Mark Zuckerberg: Oops! I Did It Again (Again)
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On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org slash bots. It's on!

Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Happy Fourth of July to everyone. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. Happy Fourth, Kara. Where are you spending the weekend? I'm going to Vermont. Amanda's family has a place there they've had for decades. There's a town called Peacham that has a tractor.

thing. Lots of tractors through town. That sounds like your kind of town. Yeah. It's a really traditional, very beautiful place. I'll be at the beach. I think a very nice 4th of July with barbecues. I showed you the house. Yeah. It looks lovely. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't been out there in a long time to the Hamptons. I don't actually like the Hamptons. No. I never go to the Hamptons. It's just approximate beach. But you know what? Grateful to my host. Thank you for having me out. Happy 4th of July. So today we get to give ourselves

a wee bit of rest. We're going to play an episode that we aired in January. It's one where I interview you, Cara, about your long tango with a certain tech titan who you met when he had a business card that said, I'm CEO, bitch. A Mark Zuckerberg original. Yeah, I have that card somewhere in one of my piles. It was a long time ago. I think he's certainly matured from that. He did a lot of stuff back then that was kind of silly. And, you know,

you know, just typical of a young person trying to dominate people when they didn't have any leverage whatsoever. You've always made the point that Mark is unfireable, that he owns 90% of the Class B shares, and that makes him kind of omnipotent. But one of the most interesting moments you've had in conversation in your many interviews with Mark was Cambridge Analytica, when you asked him basically who would get fired for this, and he said, well, it would be me. Should someone have been fired for this?

I'm just curious what you think. Well, I think it's a big issue. But look, I designed the platform. So if someone's going to get fired for this, it should be me. And I think that the important thing going forward is to make sure that we get this right. But

But to be clear, you're not going to fire yourself right now. Is that right? Not on this podcast. Okay. All right. That would be fantastic. I mean, I think you'll do okay. So let's get to the privacy and data part of it. One of the things you kept saying in Congress, which really drove me crazy because you said it like I counted it. Do you really want me to fire myself right now? Sure. It's fine. Just for the news? Yeah. Why not? Okay.

Yeah, why not? It was more of a joke, but I wanted to make two points that he couldn't be fired and two, nobody is accountable. And that was another part of the problems with the company is that accountability was not, no one got fired. No one got fired ever for anything that happened there. And of course, other companies, you get fired very quickly. They're not even a fall guy. Yeah, because what he wants to do, because he's the emperor of the company and so he can do whatever he wants to do.

which is how he set it up. So does the emperor have clothes or not? Yes, of course. Oh, it's an amazing business. He's built an amazing business, 100%. Great advertising business. Yeah, he's a skilled business person. Not everybody makes the jump from startup to...

you know, a really significant CEO. And I think Gates is the comparable to him that he did from the beginning and also similar juvenile behavior at the beginning of their careers. And so, you know, it's really an achievement of what he's built. The question is, would he have been able to do if there were real laws in place around privacy and data and everything else? But there weren't. So there we are. Well, we're going to play more moments of you interviewing Mark over the years in the course of this episode that you're about to hear. But

It's been a while since you've interviewed Mark. Yeah. Years. A couple of years, yeah. Yeah. Five years. Yeah, yeah, I know, yeah. Five-year withdrawal symptoms. And it's been a rough patch at Meta since Sue and I taped this conversation. There have been layoffs like so many other tech companies. He's handled them pretty well. Yeah, I thought so. He's not a ridiculous person.

you know, hand waiver like Elon Musk, for example, in terms of management. But, you know, they've had layoffs. They had the Francis Haugen stuff and then the metaverse thing didn't work out. They changed the whole name of the company and now everyone was rushing towards AI. You know, the two areas he rushed into sort of crypto and meta didn't quite work out. And he was caught flat footed in a lot of ways. They're trying to get there, but, and obviously they have a big business that could

from AI. Innovation has always been lacking at that company. Sure has. And has happened a lot through acquisition. And I wonder where there's hope for them anywhere. Is headsets somewhere where they were early to the VR market with Oculus? Yeah, I think Oculus is a very good device. It's just a very small business. Even though they sell quite a few of them, you know, look at their meta stuff. It's not very, if you look at, compare the vision stuff with Oculus stuff and the meta stuff, it's like,

It's like a nursery school versus like a serious designer. You know what I mean? Like you look at like the demo he did. It was so unappealing. And I thought a lot of the vision stuff, I don't know if any of this stuff is going to work, but Apple has the best chance of doing this. And it's just it's not a particularly creative company. And that's just the way it is. What about this Twitter competitor that Meta has planned? This was leaked early in June and it's the origin story of the Elon Musk campaign.

Mark Zuckerberg cage fight plan. But it's a standalone app based on Instagram. Hopefully it doesn't have that weird status feature, which three of my creepiest friends use. I don't know. I'm sure it'll be a copy of Twitter. You know, I don't know. There's not many ways to innovate in this space.

But, you know, they don't, it's just not a new fresh idea. And there's a lot of competitors and it's still hard to start one. That said, whoever's running Instagram is doing a good job. You know, they've grown it. They've made it interesting. I love Instagram and you're back on it. Yes, I am. Only because I...

I really hate Twitter. So, I mean, I am grudgingly back on it, but it's good for marketing. I'll be honest. That's the only reason I use most of these things is for marketing. But we'll see what he does with this Twitter thing. There's an opening. So he should, he should try to step into it. For photo, Facebook has always been ahead of the curve. I feel like Facebook albums and then Instagram, you know,

news and video are harder. But Elon responded to the tweet of photos of this Twitter competitor, which is rumored to be called Thread, so we don't know. He had an allergic reaction to it. He's had an allergic reaction to everything from Mastodon links to Substack authors. He's a very jealous boyfriend, it seems, that Elon... What do you think... Does...

Does this matter, this fight with Twitter? Is this going to be a small business? Is this going to be a big business? I don't know. Who knows what he's doing over there at Twitter? He may just be trying to, who knows? Who knows? I think this whole social media space is imploding in a lot of ways. I think people have found other ways to express themselves. And I think we're at a sort of a cusp. Something has to change really dramatically. I don't see great growth for any of these businesses.

Yeah. And I think it's sort of reached its peak point. And it's not, you know, it's got a, something very good has to come along. And I think there's a real opportunity, probably not from either of these people, right? The thing that Elon has in his favor is everyone's sitting there and it works and it sucks. But, you know, it's sort of like a city that,

got shitty, but it's still a city, I guess, you know. And Mark, meanwhile, he's clearly in the midst of the rebrand. He's beefing up doing the Murph Challenge. Yeah. There's been a lot of talk of the drugs of Silicon Valley in the last week, something you had written about much earlier. Yeah. Does Mark strike you as different than the rest of the CEO crowd? He's not him. Yeah, it's not. That's not his scene. He likes working out. He does. That's the other drug of Silicon Valley. Yeah, it is. Body hacking and working out.

He loves that stuff. And he's actually become a very good fighter, whatever the jujitsu stuff. It's quite good. But he's like that. He's very dedicated. He's very intense and dedicated to like doing whatever his intensity is, whether it's reading a book a day. I remember that was one of his or one of the things like that or going around the country. He's not a partier. He's, you know, he met his wife in college. He has kids. And, you know, and then Jeff Bezos is off doing the yacht scene and everything.

and Elon's doing the rave scene, you know, whatever. I'd prefer Mark over all of them in that regard. Like how you see them all as Barbies. You're like, this is workout Barbie. This is party Barbie. They're Barbies. Yeah. It's kind of sad. I mean, I find it, I find it overall very sad that they just can't just be themselves that they were when they started, but that's fine. Whatever. Money is a drug. That's really at the start of it. And that that's,

Never going to change. Never going to change. Well, he's definitely in my list of top five people I'd like to bring back to the show. So Mark, come back. He's not coming back. But until he gets here, we will hear from you. And we'll start with day one of the Kara and Mark situationship. Yes. Here's that old episode.

Tell me about the first time you met Mark Zuckerberg. Oh, this is my book. You're getting to talk about my book, but I scoop myself. I was aware of it in the early 2000s, like when it started and started to get popular colleges. And it was one of many. There was MySpace. There was a bunch of them. I can't even remember all their names, but there was a bunch.

Some of them more popular than Facebook, but it was starting to gain traction on college campuses. So we started to pay attention to it. There was a PR person named Brandy Barker who was very adamant that I come visit. And Owen Van Otta, who I'd known from Amazon before that. He was at Amazon. It was a bunch of places. And he said...

Explain who Owen was. He was an executive. And he was very adamant that I come in and meet him. You should meet him. You would like this and that. And so I finally went in to their... They had a headquarter in Palo Alto above Pizza My Heart. A lot of companies had been. It's a popular pizza place. I remember that place. On University Avenue. And so I went and met him and I walked into the office. And one of the things...

I had talked to a bunch of venture capitalists and he sounded like an asshole, like, oh, another asshole. And I think I said that. I'm like, oh, he sounds like another asshole. Like there's so many of them, so many arrogant young men. And I walked in and the first thing he said to me was, I heard you think I'm an asshole.

I wish I liked him for that. Like he's sort of that, you know, and I was like, so I said, yeah. And I said, well, I don't know you well enough to know if you're an asshole. I've heard you're an asshole or something like that. And, um, and, but we'll find out, like, we'll find out if you're, he's not an asshole. Actually. He's not, as it turns out, he did asshole things, but he certainly isn't an asshole as a person. Um,

So anyway, so we walked. I think we walked around Palo Alto and he was always super nervous around me. You kind of leaned into intimidating him because you've told me a story where you took his smoothie. Tell us. I don't want to go on about this story, but he used to have these green smoothies and I always asked for a sip and I always want to see if he would let me have one. Oh, did he? Yes. Yes. Always. He always let me have a sip. It was funny. What were you doing with that? I don't know.

I like green smoothies. And I was doing it to, I guess, am I supposed to dominate him in some way? I just was curious. A power move. Yeah. You know, if I had asked that of Steve Jobs, he'd have thrown a smoothie in my face, like that kind of thing. I would have never asked him. But I don't know why. I was just...

They have really good smoothies at Facebook, let me just say, all the time. Much more subtle than an I'm a CEO bitch. Yes. Yeah, it was. It was interesting. He would give them to me. I would often try to knock him off his thing by asking him, you know, direct questions. And I think what had started to happen by this time later, especially later when they moved into that big office building, was people, you know, like I say this all the time, people are in violent agreement with him all the time. So he never got pushback. So I often...

With all of them, I tried to say, no, that's, you know, even with Sundar Pichai or around the immigration stuff with Trump, I'd say, why aren't you saying something? And I don't think anyone had the audacity to...

to say something to these people about things. And I, I tended to like the firing thing, very typical. I'm like, you know, no one would have said that to him. And so that's why he was so, he didn't know what to think. What do you, no one talks to me like this. And I was like, oh, sorry, I don't work for you. Yeah. And Facebook certainly started off small. I remember in this time, I mean, I was in college and Facebook was this thing that we were using. It was super, it seemed super safe. We were putting a lot of information on it and it was just college students, very gated. Mm-hmm.

But then in 2005, they let on high school students. In 2006, they become an Everyone app. Anyone with an email address can join. I think that's when I joined. Because you old, Kara. Not old. I certainly wasn't in college. And then that same year, in 2006, they lowered the age to 13 and they announced News Feed, which got a lot of privacy pushback. I mean, not a lot compared today, but a lot for then.

And by 2009, they had the Like button. You were there covering all of this. How did you look at these incremental experiments with a small startup? It was always a privacy nightmare. There was a thing called Beacon where they would tell people what you bought. Like, it was so privacy problematic. They were moving fast and breaking things, right?

Yes. Well, that's a software term, but yes, I was always fascinated by that term because it's a software term, but I was always thought, why wasn't it move fast and fix things, move fast and change things. And they backed off, you know, beacon, but they got in trouble for it. They were always pushing the edge of privacy and much more so than others. That was what was interesting is that others, certainly Google was certainly a privacy, you know, sucking, you know, sucking all your privacy and information out.

But they were explicit in doing it and making mistakes doing it. And so they would grab for any frigging piece of information they could get from people and you could see it. And they were sort of naked in their ambition to own all your privacy. And they would couch it in this term of, you know, we want to build a community. But there was a one-way street of information. It was we were giving you Facebook information and they were using it and they were making money off of it. It wasn't...

AOL did the same thing. So did Google. But it was much more explicit, much more. Well, you and Walt Mossberg kind of glommed on to this privacy topic. Glommed, yes, we glommed. You glommed on to it. We were concerned about privacy by this company because who...

What did they do with it? Who were they? And when you saw the inside of these companies, it was chaotic. And so there was very early word. There was people inside the company very early on looking at people's profiles. You know, the same thing happened at Uber. But that was it. It was like, why do we trust these people with this enormous amount of personal information? Why do we? I don't. But privacy was a subject that you and your partner, Walt Mossberg, kind of got into when you interviewed Mark on stage in 2010. So this was at the All Things D conference. Yes.

And Mark is literally sweating. Was it hot in there? No. Were the lights on? Well, no. I thought he had a panic attack. He said he was sick. It was very uncomfortable because he started sweating profusely. Yeah. And you noticed because you were sitting closer to him than Walt was. I was right next to him. You were right next to him. And he's wearing this hoodie. So you ask him if he wants to remove it. He says he never removes the hoodie. And then Walt jumps back into another privacy question. Let's play the clip.

Before we move off this privacy thing, and I thought that was a fascinating answer. It's okay. You want to take off the hoodie? No, I never take off the hoodie. I know you don't. What's with that? There's a group of women in the audience that wish you would. No, no. Girls? Whoa. All right. Sorry. That's okay. Can you explain what this instant personalization thing was that you did and why you did it and what's the value of it to your users? Maybe I should take off the hoodie.

Take off the hood. Go ahead. Here. You all right? Yeah. This is a great moment in Internet history. What?

You went on to see inside the hoodie was the Illuminati symbol. Yeah, it was a symbol. I have that hoodie. Yeah, because Brandy, Barbara gave you a... Yes, one of them. Yeah. It was really awkward. I think Walt could not see what was happening. The sweat was really dropping. And when I said the ladies in the audience, Sheryl Sandberg was in the front row losing her mind. I could see her, you know, right there.

And she knew what was happening and so did I. It was super awkward because he was sweating so, so, so much. And I was worried he was going to faint, honestly. I thought he was going to faint. Surprising because you and Walt have said that Cheryl told you he was ready for the privacy questions. He told me he was ready. You know, we had talked about the movie, The Social Network, that night before at dinner.

I think I had introduced him to Steve Jobs or he had sat and talked. And so he had and he had answered lots of questions about privacy. So it wasn't the questions. We were not in the hot seat and suddenly couldn't. Oh, can you believe it? He was he was either ill or he had had panic attacks. I had heard previously. And I think he was so nervous. He just started sweating and

for whatever reason. And he, he would not take off the hoodie and it just, it became, it was uncomfortable for him and us. And one of the things I did there, especially making the joke about the hoodie was trying to relieve his tension. Cause there's no way I want someone like him to be uncomfortable on stage in that way. And he was, he was in a state of distress and I thought it was a

I thought it wasn't good for us to keep pressing him when he was, and we wanted him to calm down. And by the way, I have to say he did. He calmed down and he had a great interview afterwards. And we gave him that moment instead of pressing on him. And he wrote us a lovely letter afterwards.

What did he say?

thank you so much. Just, he was always cordial. He never, but he never did an interview with us again. I'll tell you that. That's the other thing is not the two of you together. Right. I mean, he did one with me, but he didn't, he wouldn't come to code again. And that was, he had been twice or two or three times at least. And so, um, it was, uh, it was unfortunate. Uh, I,

I know I get a lot of attention for that, but I don't feel great about that interview because I feel bad when anyone is in distress like that. And he was in physical distress. Yeah, especially not when you're interviewing someone. You want someone to be comfortable so they can tell you. They can talk to you. He was so embarrassed, too. He was so embarrassed. And he shouldn't have been at all, but he was. And I could see why. By the time you did that interview, Mark had a big company. It wasn't this small startup.

In 2008, he hired Sheryl Sandberg away from Google. I think you broke that story. I did break that story. Was hiring Sheryl, she was seen as an adult in the room. Yeah, I hate that idea, but whatever. Was hiring Sheryl a turning point for Facebook? Did it show that he wanted to kind of open up decision making and want adults in the room?

Well, he wanted them to decide on things he wasn't interested in, which is the thing that made money, right? And that's the similar thing that happened at Google with Eric Schmidt. And Cheryl was an experienced ad executive, and that was critically important. At Google, she was running one of their big ad systems. And so she needed that. The other thing is he had been through a series of COOs, including Bowen Van Otta and many others, that just didn't work. And they kept getting fired. It looked like chaos. And he was not capable of handling that.

part of it, especially the smoother part. Um, cause he just, you know, he just wasn't, he just, he's an awkward personality at the time. He's much better now. Um, and so, uh, he brought her in, it was a smart and they got along really well.

And she really did grow Facebook's ad business. She did. It was crazy what she did there. And they got along very well. They had almost, I would say, an older sister, younger brother kind of thing in a lot of weird ways. I wouldn't, you know, they became personally close, especially after Cheryl's husband, who was a very good friend of mine, died. Dave Goldberg. Dave Goldberg. And so she was very good. They got along, you know, and she took off his plate the stuff he hated. Yeah.

and sort of was the smooth operator kind of personality. I wouldn't say an adult because I think that's the problem. I hate this idea of these people aren't adults. They're total adults. And so I hate that they're like, oh, the boys now have a mom, like a Wendy and the lost boys. I can't stand that. Oh, God.

But I think they take advantage of that. Oh, they stole all your stuff? Oh, they're just boys, you know. That was irritating to me. Did she have sway with him? Because at the time he also had these outside advisors. Peter Thiel was kind of the first money in, first big money in. Yeah, Mark Andreessen. Bill Gates was close to him. Microsoft put in a big stake in 2007. So...

Did Cheryl have kind of equal clout to him? Yes. Versus these advisors? Oh, for a long time. A hundred percent. Yeah. She was, I think, his principal advisor, I would say. You know, he always, you know, had these other people like Peter Mark Andreessen, Bill Gates, you know, who influenced him. Lots of people. Yeah. But I think she and he were a real unit for a very long time. They did a lot of stuff together. He put her up. That was one of the things. He wasn't like a lot of men. He wasn't...

he didn't have a problem putting a strong woman in charge kind of thing. Yeah, and putting her in front of people. Compare him to Elon, because you've talked about how Elon surrounded himself with people kind of looking him up and down. And Elon seems to be... He didn't. He didn't. Like, did he allow other people to disagree with him at this time? It was different because he had people around him that agreed with him. That's all. And that was the problem. They all have this problem, as I say. But I think he didn't

He didn't like dissent. He eventually didn't like dissent. No dictator does, Cara. But they all agreed with him. I remember Cheryl one time said to me, like, oh, we've all been together 10 years and we get along so well. And I was like, is that a good thing? Like, I never think it's a good thing for companies not to have dissent internally. And so everybody's...

fortunes are linked to, um, to getting along and especially pleasing him. And even if he doesn't mean to do it, and I don't think he, unlike Elon, I think Elon needs attention almost constantly. You can see it even when he was walking out of a trial the other day, how'd I do? Like, Oh my God, that is so pathetic. Like from the reporters hanging outside. Um, Mark doesn't need that kind of, uh, you know, he's got a very loving family. He's got, um,

You know, but you're around people who you're all in agreement. And so where's the push when things are problematic? No one's going to say, oh, the privacy thing, maybe we should do something about it. And I think if you're an adult, you want that. We'll be back in a minute. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

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In 2012, Facebook went public. You covered that for All Things D. And you're pretty complimentary about Mark then. You were predicting an overhyped valuation. You noted he wasn't like blabby like Groupon or others were. And you talked about how he had been patient in growing his business. He did. About how he was insistent about conducting the IPO with deliberation and care. Were you hopeful or hopeless about Mark and Facebook then? I

first thought that first valuation for Microsoft was insane, but you know, that was crazy. It was the 15 billion for some reason, it sticks in my head, but those were crazy numbers at the time and they weren't, you know, now it's like a nothing burger, but once you could see him building it slowly, he was quite a good operator and not every founder is a good operator. Bill Gates was the comparison I made with him. Um,

a nicer Bill Gates, essentially. Bill Gates was not a very nice person when he was CEO. He was just very careful and he wasn't showy like the others. And a million of them were more showy and they didn't do as well as he did. And he picked Cheryl and he picked, the executives were really competent. You could feel the competence off of them. And I thought he built a nice team. I just didn't think he had built a team with enough people to push back on him. And then he started to shed those people, including me, including me. Including you, we'll get to that.

Shortly after the IPO, Facebook really swells. They passed a billion monthly active users in 2012. They go on a buying spree. They already had Instagram, but they eat up Oculus and WhatsApp. They try to buy Snap. And things seem to be going swimmingly for the most part until the 2016 elections. We're going to get to Cambridge Analytica revelations, which come later, but

First, talk about 2016 itself, because right after the election, Facebook has called out for misinformation. And Mark kind of shrugged it off. He did. He said, I think the idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea. And then BuzzFeed just followed up, I think, less than a week later when they had their big investigative team.

showing that false news stories actually outperformed real news stories. Yeah, it was in real time because when he said, he said nothing, he was on stage with David Kirkpatrick, I remember that. And I think I emailed or texted him and Cheryl and I said, nothing? Where are you coming up with that number? Don't say nothing if you don't know. And I had a lot of discussions, especially with Cheryl about this.

Because he kept walking it back. I'm like, if you don't know, stop talking because I think you don't know. And again, it showed that they weren't managing the business. They were sloppy managers of the business.

And, you know, and also it got sucked up into a media cycle because I think some of it was overblown, no question. Some of the reporting on Cambridge Analytica, but directionally, 100% correct. In the next two years, we kind of have a couple of big revelations. In 2017, we learned about the foreign interference in the presidential election, right? The huge volume of Russian interference on Facebook and other platforms. And then in early 2018, there's this explosive expose on Cambridge Analytica. So we learned that this British consulting firm, this political consulting firm,

bought personal data that had been harvested from tens of millions of Facebook users and used it to micro-target ads for Trump as well as for campaigns like Brexit. How did you think Mark handled that?

Because it had been built on a kind of bad stack. Well, he handled it like an engineer, right? Look, it wasn't as big as everybody said, but it was also not as little as he tried to make it, right? The roots were farther back when he allowed all kinds of developers, third-party developers on the platform. That was always, I always had an issue. He did it at one of his F whatever aid or whatever they called them.

He had these meetings with developers and I used to think some of these developers are kind of sketchy. Why are they getting all this information? And he cut that off at some point, but it was always a real problem and he was never caring about it. Right. And so you'd be like, well, who are you giving information to? How are you managing the information? And I think that's what was really at the heart of this. Yeah.

You know, he definitely tried to get off the developers, but the instinct was to give away information to make money. It was important for them to make the platform bigger, to have game players, whatever. Remember they had everybody on there. They had a big open, that was the whole thing, open graph in 2010. It's always like, wow, you've left all the doors open to this place with no keys. Well, they tried to clean it up in 2014, but they didn't do it retroactively. Well, that was in their self-interest.

Yes, but that was in their self-interest because they wanted to own it all. In March of 2018, he goes on a kind of apology tour for Cambridge Analytica, which is very different than the listening tour he went to in 2017 where people thought he was going to run for president. That was funny. But you got an interview with him late, but you got it. Yeah, I did. It's only 20 minutes. It's on the phone on the way to him going to an employee Q&A. That's correct. And we don't have the audio, but at

The transcript really struck me because you start the interview abruptly and you say, as you know from us emailing, I'm very interested in tough, substantial discussions and questions about this. So that's why I've been so adamant. Let's just get started.

I'm interpreting how you'd read it. Adamant. It was a word for pissed because what they did is they went around real reporters and gave them to much easier reporters. I don't know how else to say it, but they did that a lot. They started to do this a lot. They didn't want to answer tough questions. And so they gave all these kiss-ass interviews, you know, and I was furious because we were really doing a good job covering it. I thought we were very responsible for

on the cambridge analytical stuff i don't think we went off you know i didn't accuse him of being satan or things like that and so i called i think it was rachel whetstone i was like what the what the living are you doing you're not giving us an interview and we were at one of the leading news sources here and so i was pissed and so i emailed him i'm like we want to do substantive thing and you want to do light and this is important and so i bull i kind of bullied him into doing it but

But he should have. He was a good interview, by the way. It was a good interview. It was the best interview of all those interviews, too, because I pushed him. In just 20 minutes with you and Kurt Wagner. And he kind of gave you the same, we're a small company and I'm just too idealistic defense that we kind of get. You were not buying the Kool-Aid. No, I was not. A couple months later, after Mark goes for those awkward congressional testimonies in which he's either kind of grilled by the Senate or bear hugged by geriatric members of the House whose grandkids love Facebook. Yeah.

You sit with him for over an hour. This is July of 2018. I'm surprised he came back. How did you negotiate that interview? Again, it was Rachel Whetstone, who's now at Netflix, who probably regrets that one. You know, I think she was smart. She wanted to get him out there. I think she had a lot of regard for him. And Mark is a lot smart. You know, he has trouble with me and some reporters. And so she wanted to show that he could. And he won. I think he did.

And we did this interview out at Facebook headquarters, and it did not go well for him. Did not go well for him. We'll get to the part that really didn't go well. But first you asked him about Cambridge Analytica, Russian interference, and he said something that stood out to me. Let's play a clip. In retrospect, yes.

I do think it's fair to say that we were overly idealistic and focused on more of the good parts of what connecting people and giving people a voice can bring. And I think now we understand that given where we are, both the centrality of Facebook, but also frankly, we're a profitable enough company to have 20,000 people go work on reviewing content. So I think that that means that we have a responsibility to go do that.

Oh. So idealistic. I was too idealistic. We've made like a toxic waste dump. Maybe we should clean it up. And he had a lot of money at this point. Of course he did. He should have done it from the beginning. This is something I've been in a constant fight with Facebook about, whether it was Facebook Live. Like, why don't you put...

Tools in it from the beginning, safety tools. Safety was never their first interest ever. It's not idealistic. That's what drove me crazy. Yeah, that's just a cloak, right? I think so. I think it was just ridiculous. It happened too many times from way back in beacon days. It happened so much that at some point, like, are you stupid or are you doing this on purpose? So that's the thing. You keep pushing him on, like, how did you not foresee? Like, you build things. Consequences was my themes. Yes. Yes.

And yet he kind of kept saying. What, me? We were just too holistic. We're just a small company, right? Meanwhile, he's been meeting with world leaders for years now. He's a very famous rich person. People a year before thought he was going to run for president. That's right. When he went on his weird tour. Yeah. Yeah, his weird tour. He was shooting Buffalo, if you remember. He was driving around in a car with Mayor Pete. Yeah. The Buffalo. I'll never forget that he gave the show. Oh, yeah.

And he went to see these families who were like, I'd vote for Mark. Yeah. It was the adventure of Mark Zuckerberg. But the 2018 interview did not go well for him. And let's talk about why it didn't go well. The one comment he made that got to headlines, this is you're asking him about Sandy Hook. I'm trying to talk about Alex Jones. Right. And he brings up something completely unexpected. Agreed. Let's play a clip. Sandy Hook didn't happen is not a debate.

It is false. You can't just take that down. I agree that it is false. And I also think that going to someone who is a victim of Sandy Hook and telling them, hey, no, you're a liar, that is harassment and we actually will take that down. But overall, let's take this a little closer to home. So I'm Jewish and there's a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened. I find that deeply offensive. But

At the end of the day, I don't believe that our platform should take that down because I think that there are things that different people get wrong. I don't think that they're intentionally getting it wrong. In the case of a Holocaust denier, they might be, but go ahead. It's hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent. But I just think for as abhorrent as some of those examples are, I think the reality is also that

I get things wrong when I speak publicly. I'm sure you do. I'm sure a lot of leaders and public figures who we respect do too. And I just don't think that it is the right thing to say we are going to take someone off the platform if they get things wrong, even multiple times. Oh, gosh. Oof.

Was that bad? It is bad now. Yeah, it's bad now. I listen to it. I'm like, oh, good God, Mark. After the interview, he clarified the comments. He said he finds Holocaust denial deeply offensive and, quote, he didn't intend to defend the intent of people who deny that. I think he said both those things. But what were you thinking as he said that? Well, it was an interesting moment as a reporter because I usually was like, what the fuck?

My answer would have, I said, but go ahead. Do you see how I said that? Because I couldn't believe he was going to Holocaust. That's your favorite thing to say, by the way, but go ahead. But go ahead. In that case, I was, I couldn't believe he said it. I couldn't believe, first of all, I couldn't believe he was going to the Holocaust because I thought, oh, no, no, no. And don't do the, I'm Jewish because, and I, so therefore, that was, he was trying to say, me of all people should be more, I think we all should be offended by the Holocaust, but

Fine. Great. Okay. But then he sort of was like essentially saying, well, I don't think they intentionally get it wrong. And that was like, what? So here he is letting these people game him over and over and over again and pretending they just are getting it wrong. They're not getting it wrong. They're purposely and viciously and, and,

They're stone cold anti-Semites and they have no business on this platform. They're trying to sow harm. Yes, exactly. Just so they could say their piece. Well, we know they hate Jewish people. Thank you. That's been very clear for many centuries. I just was sort of like, and I looked at Eric. Eric Johnson, your former producer.

Yes, Eric Johnson. And I looked at him and he looked at me and for some reason they didn't understand what he had just said. And we were like, let's get it up before they figure out what they just said. Because I couldn't believe he said it, but it was such an insight that he really, he actually believed it. I was so, I wasn't shocked, but I was, I was like, oh no, here's the person running this site. And they really think people just get it wrong and not that they're bad players or anything else. It was a real moment. That was a real moment in an interview. Yeah.

So that's why I was quiet, because I wanted you to understand his point of view. And there was nowhere for him to hide because I wasn't haranguing him. I wasn't peppering him. I just let him say it. And it was so clear what he said. And, you know, I'll have to clarify it. He didn't need to clarify it. That's what he thought. And I wanted people to see it.

just the way it was. And he didn't break a sweat. Didn't break a sweat. He said what he meant. Yeah. It took two years for Facebook to ban Holocaust denial posts after that conversation, more than two years, like until October 2020. Alex Stamos, who was the former chief security officer at Facebook, told you in an interview on our old show that the attention from your conversation with Mark probably delayed him in reversing the decision, that he dug in his heels. Do you think that's true? And what does that

say about Mark? He doesn't want to be he doesn't have other people telling me he's wrong. He doesn't have the foresight to say, oh, my God, what did I do with again? He doesn't think he's powerful. It's powerful people who pretend they're not powerful, like super powerful people with implications of what they do. And somehow it was my fault what he thought. I'm sure that's what happened. And then, of course, he changes mine two years later, all the damage that it did. And he came to the same place that I told him he was going to be at. I felt like his parent at that point, like

what the hell are you thinking? That means that Sheryl Sandberg was your oldest child. No, she wasn't. If we're going to continue the analogy. How did that interview change your relationship with Mark, with the company? Because, you know,

I've been we've been working together, you and I, Cara, for three years now, I think almost. And we ain't getting any Mark Zuckerberg interviews. We're not getting any Mark Zuckerberg. Never again. Or any other executives. I mean, I think they maybe maybe Nick one day will come. Never again. He's used to the British press. But I don't know. How did the interview change that relationship?

Never getting an interview again. Never, never anywhere. It was my fault that he said what he thought. You know what I mean? Like I somehow used my magical powers of interview to get it out of him. I didn't. He told the truth. And that was a problem. That was a problem for them. And so, you know, I then got very, very angry about what was happening because they just wouldn't listen. I started to be much more critical around Trump. I had started...

I was I had already been critical about when they got went and sucked up Trump after he won. And I they thought I was hostile to the company when in fact, if you look back at my stuff, it's not hostile. If you I'm just like, this is going to end badly, may I just say. And I even I did predict what Trump was going to do around January 6th. I said he's going to lie about the election. And they just I remember writing a comment. I got it. I got put.

How dare you say this? I was like, oh, all right, fine. What is Mark's Achilles heel as an interviewee? Normally, I don't want to tip off potential guests to their vulnerabilities. I'm never going to interview him again. We have so little chance. Tell all, Kara. What does he do? I think now, I think he still is the same kid I met back then. That's the thing, is he's not any smarter. He's gotten more training, but it's very easy to go past his talking points. He's not very good at talking points.

And I think he wants to, you know, it sounds like dumb. You remember that scene in A Few Good Men? Yeah. I think he wants to say it, like at the last thing. Yeah. He wants to say he did the code red. Right. And that's what it is. He really wants to say it. So it's hubris.

No, I think he's like, I have something to say. He's gotten a lot of shit, let me just say. He's gotten probably more shit than any executive and he's become the villain in a way that he doesn't deserve in many ways. But he's got, I think he really...

I honestly think he wants to say it. And so I provide a situation where he gets to say it. And he, he, sometimes he wants in Mark's case, I don't think that's the case. Some of these people try to see if they can beat me, which is ridiculous. I mean, I won already if that's the, if that's what they're doing. And, and so I don't think that's it. It's just, he's, he's,

He's constitutionally unable not to say what he thinks. And so that's what happens in interviews with me. And he gets nervous. And so that's another thing. And he doesn't, now he's a, you know, he's a titan of industry. He doesn't want to look like he's weak in any way. We'll be back in a minute. The other day you talked to me about a time where Mark used to listen. You said, you said that was back when Mark used to listen. What did you mean by that?

Oh, he'd call me up at night. You know, he would write these long, long essays about community. He did one that was like 26 pages long. And I think the first thing he does, and he wanted to know what I thought, which was interesting. And he... So he's inviting critique and so on. Oh, yeah. No, he wanted to engage. He found other people to engage with that weren't quite so critical. And the first thing I said is, I really think you need an editor. You know, this is just ridiculous. It was so long and not

badly written. It just needed an editor. Like it wasn't clear. And, and he's like, oh, everyone else likes it. I'm like, yeah, of course they do, Mark. Like, but it's too long and it's not clear. And, and he also had a lot of stuff about this community and these lofty ideas that were just not true. Um, and, and so we talked a lot, we talked a lot about that idea and, uh, you know, we talked about a lot of things for a long time. And I just think he just

I probably was too critical for him. And I thought that helped him, but you know, I didn't, I didn't want to be his friend. I'm not his friend. And he thought, asked me what I thought. And I told him, I think, I think you have a way too powerful platform here. And I think you need to,

Understand your responsibility to it and the people that you serve. Mark gave a commencement speech back in his heyday of 2017 at Harvard, that peak year when he was going on the political tour with the cattle. When he was meeting all the cows. All the cows, yeah. And here's what he said in the commencement speech. Be prepared to be misunderstood. Anyone working on a big vision is going to get called crazy, even if you end up right.

Anyone taking on a complex problem is going to get blamed for not fully understanding it, even though it's impossible to know everything up front. Anyone taking initiative will always get criticized for moving too fast because there's always someone who wants to slow you down. In our society, we often don't take on big things because we're so afraid of making mistakes that we ignore all the things wrong today if we do nothing. The reality is, anything we do today...

is going to have some issues in the future. But that can't stop us from getting started.

Oh, there's so much wrong in that statement. I can't even tell you. You know, everyone's wrong but me. I'm an aggrieved citizen. It is so, that is absolutely the distillation of the attitude of people in Silicon Valley is we were, you know, if you get in our way, girls or, you know, mean ladies like Kara. Anyone that disagrees. You don't understand. Anyone that disagrees. And by the way, let me just tell you, guess who disagreed with Mark? People who he bought companies from and who do

not like him, I would say. Who left him. Brian Acton from WhatsApp. Instagram, Systrom and Mike Krieger. You know, I just am like, is everybody really

wrong? Is everybody who says just a second wrong? Roger McNamee was another one. His big advisor. Yes. Chris Hughes spoke out about him. Yes, exactly. And so it's like I'm listening to Peter Thiel and Mark, I mean, Unholy Alliance of Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen. And it's really disappointing. They made him. Because by the way, Mark's a better person than either of those two every day of the week and twice on Sunday. That's the problem.

a better person, a better citizen of the United States and the world. And it's sad that this is the influence. This is what happens to someone like him because he's actually, again, a good guy. I'm going to say it over and over again. Do you think he's misunderstood? No. Or do you think he misunderstands

I think he's totally understood. I think he's totally understood. And he just doesn't like it. And that's my that's the issue. When you joined The Times in 2018, you started you you wrote a lot about him before, but you were an opinion writer. It's why I joined The Times. And you wrote a lot about him. I'm going to ask you to read some of these headlines. So let me just say the very first one was the most critical one, which was which was the expensive education of Mark Zuckerberg.

That was the most direct I was trying to do. Fall 2018. If I had stopped doing Times columns for that, it would have been good. Because that's what I wanted to say. That they had amplified and weaponized information. And this guy is at the center of it. The expense of education was not that it cost him a lot. It cost us a lot. Society a lot. Same thing with the Holocaust. That's what I was...

talking about so i later wrote a wise man leaves facebook about kevin sistrum lean out mark zuckerberg let me fix that op-ed you wrote which was a ridiculous piece about the first amendment i think uh i wrote about facebook's biblically bad week i wrote clean up your act facebook or we're leaving

I wrote Zuckerberg never fails to disappoint. I wrote the terrible cost of Mark Zuckerberg's naivete. And I wrote the endless Facebook apology. It kind of comes full circle. That's just, by the way, a small sampling, Cara. Just some of my favorites. So the hits.

Lean Out is probably my favorite. That was kind of about how Cheryl got thrown under the bus. Yeah, yeah. She has plenty of responsibility. Let me just say, people always say I'm too nice to her. She has plenty of responsibility. But nonetheless, guess who can't be fired? Yeah, the CEO bitch. That's right. That guy. That guy. So you've been critical. But what has Mark done well in all this time?

I think it's a, I think it's well built. The service is well built. I think the idea of it is great. I think he handles layoffs beautifully. Like recently he showed a lot of class. Um, I think in part he's right about Apple's power, but the way he does it, I don't agree with, he shouldn't have put himself in that situation to start with. Um, I,

I think he means well, like you're not going to see him tweeting all sorts of nonsense that Elon does. And Jeff Bezos sometimes too, right? Every now and you're like, Oh, shut up. You know, like stop talking. You don't see that. Um,

I think he actually does care for the product. He's a real product guy. And I don't know if he's the most creative person in the world. When you look at the metaverse stuff, you're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, sir. He doesn't mind being wrong, but he never says he's wrong. That's the thing. He won't shift. He's slow to shift. Yes, he's slow to shift. I don't think he'll ever say it, but...

I think he does see threats. I like that about him. He's competitive about TikTok, whoever's coming. It tends to make him want to copy things. I used to call them shoplifters at Facebook. So that I don't love, but you know, there's a lot of non-creative. Bill Gates was not very creative. The question was what you thought he did well, Cara, but

All those things. Someone once described, someone who knows Peter Thiel well, described Peter Thiel to be as being driven by two principles, one, loyalty and two, contrarianism. What do you think Mark Zuckerberg's guiding principles are, if you had to analyze from your reporting?

I think he doesn't mind there being collateral damage to the things he does. Think of Augustus Caesar. You know, like, well, we got democracy. A lot of people died. Like that kind of thing. Oh, yeah. So big picture oriented would be that. Big picture oriented. I think big picture, he's right. Small picture, some of the execution's been bad. Yeah.

And he tries things, you know, he tried that phone. Yeah, the smartphone that came in wet. It's called Home. HTC. He did Libra, the cryptocurrency. So you've seen him experience a lot of failure in those products. How does Mark deal with that failure from your observation? He moves on. I just don't think they're very creative at Facebook. That's all. They got the news feed right and that was a while ago and

But when you look at a lot of their innovations, they're copied from other people. And so, you know, but he moves on. That's great. He's trying things. The metaverse is the first time he's really gone.

out on a limb by himself on a thing that they're in the front of. What do you think's driving that? Is this like a displacement activity for him where he just wants to get out of this kind of fucked up business? Yeah, I think he wants to get out of the face. That's why he's not making this decision. Why did he change the name? Yeah. He put on a mustache. It's a new mustache. It's still Mark's.

That all came after the whistleblower revelations in fall of 2021, where Frances Haugen released a treasure trove of documents to the journal, etc. And she came and talked to us about it on the last show. She didn't work directly with Mark, but she observed him in the company. And she describes the obsession with flatness at Facebook.

Here she is describing the offices. It's basically an aircraft hangar. But they do that because like no one is above anyone else. No one is below, right? It's flat. And when you refuse to acknowledge the power exists, you actually end up reinforcing like the fact that power isn't flat in the world. And so I think it's one of these things where they haven't been able to hit that point of maturation where they say, actually, no, like we have a lot of responsibility here.

Yeah, she's right. That's what I've been saying. What do you think it will take for Mark to acknowledge his own power? He won't. Everybody's, you know, everyone's the same. And I'm like, and then they get on the private plane and fly off, right? And they get to make the decisions. It's sort of so... They own 90% of the class we share. Exactly. I don't think they will. I don't think they will. Who do you think he would, who do you think he likes less, you or Frances Haugen?

I don't know. Or who do you think irks him more? Well, I think he was irked by the coverage of it and probably got too much coverage probably. I like Francis, but you know, I think, I don't think he dislikes me in his heart. I don't think he's, he's not like that. He's not like that. He just doesn't want to step in it again. Yeah. He probably thinks I'm just, I'm just hostile. I think that's the worst thing he would say about me. Probably. Maybe not. Maybe he's telling people that, that bitch. I,

I'm CEO bitch. That's the bitch bitch. That's the real bitch. That fucking bitch. But I've been right. So I'm your best friend, Mark. That's what I say to Mark. I'm your best fucking friend. That's what I say to you when I disagree with you. I'm your best friend. I'm your best friend. What would redemption look like for Mark Zuckerberg?

I assume it's not in the metaverse. I don't know. This metaverse thing, boy, is he going for it with the money? And it's not good. It's not going to end well. Can he redeem himself? Yeah. Bill Gates. Look at Bill Gates. He was the villain, Darth Vader of that era. Except this Epstein situation, which is, of course, a problem. Mark, avoid an Epstein-like situation. You'll be fine. He's very happily married and seems very loyal to his wife, Priscilla. Yeah, he is. He is 100%.

And his wife is lovely. I understand he's a terrific father.

So yes, he can give away money and do stuff and we will forget, we will buy guns. And by the way, people will do worse. Elon's already sort of like, oh, let's get Mark back because he's at least we could, he's not a jackass like Elon Musk. So yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah. He can redeem himself. Oh, how things have changed in the last couple of years where you're like, Mark Zuckerberg is great compared to Elon. That was not the case

two years ago for you. But he is. Mostly because he's lost power and the company's not as relevant and he's got competition and he's also not a jerk. And Bill Gates is a good model for him. In 2018, you asked him who he looked up to as mentors are and his first person was

Bill Gates was similarly obtuse to the challenges that Microsoft posed to the world. 100%. And yet after antitrust was able to hand over the reins a little bit. Yeah, he did. And I think he's happier. So do you think that's what it will take for Mark handing over the reins? Yeah, I think he wants to. I have this feeling he's like, I'm trapped here. You know what I mean? Maybe he's super interested in metaverse. I don't know how you could be.

But it's just not. You play a lot of video games. You might be interested in that. I guess. I just don't. It's not where we're going. We're going lots of other places, but not there right now. I think he probably wants to get out. It must be such a prison. It sounds crazy, but I feel like where does he, he can't go anywhere. He's so famous. So much security. Like one of the things that he, that I think is unfair and I never do is remember when he was doing his, his weird kiteboarding. I think I

nice that he does stuff like I think he nice that he does his punching stuff he does all kinds of yeah whatever I think that's great but when people make fun of his looks it drives me crazy you know his haircut or when he was wearing the correct kind of sunscreen I think that was really irritating I don't think that's fair I think that's not nice last question yeah what would be your first question

in an interview with Mark Zuckerberg? That's a good question. What's new? I'd start in the metaverse. I'd start talking about the future. I don't want to relitigate all the stuff that I was 100% right about, but I would start to talk about what his vision is now and why he's still doing it. Why are you doing this? I don't understand personally why you're doing this. So I'd like you to explain to me why you're doing it.

I hope you get to ask that question. I will not. We will try adamantly. Never. Be adamant. Never, unless we're caught in an elevator together by accident and it breaks down. You know, us producers could arrange that. No. Not with a security team. All right. Miss you, Mark. Big hug. You think he'll listen? I don't know. Probably not. Someone will. Someone over at Bend the Park will. Andy Stone. Hey, Andy. Hi, Andy. Make it so.

Don't you have any juice, Andy? Nick, don't you people have juice? I guess not. Turns out you don't. I'm on the show. All right. Thanks, Carrie. Do you want to read us out or shall I? I shall do it. Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Blakeney Schick, Kristen Castro-Rossell, Rafaela Seward, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Haley Milliken and Aaliyah Jackson. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics.

If you're already following the show, you get a front row seat at the cage match. If not, you get a front row seat at the cage match. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.