology we've been investigating warning signs that existed long before problems burst into public view. It was my missing but for those inside facebook the story began with an intoxicating vision that turned into a lucrative business plan, but one thing that Mark zuckerberg has been so good at is being incredibly clear and compelling about the mission of facebook has always had facebook's mission is to give people the power to share with people the power to share in order to make the world more open and connected more open and connected open and connected and Internet How pervasive the mission was that inside of the company give me a sense of that. It was something that you know Mark doesn't, just say when we do you know, ordered in the morning and we yell the mission to each other right. We would actually say it to each other. You know when Mark was around and that was a mission that you really believed it. How could you not how exciting what if connecting the world actually delivered a promise that we've been looking for to genuinely make the world a better place was there ever a point Where there was questions internally about this mission being naive, optimism. I think the short answer is completely yes and I think that's why we loved it, especially in a moment like when we crossed a billion monthly active users for the first time and marks the way I recall Mark at the time I remember thinking I don't think Mark is gonna stop until he gets to everybody. I think some of us had an early understanding that we were creating in some ways ' digital nation-state. This was the Just experiment and free speech in human history, there was a sense inside the company that we are building the future and there was a real focus on uh youth being a good thing It was not a particularly diverse workforce. It was very much the sort of Harvard stanford League group of people who are largely in their twenties, that was a big believer in the company. Like I knew that it was gonna be a paradigm shifting thing. There is definitely this feeling of everything for the company of this. You know, world stirring vision. Everyone more less-stress with the same fleece and swagg with logo on it posters on the Wall that looks like a little alien um, but, of course I don't enough beat way. Obviously and then you know some of the slogans are pretty well known, move fast and break things, fortune favors the bold. What would you do if you weren't afraid you know it's always sort of rousing rhetoric that would push you to Further Antonio garcia Martinez of former product manager, on facebook's advertising team is one of eight former facebook insiders who agreed to talk on camera about their experiences in silicon Valley. There's, a you know I'm awesome so code of silence that you're not supposed to talk about the business in any but the most flattering way basically, you can say anything you know measure truthful about the business and I think, as perhaps with facebook, it's kind of arrived at the point which is so important. You need to be a little bit more transparent about how it works like let's stop a little worried about everyone in silicon Valley. You know creating disrupting this and improving the world right it's in many ways the business, like any other it's just kind of more exciting and impactful ' two thousand seven soderbergh had made it clear that the goal of the business was world-wide expansion almost a year ago when we were first discussing how to let everyone in the world into facebook remember, someone said to me Mark. We already have nearly every College student in the us on facebook. It's incredible that we were even able to do that but no one gets the second track like that well, let's take a look at how we did What was the growth team about what did you do. It. Growth, the story of growth has really been about making facebook available to people that wanted it, but couldn't have access to it. They only glide facebook's second longest serving employee is one of five officials. The company put forward to talk to frontline. She was an original member of the growth team, one of my first projects was expanding facebook to high school students. I worked on translating facebook into over a hundred languages when I joined the one million users and now there's over two billion people using facebook every month, some of the problems that have reared their head with facebook over the past couple of years seems to have been caused in some ways by this exponential growth. So I think Mark and marcus said this that we have been slow to really understand the ways in which facebook might be used for bad things um we've been really focused on the good things so who are all these new users the growth team had tons of engineers figure out. How you can make the new user experience more engaging, how you can figure out how to get more people to sign up everyone is focused on growth, growth bro people The power to share and the key to keeping all these new people engage more open and connected was facebook's most important feature. Your feed news feed the seemingly endless stream of stories pictures and updates shared by friends, advertisers and others. It analyzes all the information available to each user and it actually computes what's gonna be the most interesting piece of information and published a little story for them. It's your personalized newspaper it's your the New York times of you channel you. It is you know your customize optimization on the world, but what appeared in users news feed wasn't random. It was driven by The secret mathematical formula and algorithm stories are ranked in terms of what's gonna, be the most important and we design alot of algorithms so we can produce interesting content for you. The goal of the news feed is to provide you the user with the content on facebook that you most want to see it is designed to make you want to keep scrolling keep looking, keep liking that's the key that's the secret sauce that's how we that's why we're worth explained all the addition of the new, like button in two thousand nine aloud newsfeed to collect vast amounts of users personal data that would prove in Able to facebook at the time, we were a little bit skeptical about the like button. We were concerned and as it turned out, our intuition was just dead wrong and what we found is that the like button acted as a social lubricant and of course, it was also driving this fly wheel of engagement that people felt like they were heard on the platform whenever they shared something to connect to it by liking. It and it became a driving force for the product. It was incredibly important because it allows us to understand who are the people that you care more about that cause. You to react and who are the businesses the pages the other interests on facebook that are important to you and that gave us The degree of constantly increasing understanding about people usually got off to a bit of a rocky start and now our users love newsfeed did love it News feeds exponential growth was spurred on by the fact that existing laws didn't hold Internet companies liable for all the content being posted on their sites. So section two 30 of the communications, decency act is the provision which allows the Internet economy to grow and thrive in facebook is one of the principal beneficiaries of this provision. It says don't hold this Internet company responsible if some idiot says something violence on the site um don't hold the Internet company responsible if somebody publishes something that Creates conflict, uh that that violates the law it's the quintessential provision that allows them to say don't blame on Sea. So it was up to facebook to make the rules not inside the company. They made a fateful decision. We took a very libertarian perspective here. We allowed people to speak and we said, if you're gonna incite violence that's clearly out of bounce we're gonna kick you off immediately but we're gonna lot of people go right up to the edge and we're gonna allow other people to response. We had to Get up some ground rules basic decency, no, nudity and no violent or hateful speech and after that we felt some reluctance to inner pose our value system on this world wide community. That was growing was there not a concern that it could come become sort of the place of just utter confusion that you have lies that are given the same weight as truth and that it kind of just becomes the place where truth becomes completely obligated no We relied on what we thought were the public's common sense and common decency to police the site That approach with some contribute to real world consequences far from silicon Valley, where Mark zuckerberg's optimistic vision at first seem to be playing out. The Arab spring at come to reject Miss Diego done it took old with the help of the facebook page for testing abuses by the regime of his name. Rabara not that I was thinking that this facebook page is going to be effective. I just did not want to look back and say that happened and I just didn't do anything about it at the time, while name was working for Google in the Middle East in just three days and over a hundred thousand people join the page Throughout the next few months, the page was growing until what happened in tunisia. Intonation of capture the attention of viewers around the world and a lot of it was happening. Online. They took just 28 days to the form of the religion they just created for me, a moment of maybe we can do this Can I just posted an event calling for a revolution in 10 days like we should all get to the Street and we should all bring down the barn organized by a group of online activists are calling it the facebook revolution Within days the names online cry had help fill the streets of Cairo with hundreds of thousands of protestors Eighteen days later, President Obama has newmark has decided to shut down I truly the underground festival It's generally acknowledged that go games, facebook, page first spark the protests there was a moment but you were being interviewed on cnn yeah. I remember the first tunisia now each upped what's next at people that's what hey facebook facebook, the technology was for me that enables I would not have been able to engage with others. I would not have been able to propagate my ideas to others without social media, without facebook we're giving facebook a lot of credit for this yeah I wanna be like look at that one day and thank you so much. you Hey you ever think that this could have an impact on revolution. You know my own opinion is that it would be extremely arrogant for any specific technology company to claim any meaningful role in in those um, but you can have the overall trend that play here, which is people being able to share what they want with the people who they want, is an extremely powerful thing right in and we're kind of fundamentally, rewiring the world from the ground up and it starts with people they're relatively restrained external about taking credit for it, but internally. They were, I would say Very happy to take credit for the idea that social media is being used to effect Democratic change activists and civil society leaders would just come up to me and say you know, while we couldn't have done this without you guys, government officials, you know would say does facebook really realize how much you guys are changing our societies. It felt uh like facebook uh had extraordinary power and power for good But my facebook was enjoying this moment back in agent. On-the-ground and on facebook, the situation was unraveling following the revolution. Things going into a much worse direction than what we had anticipated is a complete split between the seven community and those who are calling for an Islamic state. What was happening and easy boys polarization 50 clashes between Christians and the military belief brotherhood cannot rule this and all these voices started to clash and the environment on social media, a breed of that kind of class like that polarization, rewarded it When they're spring have fun, I know that a lot of people in silicon Valley technologies help bring freedom to people which was true, but there's a twist of this which is facebook's news feed. algorithm If you increase the tone of your posts against your opponents, we're gonna get more distribution Because we tend to be more tribal so if I call my opponents, names, my tribe is happy and celebrating. Yes do it like comment share so more people end up seeing it because the algorithm is gonna seo okay that's engaging content, people like it show it to more people so other groups of friends, what a pattern of sectarian violence the hardest part for me, was seeing the tool that brought us together, tearing us apart. These tools um are just enablers for whomever. They don't separate Between what's good and bad they just look at engagement. Metrics your name himself became a victim of those metrics through the page. It had, like hundreds of thousands of followers all what it did was creating fake statements and I was a victim of that page They wrote statements about me insulting the army, which puts me at serious risk because that is not something I said. I was extremely naive in away. I don't like actually now thinking that these are liberating tools. It's the spread of misinformation, fake news in Egypt in two thousand 11 he says he later talk to people. He knew at facebook and other companies about what was going on. I tried to talk to people who are in silicon Valley, but I feel, like it was not it was not being heard. What were you trying to express to people in silicon Valley it's very serious whatever that we, that you are building has As massive serious intent and unintended consequences on the lives of people on this planet and you are not investing enough in trying to make sure that what you're building um does not go in the wrong way and it's very hard to be in their position. No matter how they try and moving change things there will be always unintended consequences activists in my region were on the front lines of you know spotting corners Of facebook that the rest of the world, the rest of the company, wasn't yet talking about because in a company that's built off uh numbers and metrics and measurements anecdote sometimes got lost along the way and that was always a real challenge and it always bothered me. Elizabeth lender facebook's representative in the region at the time was also hearing warnings from government officials so many um country representatives were expressing to me a huge concern about the ability of rumors to spread all On facebook and what do you do about that. How did you respond to that. If we didn't have a solution for it and so the best that I could do is report back to headquarters that this is something that I was hearing. On-the-ground and what sort of response would you get from headquarters. You know it's impossible to be specific about that because it was always just kind of uh. This is what I'm hearing this is. What's going on, but I think in a company The the people that could have actually you know had an impact on making those decisions are not necessarily seen. It first hand. I think everything that happened after the Arab spring should have been a warning sign to facebook signed up to the ' researcher and former computer programmer and also been raising alarms to facebook and other social media companies. These companies were terribly understaffed in over their heads in terms of the important role the airplane, like all of a sudden When you're in the public sphere in Egypt, so I kept starting to talk to my friends at this companies and saying you have to step up and you have to put in large amounts of people who speak the language who understand the culture who understand the complexities of wherever you happen to operate. But facebook hadn't been set up to police the amount of content coming from all the new places. It was expanding to. I think no one at any of these companies in silicon Valley has the resources for this kind of scale You had queues of work for people to go through and hundreds of employees who would spend all day everyday clicking. Yes, no keep take down take it down. Take it down. Keep up keep up making judgment calls snap judgement calls about doesn't violate our terms of service. Doesn't violate our standards of decency. What are the consequences of the speech so you have this fabulously talented group of mostly 20 somethings who are deciding what speech matters and they're doing. It in real time all day everyday is that's scary It's terrifying right their responsibility was awesome no one could ever have predicted how fast facebook will grow. The trajectory of growth of the user base and of the issues was like this and of all it. Staffing throughout the company was like this other company was trying to make money. It was trying to keep costs down. It had to be going concern. It had to be revenue generating thing or would cease to exist in fact Facebook was preparing to take its rapidly growing business to the next level by going public. I'm David in facebook. Thank you for taking the time to consider an investment in facebook, social media giant hopes to raise five million dollar. The pressure heading into the of course was to prove that facebook was a great business. Otherwise, we have no shareholders facebook is it worth a hundred billion dollars and should be valued at soccer challenge was to show investors and advertisers the profit that could be made from Most valuable asset the personal data, it head on it's users Mark great as he was at vision and product. He had very little experience in building a big advertising business that would be the job of zuckerberg's deputy sheryl sandberg, who done the same for Google at facebook. We have abroad mission. We want to make the world more open and connected the business model. We see today was created by sheryl sandberg and the team she built at facebook, many of whom have been with her at Google. How good Sandberg and zuckerberg has been downplaying the extent of the personal data facebook was collecting and emphasizing users privacy we're focus on privacy. We care the most about privacy. Our business model is by far the most privacy friendly to consumers. That's our mission right and we we have to do that because if people feel like they don't have control over how their sharing things then, then we're failing them really is the point that the only things facebook knows about you or things you've done and told us, but internally sandberg would soon lead facebook in a very different direction is That was in March two thousand 12 in which you know as everyone who build stuff inside ads myself among them and you know she basically re cited the reality which is revenue, is flattening. I wasn't slow isn't declining, but it wasn't growing nearly as fast as investors would have gas, so she basically said, like we have to do something. You people have to do something and so it was a big effort to basically pull out all the stops and start experimenting way more aggressively. That we have. It is yeah facebook has a lot of personal data uh your chat with your girlfriend or boyfriend your drunk party photos from College etcetera the reality is that none of that is actually valuable to any marketer. We want commercially Interesting data you know what products did you take off the shelf at best buy what did you buy in your last grocery run that includes diapers. Do you have kids you have household right. It's things like that things that exist in the outside world. That just don't exist inside facebook at all sandberg steam started developing new ways to collect personal data from users wherever they went on the Internet and when they weren't on the Internet at all and so there's extraordinary thing that happens, that doesn't get much attention at the time about 45 Before the the company announces it's first uh relationship with data broker companies, companies that most Americans aren't at all aware of that go out and buy up data about each and everyone of us by where we shop where we live. What our traffic patterns are, what our families are doing where likes are what magazines weary data that the consumer doesn't even know that's been collected about them because it's been collected from the rest of their lives by companies. They don't know and it's now being shared with facebook, so that facebook can target ads back to the user What facebook does is profile you, if you're on facebook it's collecting everything you do. If you're on facebook it's using tracking pixels to collect what you're browsing and force micro targeting to work for its business model to work. It has to remain surveillance machine. They made a product that was a better tool for advertisers than anything that will ever come before and of course, the ad revenue spikes that change alone. I think To see change in the way that company felt about it's future and the direction it was headed. Sparapani was so uncomfortable with the direction facebook was going. He left before the company's work with data brokers took effect. The extent of facebook's data collection was largely a secret until the law student in Austria had a chance encounter with the company lawyer. I kind of Of the semester off so I actually went to California to Santa clara University in the silicon Valley, someone from facebook was the guest Speaker is planning to us basically how they deal with your privacy, look at general understanding what you can do whatever you wanna do in your because they do have data protection laws, but they don't really enforce them at all, so send an email to facebook, saying I want to have a copy of all my data so I got from facebook about one thousand 200 pages and I read through it in my personal I think the most sensitive information was my messages for example, a friend of mine was in the close to University of psychological hospital in indiana I'd leave it all these messages and all of them came back up and you have messages about you know love life and sexuality and all of that is kept facebook tries to give you the impression that you shared it is only with friends the realities, facebook is always looking there is a data category called last location where they um store where they think you've been the last time. If you tag people in pictures there's gps location, so by that they know which person has been Place what time back on the service stairs like a treasure, trove just like 10 times as big as anything we ever see on the screen as facebook was ramping up its data collection business ahead of the trends file. 22 complaints with the data protection Commission in Ireland, where facebook has its international headquarters and they had 20 people at the time over little supermarket in a small town it's called it's five thousand people in the Middle of nowhere and they were meant to regulate Google facebook or linked in and all of them, trump claimed It was violating European privacy law in the way it was collecting personal data and not telling users what they were doing with it and after we found this complains that was when you actually face will reach out basically saying, let's sit down and have a coffee and talk about all of this So we actually had a kind of notable meeting that was in two thousand 12 at the indiana but the interesting thing is the most of these points and simply didn't have an answer. You told me saud of their pens for down. However, the certain point I just got a text message from the data protection authority and saying they're not available to speak to me anymore, that was how this procedure basically in that facebook, knew that the system plays in their favor so, even if you violate the law duality is it's it's very likely not gonna be enforced Disputed claims and said, it takes European privacy laws seriously. It agreed to make its policies clearer and stop storing some kinds of user data so without Thursday March second, birth in silicon Valley, those who covered the tech industry had also been confronting facebook about how it was handling users. Personal data, privacy was my number one concern back then so when we were thinking about talking to Mark the platform is an issue there are bunch of privacy violations and that was what we wanted to talk to you about is their level of privacy that just have Ask to apply to everyone who do you think. I mean you might have a view of this is what privacy means to marks Oct so this is what it's gonna be at facebook. Yeah. I mean people can control this by themselves and simple control has always been one of the important parts of using facebook and kara swisher has covered zuckerberg, since the beginning. I'm a dinner or just to hang out with she interviewed him after the company had changed its default privacy settings, so do you feel like it's a backlash, do you feel, like you're violating people's privacy and when we started asking questions, he became increasingly uncomfortable and you know No, it's think the issue is you became the head of the biggest social networking company on the planet. I know so everything you need in things that you know so I started this when I was you know started working on this type of stuff when I was eighteen so he started to sweat quite a lot and then alot alot and then a real lot so the kind. This kind of thing you know, like broadcast news was dripping down like or Tom cruise mission impossible. It was just it was going to his chin and dripping off you know a lot of stuff change that we've gone from building this project and the dorm room and it wasn't stopping And I was noticing that one of the people from facebook was like oh my, God and was we're always trying to figure out what to do. Yeah I mean you know a lot of stuff happening along the way. I think I'm You know they're real learning points and turning points along the way in terms of um in terms of building things He was in such distress and I know it sounds awful, but I felt like his mother, like oh, my God, this poor guy is gonna faint, but I thought it was gonna thing I didn't take off the hoodie know what Well, different people think different things. He's told us, he had the flu. Um. I felt like he had a panic attack is what happened there. You should take it off hey got that okay course, no, it is a warm pretty yeah you know it's it's that could be. We it's awesome as a company, we print our mission on the inside. What I really love the inside of the hoodie. Everybody take what is it making the making the world more open and connected oh my God single hold from that interview and from others having how would you have characterized marks view of privacy well, you know I don't know if you Thought about that. It's kind of interesting cuz they're very they're very loose on it. Um they have viewpoint that this helps you, as the user to get more information and they will deliver up more. Sir that's the whole length of silicon Valley by the way, if you only give us everything we will give you free stuff. There is a trade being made between the user and facebook the question is are they protecting that that data. Thank you, facebook had been free to set its own privacy standards because in the us there are no overarching privacy laws that apply to this kind of data collection But in 20 10 authorities at the federal trade Commission became concerned and most other parts of the world privacy is a right, United States, not exactly at the David Atlantic was investigating whether facebook has been deceiving his users. What he found was that facebook has been sharing users personal data with so-called third party developers companies that build games and apps for the platform and our view was that you know it's fine for facebook to collect this data, but sharing this data with third parties without consent was a no no The facebook of course, we believe that our users have complete control of their information. The heart of our cases against companies like facebook was deceptive conduct that is, they did not make it clear to consumers the extent to which their personal data will be shared with third parties the had another worry it's all the potential for data to be misused because facebook wasn't keeping track of what the third parties we're doing with it. They had in my view, no real control over the third party app developers that had access to the site. They could have been anyone there's no due diligence. Anyone essentially who can develop a third Party app you can get access to the site. It could have been somebody working for a foreign adversary. Certainly, it could have been somebody working. Yes for you know, for the Russian government facebook's settled with the without admitting guilt and under a consent order, agreed to fix the problems was their expectation at the time of the consent order. That they would staff up to ensure that their users data was not leaking out all over the place. Yes, that's that was Point of the this provision of the consent order that required them to identify risks to personal privacy and to plug those gaps quickly inside facebook. However, with the on the horizon they were also under pressure to keep monetizing all that personal information not just fix the privacy issues. Nine months into my first job in tech in added up in an interesting situation where, because I have been the main person who was working on privacy issues with respect to facebook platform with I had many many, many privacy issues. It was uh. It was a real hornet's nest and in the meeting with a bunch of the most senior executives of the company and they went around the room and they basically said well who's in charge and the answer was me because no one else really know anything about it. You think that the company of the size and importance of facebook you know would have really focused on how to team of people and you know very senior people working on these issues, but and it being Me what did you think about that at the time that was horrified. I'd didn't think I was qualified. Parakeet was trying to examine all the ways that the data facebook we're sharing with third party developers, could be misused. My concerns of the time we're that I knew that there are all these malicious actors who would do a wide range of bad things, given the opportunity given the ability to target people based on this information that facebook had so I started thinking through one of the worst case scenarios of what people could do with this data um and I showed some of the kinds of bad actors that might try to attack and I share that With ' number of senior executives and the the response was was muted. I would say um. I got the sense that it just wasn't their priority. They weren't, that concerned about the vulnerabilities that the company was creating. They were concerned about revenue, growth and user growth and that was expressed to you or that something that you just cleaned from the interactions from the lack of response I would, I gathered that yeah and how senior We're the senior executives very senior, like among the top five executives of the company facebook, has said it took the order seriously and despite para keyless account at large teams of people working to improve users privacy. But the perilous and others inside facebook. It was clear the business model continued to drive the mission and 20 12 ara keyless left the company frustrated. I think there was a certain arrogance there that lead to alot of bad long-term decision making the long term ramifications of those decisions was not well thought through at all and it It's got us to where we are right now You're visionary, your founder leader, lord, please come to the podium In may of 20 12 the company finely went public. The world's largest social network managed to raise more than eighteen billion dollars making it the largest technology in us history, people literally lined up in time square around the Nasdaq bordering the spell and we'll get back to work with founder Mark zuckerberg will leave the Nasdaq opening Bell remotely from facebook headquarters in menlo Park California Park soccer Bird was now worth an estimated 15 billion dollars Go on to acquire instagram and what's up on its way to becoming one of the most valuable companies in the world going public is an important milestone in our history. But here's the thing our mission isn't to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected at facebook the business model built on getting more and more of users, personal data was seen as a success, but across the Country researchers working for the Department of defense we're, seeing something else the concern was that social media could be used for really the various purposes. The opportunities for disinformation for deception for everything else are enormous, bad guys or anybody could use this for any kind of purpose in a way that wasn't possible before that's the concern and what did you see as a potential threat of people giving up their data that they're opening Up to being targets for manipulation, I couldn't believe it. You to buy something I can. It be like you to vote for somebody. It's like putting a target painting of big target on your front on your chest and on your back and say here I am coming manipulate me. You have every I've given you everything you need how about it that's the threat ross, Simon says facebook wouldn't provide data to help his research, but from 20 12 to 20 15, he and his colleagues published more than 200 academic papers and reports about the threats they were From social media, when I saw over the years of the program was that the medium enables you to really take this information and turn it into a serious weapon was your research revealing the potential threats to National security so, if you, when you look at how it actually worked, you see where the opportunities are for manipulation Mass manipulation and is there an assumption, there that people are easily misled. Yes, yes, people. It is leave his land if you do it the right way for example When you see people forming enter communities okay, what's called filter bubbles. Now I'm gonna explain that to craft, my message that resonates most exactly with that community and I'll do that for every single community. It would be pretty easy. It will be pretty easy to set up a fake account and large number of fake accounts embedded in different communities and use them to disseminate propaganda at an enormous scale. Yes well, that's why so serious weapon because this is an enormous scale is the scale That makes it a weapon In fact, fears were already playing out at the secret propaganda factory in saint petersburg, Russia called the Internet research agency. Hundreds of Russian operatives were using social media to fight the entire Russian government in neighboring Ukraine bit olly best. Pull-offs says he was one of them. Can you explain what is the Internet research agency for those at the combined together it's a company that creates a fake perception of Russia so we use non ammonia and the use things like illustrations pictures, anything that would influence people's mind. What about the thumbs up easily base or uh When I worked there, I didn't hear anyone say the government runs us or the Kremlin runs us, but everyone there knew and everyone realized it this is not, I who is the main intention to make the ukrainian government look bad that it's even yeah that's. What it was this was the intention with Ukraine put President in the bad light and the rest of the governments in the military so it's something that people just know what you come to work and there's a pile of sim cards. many Many, some cards and an old Mobile phone you need an account to register for various social media sites. You pick a photo of a random person choose a random last name and start posting links to news and different keeps the Russian propaganda had its intended effect, helping to sow distrust and fear of the ukrainian government, Russia demonstrators against ukraine's new. You control governments crusher Russia on Russian propaganda was massive on social media was massive there was so many stories that start emerging on the facebook crew old Cruel ukrainian nationalists killing people or torturing them because they speak Russia and they scare people. You see they gonna attack gonna burn. Your villages. You should worry you won't that I see people than fake stage two news. Let you know when history Christopher, child by ukrainian soldiers, which is totally nonsense, sir not just it good proven that those people were actually hired actors complete nonsense, but it's it spreads on facebook so facebook was weaponized just as in the Spring facebook was being used to inflame divisions, but now by groups working on behalf of a foreign power using facebook's tools built to help advertisers boost their content by that time in facebook, you could pay money to promote the storage to your stories emerge on the top lines and suddenly you start to believe in this and you immediately get immediate response. You can text oh Kind of non senses and understand to which nonsense people do not be mice and to which nonsense is people start believing Which will influence the behavior of person receptive to propaganda and then provoking that person on certain action They decided to undermine you, praying from the inside Rather than from the outside I'm a basically think about this. Russia hacked us to meet your the top adviser to ukraine's President met with facebook representatives and says he asked them to intervene. The response that facebook gave us a sorry we're open platform. Anybody can do anything with out within the hour policy which is written on the website and when I said but this is fake accounts, you can verify that uh well, we will think about this, but you know we we have a freedom of speech and we're very proud democracy platform. Everybody can say anything in the medium do you think you made It explicitly clear that Russia was using facebook to medal in Ukraine, politics. I was explicitly saying that there are trolls factory that there re post and use that are fake. That are lying and they are promoted on your platform, uh, we buy very often fake accounts have a look at least sending somebody to investigate and no one Sorry, no one wants enough for them at that time. It was not an issue Facebook told frontline that didn't raise the issue with misinformation in their meeting Conversations has nothing to do with what would happen in the United States. Two years later, it was known to facebook in 20 14. There was potential for Russian disinformation campaigns on facebook. Yes and there were disinformation campaigns from a number of different countries on facebook. You know, disinformation campaigns were regular facets that um of facebook curry abroad um and that's what I mean yeah technically that's Should have led to a learning experience and I just don't know There was plenty that was known about the potential downsides of social media and facebook. You know potential for disinformation potential for bad actors and abuse where these things that you just weren't paying attention to earlier with these things that were kinda conscious choice is to kind of save alright we're gonna kind of abdicate responsibility from those things and just keep growing I'd definitely think we've been paying attention to the things that we know and one of the biggest challenges here is that this is really an evolving set of threats and risks. We had a big Referred around scams. We had a big effort around bullying and harassment. We had a big effort around nudity and porn on facebook. It's always ongoing and so some of these threats and problems are new and I think we're grappling with that. As a company with other companies in the space with governments with other organizations and so I wouldn't say that everything is new it's just different problems Facebook is the ultimate grocery store at facebook headquarters in menlo Park. They would stick to the mission and the business model. Despite the gathering storm action news and decision making material from baseball to extraordinary by 20 16 Russia was continuing to use social media as a weapon, not seem to extinguish and division and polarization we're running through the presidential campaign is it a lion crooked Hillary the race for the White House was shaking up again on Mark zuckerberg's threats to his vision of an open and connected world As I look around I'm starting to see people and Nations turning inward against this idea of a connected world and the global community at you're fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people. They label as others for blocking free expression for slowing immigration, reducing trade and in some cases around the world, even cutting access to the Internet But he continued to view his invention not as part of the problem, but has the solution and that's why I think the work that we're all doing together is more important now than it's ever been before Tomorrow night, frontline's investigation continues. There is absolutely no company who has had so much influence on the information that Americans consume. He's the man who connected the world but at what cost polarization was the key to the model for global threat. This is an information ecosystem that just turns democracy upside down the 20 16 election facebook getting over a billion political and the company denials the idea that fake news on facebook influence the election in anyway, I think, is pretty crazy, ideas, book ceo Mark zuckerberg will test and I'm responsible for what happens here is facebook ready for the midterm elections. There are lot of question Heading into this midterm midterm elections and I still have questions. If we're gonna make sure that in 20 eighteen and 20 20 this doesn't happen again, part two of the facebookdilemma tomorrow night on frontline go to Cbs dot. Org slash frontline to read more about facebook from our partner, Washington post reporter Dan, a priest for facebookdilemma, is, can they solve the serious problems without completely revamping and business model, then watch a video explaining how about what facebook knows about you and how even though you never signed up for it, facebook now has did about you and stores. It has a shadow profile connect The frontline community at Cbs dot org slash frontline frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers. Like you, thank you and by the Corporation for public broadcasting. Major support is provided by the John and catherine t macarthur foundation committed to building a more just verdant and peaceful world more information is available at dot org the Ford foundation