All language subtitles for Zuckerberg.King.Of.The.Metaverse.2024.1080p.WEB.H264-CBFM

Gosh. OK...

I'm glad this isn't live. (CHUCKLES)

I'm, like, so not on today.

INTERVIEWER: Can you just say
your name and pronounce it

so nobody messes it up?
Sure, It's Mark Zuckerberg.

How would you like to be identified?
Your title?

Founder and CEO?

I was a sophomore at Harvard
and we needed to- I guess...

I've never really been asked
how the company was started before.

(LAUGHTER)

How does how did Facebook start?

Um, now I'm all embarrassed.

I was there,
right from the beginning,

and Mark always carried himself
in a way that showed confidence.

You launched Facebook
in your dorm room?Yeah.

Have a 10 million dollar cheque
in your pocket

probably does that to you.

Facebook is like the world's
largest media company in history.

And one person, Mark Zuckerberg,
is its dictator.

When I first joined, the founders
is on the cover of Time magazine,

movies were being made,
and now you are being told

you destroyed democracy.

And then his worst nightmare,
the threat of regulation.

Congress says they are going to
call for his head,

they summon him, then he appears.

REPORTER: Today could be
the biggest day

of Mark Zuckerberg's entire career.

The Facebook CEO is set to testify
before Congress this afternoon

for the very first time.

REPORTER: The lines out of the door,
Julia, I mean, it's insane.

Its definitely very crowded,
it's our understanding

that he arrived through the garage,
then an elevator upstairs

and he avoided all of the cameras
that where trying to stake him out.

REPORTER: The stakes couldn't be
any higher for Zuckerberg

after revelations
that the personal data

of as many as 87 million users
was improperly obtained.

REPORTER: Facebook really is
facing a crisis of trust.

Mark, why hasn't anyone been
fired over this scandal?

Mr Zuckerberg, is there
any regulation?

Are you putting privacy
over profits now?

SENATOR: Mr Zuckerberg...
are you too powerful?

Do you think you're too powerful?

Today's hearing is extraordinary,

but then Facebook
is pretty extraordinary.

We're here because of what you,
Mr Zuckerberg,

have described as a breach of trust.

As you said, "This is not likely
to be an isolated incident.

We are listening,
America is listening,

and quite possibly,
the world is listening too.

My top priority has always been
our social mission

of connecting people, building
community

and bringing the world
closer together.

We have faced a number of important
issues around privacy,

safety and democracy,

before I talk about the steps we are
taking to address them,

I want to talk about how we got here.

Facebook is an idealistic and
optimistic company,

for most of our existence...
(SPEECH FADES, STOPS)

You know, I was a tech journalist
for Fortune magazine.

A PR person called me and said,

"You know, Mark Zuckerberg is
coming to New York.

Would you like to meet him?

My first instinct was, "Oh, this is
ridiculous. I'm wasting my time.

This is a baby." He was so young.

I never had interviewed
someone that young before.

But as soon as he started talking,
I settled down fast

because he spoke with some of
the most visionary language

that I had experienced
talking to anyone ever.

I was sitting there talking to him
and said, "You know, I was thinking,

maybe I should write a book
about your company."

And he says, "Go for it."

And I was like, "Holy shit, he
actually wants to cooperate."

And that was too good of an
opportunity to pass up.

He was one of four children.

The only boy and his mother
called him the Prince.

He was anointed even
within the family, in other words,

and that shaped his worldview
tremendously.

He went to one of the most
elite prep schools and thrived

and triumphed there. And then,
of course, he got into Harvard.

You know, Harvard is an anointment.

You're feeling you have
unlimited possibilities.

He really wanted to be noticed.

He wanted to be the smartest kid on
campus. But Harvard is full of kids

who were always the smartest kids
in their school.

And so Mark Zuckerberg had to
find a way to get noticed.

And he did that.

Chair recognises the gentleman from
Missouri, Mr Long for 4 minutes.

Thank you, Mr Chairman.
One question I would like to ask is,

what was Facemash?
And is it still up and running?

No congressman, Facesmash was
a prank website that I launched

in college, in my dorm room.

It's on page one, November 4 2003.

"Hot or Not?
Website briefly judges looks."

Which is a good headline.

"Zuckerberg wrote a journal
published on the site itself,

he wrote 'I need something to occupy
my mind, I just need an idea.'"

It sort of spread across campus
that there were these rankings

of the hottest students on
campus on Facemash.

And everyone wanted to see the top
five hottest guys

and the top five hottest girls.
And it was a unifying campus event.

Everyone heard about it very
quickly all at once.

And it was all we were
talking about.

KIRKPATRICK: It was something he
just did for the fun, and then

it got a little out of hand because
people liked it so much.

It was sexist, it was juvenile.

It did get him in trouble.

I don't think he would have
probably been expelled,

but he was called before
the disciplinary authorities
at the school.

And that made him a celebrated
figure on campus.

By the time he launched Facebook, he
was already like a famous innovator.

So people wanted to know
what he was gonna do next.

So, one night in February of 2004,
I'm sitting in my dorm room,

and my roommate comes in,
and she shows me on the screen,

this very rudimentary template where
your uploading a photo of yourself

and sort of answering a few basic
biographical details

and it's called The Facebook.

REPORTER: What is
The Facebook exactly?

You sign on, you make a profile about
yourself by answering some questions,

entering some information
phone numbers, interests,

what books you like, movies, and most
importantly, who your friends are.

Then you can browse around

and just find some interesting
information about people.

It was definitely
romantically-charged.

If you decided you like someone

and you wanted to learn
more about them at the time,

you had very few options.

Relationship status, women would put

that they were married
to their best friends.

'It's complicated', I think
was also one that was popular.

I do remember some of the questions
that were on the Facebook template

included political views, everyone
put 'very liberal'.

Favourite quote, people would put
earnest quotes.

It was earnest.
It wasn't ironic at the time.

I just threw it together
one week in January.

This was in your dorm room?
Yeah.

You launched Facebook
in your dorm room?Yeah.

I was the 60th user. It must have
been only a couple of hours

after he made it go live,
but then very shortly after that,

everyone on campus was on it.

In one email exchange,
he was kind of joking.

"Wow, all these people are
submitting their stuff,

all these photos, they're so dumb,
they just give me their data.

They don't understand how
precious data is."

"Ha-ha, dumb fucks."

Mark understands
when he's very young,

that private data
on people can be used.

He doesn't know how,
when he's in his early twenties,

he has a certain voyeuristic
approach to the data.

"I want to collect data
for data sake,"

but initially it's just
it feels like power.

Data feels like power to him.

SENATOR: Thank you, Mr Chairman,
I want to follow up on the questions

around the terms of service.

Your terms of service are about
3,200 words with 30 links.

One of the links
is to your data policy,

which is about 2,700 words
with 22 links.

And I think the point
has been well made that

people really have no earthly idea
what they're signing up for

but I'm wondering if you can explain
to the billions of users,

in plain language,
what are they signing up for?

Silicon Valley was
the mecca of software

and innovation and technology.

Amazon-dot-com, this is Lance.

Money was being poured into
software companies

and internet companies and it was
seen as, sort of,

the promised land of capitalism.

This is definitely very cool.
I like it a lot.

Just three years ago I was sleeping
on the office floor

and now, obviously, I've got
a million dollar car

and quite a few creature comforts.

And Zuckerberg was very impressed
by that, that's for sure.

We had this feeling like,
OK, all these great companies

come from Silicon Valley. Wouldn't it
be cool to spend a summer out there?

Get that experience, but we expected
to go back to Harvard in the fall.

The thing that made it so that
we didn't

was that Harvard
has this great policy

that lets you take as much
time off as you want.

So in the summer of 2004,
he rented a house

and took a bunch of
his Harvard chums out there,

and they started programming
Facebook from Palo Alto.

CHAFKIN: You know, the Internet,
kind of by definition,

is sort of a lawless place,
particularly back then.

REPORTER: Today the US Court of
Appeals ruled that Napster

is infringing on copyrighted music,

in essence,
letting its users steal songs.

It's kind of, probably,
no coincidence

that this sort of wild forum
would start in California,

in the original Wild West.

At the time,
Silicon Valley companies

were pushing
the regulatory envelope.

They were doing things
that in various ways

seemed unacceptable and doing it
with almost no consequences.

Silicon Valley
and the ethos of Silicon Valley

couldn't have been more perfectly
suited for Mark Zuckerberg

if he had drawn it up himself.

Because here you have this idea
that there are disruptors of society

who are smarter than everyone else,

and they should be given money.

They should be given power because
they can create a technology

that will disrupt the whole world.

BALOUN: The life
of my profile pictures.

That's my mom. We're in Lake Cuomo.

I'm just amazed at how many photos
I have on Facebook

and how they're all...
relentlessly optimistic.

I think it's just a celebration
of my life actually.

This wouldn't be bad
on my gravestone. (CHUCKLES)

Because this is actually
what I'd like to be remembered as.

I'm Karel Baloun,

I was Mark Zuckerberg's first
senior engineer at Facebook.

I have a master's in Social Psych,

so just the idea of connecting
people was really tremendous.

I had been an engineer in Silicon
Valley for seven or eight years,

and all of that
was in corporations.

So I was ready for a start up.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

Alright, what's the safety word?

It was the office
above the Chinese restaurant

with the graffiti on the wall.

ALL: One, two, three,
four, five, six...

The office was very Spartan.

There were IKEA tables.

We assembled our own chairs
the first day.

ALL: ..eleven, twelve, thirteen.
Wow! (LAUGHTER)

The amount of energy and confidence
in that room was astounding.

You could see Mark coding in
the corner on the floor sometimes.

He would just-
Instead of sitting at the table,

he would just lie down on the floor
with his laptop, flip flops up.

And Mark Zuckerberg's handle
is 'Zuck'.

It was a term of endearment.

We were all that close.

The way that I can be unique is
by revelling

and being young
and just being a little crazy.

So, for example, there's this
feature called 'poking'

where you just go to someone's
profile and you can poke the person

and like, what does that do?
Nothing. It sends them a message.

It's like, "You've been poked",
you know? Like, who cares?

It's like, I thought about it when
I was drunk or something, you know?

And like people really like poking
each other for some reason.

I don't think anyone
can really explain.

Mark has a consistent vision that
is very clearly articulated

for everyone to understand.
He wants to connect people.

That was the supreme novel idea.

Was that we are engaging
on things together

and it's bringing people together.

I've been covering tech since 2015.

Somewhere within, almost every story

in Silicon Valley
that I've come across...

..Peter Thiel has been pretty
much inside, behind, around.

He's one of the key power brokers.

He's started a company
called PayPal with Elon Musk

and from there, built this empire.

The government is so-
is so fundamentally evil,

that to deny the evil nature
of the government

is equal to denying
the existence of the devil.

Kind of what makes Thiel
interesting and special

is that he's not just a money guy,
he's sort of an influence guy.

Technology is this incredible
alternative to politics

and the task in this world where
politics has become so broken

and so dysfunctional
is to find a way to escape from it.

Most of his beliefs boil down to an
idea that billionaires,

in particular tech billionaires,

should be afforded maximum freedom
to run the world.

The initial founding vision was
that we were going to use technology

to overturn the monetary system
of the world.

It's really easy to see
why he liked Mark Zuckerberg.

He had been sort of, you know,
a bad boy of campus.

He was kind of like pushing
the bounds of what was acceptable

and what was normal.

And that is the kind of thing
that Peter Thiel absolutely loves.

And you can kind of see why.

Because those kind of rule-breakers
are the ones who are likely

to, you know, find opportunities.

KIRKPATRICK: Peter Thiel was the
first really serious businessperson

to recognise the scale
of what this could become.

Which is why he said, "OK,
I'll invest half a million

for 10% of the company."

And the parting words that Thiel
left them with,

as they walked out of his office,
was, "Just don't fuck it up."

Today, The Facebook has nearly 5
million users across 1,500 campuses.

Joining me to talk about
the fast-growing company

is the founder and CEO,
Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me.

You received venture capital funding

and received about $13 million.

What was the pitch to VCs?

Oh, we didn't do any pitch.
No?

He looked very young...

but he carried himself in a way
that showed confidence.

You know, having a 10 million
dollar cheque in your pocket

probably does that to you.

THOMPSON: What I can say about
the early investors

is they're all
hardcore capitalists.

They're all big time Valley people.

They'd much rather have a one in
a hundred chance

of becoming a trillion-dollar company

than a guaranteed
$10 billion company.

So, they're going to want you to
take risks

and they want you
to be extreme in what you do.

Mark thought of himself as
a renegade leader of opposition

to the established order,

so he would sign his pages
of the service.

Sometimes you'd find the phrase,

'Founder, Master and Commander,
Enemy of the State.

SENATOR: Thank you, Mr Zuckerberg,
for being here.

I note up, until 2014,
the mantra or motto of Facebook

was "move fast and break things".

Is that correct?

I don't know when we changed it,
but the mantra is currently

"move fast with
stable infrastructure",

which is a much less sexy mantra.

Sounds much more boring.
But my question is,

during the time
it was Facebook's mantra,

do you think some of the...
misjudgements

were as a result of that
culture or that attitude?

CHAFKIN: Where Thiel
influenced Zuckerberg

was in this idea of
'move fast and break things'.

Growing like as big as you
can, as fast as you can,

that is the Peter Thiel approach.

Push the gas as hard as you can,

spend as much money as possible on
anything you can do to grow,

to ensure that you have
absolute network dominance.

Every day we would code and push
that immediately to the site.

Then it would hit the site and we
would see whether it worked or not.

And if there was a bug, we might
roll back what was on the site.

Or we might just push
a patch right over it.

And there was very little
safety or control.

FRENKEL: There's a video
of Mark Zuckerberg

where he goes back to Harvard
and he essentially tells students

that they should buck
the system the way he did.

I think it's more useful to, like,
make things happen

and then apologise later

than it is to make sure
that you dot all your I's now

and then, like
just not get stepped on.

He loved playing strategy games
from a young age

and winning in everything he did

has always been a high priority
for him. Dominating, succeeding.

He used to end every meeting at
the company by shouting,

"Domination!" That was like his,
sort of, catch phrase

that he ended meetings with.
And you know,

that reflects a lot about
his personality, his goals.

He wanted to dominate,
and he wanted to win.

FRENKEL: Mark Zuckerberg needs
to distinguish his company

from other social media
companies at the time.

Because even though he's incredibly
popular among college students,

he still has competition.

There's MySpace, there's Friendster.

And he very quickly
understands that...

by making decisions as
a company about what people see,

he can create
a revolutionary product.

What Mark did was really use
the first algorithmic device

that would rank what you saw.

It made decisions for you.

KIRKPATRICK: People competed
with each other

to have the most Facebook friends.

"You have 100 friends?
I have 200 friends."

Or 2,000, or whatever.

All of a sudden, they could see
everything about you

and you could see everything about
them in a newly automated fashion.

And many people didn't like that.

They viewed that as an invasion
of privacy and it was a crisis.

CHAFKIN: Over and over again
in the history of Facebook,

the company would kind of go to a
place that was, like, a little edgy.

They just sort of violated
everyone's privacy without asking.

Facebook's approach for most of
its history was to, you know,

shoot first and ask questions later.

BAROUN: He apologized publicly for
how he rolled it out

or for poorly communicating
about this new feature.

But the feature was going to be
there because it had real utility.

FRENKEL: He wanted you to spend
hours scrolling your news feed,

getting this constant sort of
stream of data about people you knew

and people you were interested in.

REPORTER: Students looking at
Facebook average 18 minutes a day,

and that fact has rocketed the
company's value

into the hundreds of millions
of dollars, maybe more.

KIRKPATRICK: The company was just
growing like crazy at that time.

I got a phone call from an
executive at Facebook

that I barely knew, and he said,

"My boss is facing a crisis

and he needs advice

from somebody who really
understands Silicon Valley.

Would you take a meeting
with Mark Zuckerberg?"

And so Mark Zuckerberg
came to my office

and he looked just
like Mark Zuckerberg. I mean,

the grey hoodie, the jeans.

And he goes, "Yahoo! has offered
a billion dollars to buy Facebook.

And everybody I know,
including my parents,

has told me to take the money."

So I looked at Mark and I said,

"Well, there's only one
that question matters.

What do you want?
Do you want to sell the company?"

BAROUN: He refused, famously,
to sell Facebook to Yahoo!

for a billion dollars
and everybody was against him.

It's a lot of money
for all of us, right?

None of us were
independently wealthy.

He was saying,
this is a valuable idea

and I can execute it
better than Yahoo!

That type of confidence
and fearlessness...

..when even technical obstacles
are daunting.

Well, it's courage.

If they'd sold to Yahoo!
at a billion,

they would all be quite rich, but
they were going to be really rich.

More and more press attention
from people even like myself,

was, you know, flattering them

and making them feel
the centre of the universe.

And they were like, "Yeah,
we are really the cool ones."

INTERVIEWER: Let's talk about
business. There are reports

that this company is still not
breaking even.

And what shocked me when I read
that was with 175 million customers,

how can any business not make money?

What's the explanation for that?

Zuckerberg was still living on
a mattress on the floor,

you know, hardly ever
even going home

because he was just working
around the clock.

He cared very little about
anything else

other than user growth
and user engagement.

Well after Facebook had been
going for...

three years or so,

the investors were
increasingly determined that

somebody had to figure out how to
make a lot of money out of this

tremendous cultural
and community success.

Oh, wow. That's awesome.
How are you?

REPORTER: Sheryl Sandberg is
an unlikely revolutionary.

At 43, she is one of the few women
at the top of corporate America.

Sheryl changed everything.

She was a practice business leader

who had, in many ways, built
the advertising business at Google.

Panama hats.

Let's say I was looking for Panama
hats today. Here I go.

Panama Hats Direct,
a very specific search,

looking for a very specific product.

And the advertiser
is able to find me

and I'm looking for that product.

There is a crucial, crucial moment
in the evolution of Facebook.

Sheryl Sandberg comes on board
and is given the mandate,

'figure out how this
thing can make money.'

We just literally had dinner
at my house

and Mark would say,
sometimes, you know,

"I'm so sorry, I can't
invite you over for dinner."

But at the time, he only had
like a one room apartment.

He never had any furniture,
make it a futon.

He thought that would be awkward,
which it would have been.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

Thank you all.

There are lots of choices that
she and they could have made.

And they made a choice to sell
targeted advertising

based on individual's data.

The thing about Facebook
that was so unique

was it had a whole lot of data
that you had voluntarily provided,

where you lived, how old you were,

whether you were in a relationship,
what your interests are.

These are invaluable
pieces of information

for people trying to sell ads.

BAROUN: People were
uploading photos,

people were posting status updates
to their feed.

But it was really about what's
going on in my mind right now.

The prompt is still the same.
What's on your mind?

But people are really using it
in real time

to say what was on their mind.

Sheryl Sandberg realised that
a system with that many users

was going to be a huge opportunity
for advertising.

And from the time she arrived,

they started making more money.

INTERVIEWER: Are you Facebook
friends with Mark?

Yes. Yeah, I have been since
the beginning.

He just posted he's going
to have another baby.

And so I liked the fact that
he's having another baby,

wished him a Happy New Year
at the beginning of this year.

And he liked back in my comment,
wishing him a happy New Year.

I found myself in the mid-2000's

working at a company called Cisco

and Facebook came
knocking on my door.

(PHONE RINGING) Good afternoon,
Facebook how may I help you?

When I arrived. Wow. It was chaotic.

I just found these really smart,

really high energy people
bouncing around.

In those, sort of, early 20-tens,

if you worked for Facebook,
everyone was fascinated by it.

You did feel like, in a sense,
an ambassador

for this amazing force that was
potentially gonna change the world.

Um... I'm sorry. I'm kind of nervous.

We have the President of
the United States here.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

My name is Barack Obama

and I'm the guy who got Mark to
wear a jacket and tie.

(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)

Thank you.

And, in fact, if you'd like,
Mark, we can take our jackets off.

That's good.

Part of what...
makes for a healthy democracy

is when you've got citizens who
are informed, who are engaged.

And what Facebook allows us to do

is make sure this isn't
just a one-way conversation.

Well, it was widely said
at the time of Obama's election

that one of the ways he won

was by so effectively campaigning
on Facebook.

Who is Barack Obama?

The answer is right there on
my Facebook page.

That was a deeply impressive
to Zuckerberg

and made him feel pretty puffed up.
I'd say, yeah.

"Hey, we helped get the president
elected." That was very heady.

Hi, this is Lady Gaga.

And I'm saying hello to all
of my little monsters on Facebook.

I love you guys so much.

CHAFKIN: You know, this clip,
Lady Gaga shows back then,

Facebook was unambiguously cool.

REPORTER: Here is what
Time magazine said in 2010

when it named Zuckerberg
'Person of the Year',

quote, "In less than seven years,
Zuckerberg wired together

a 12th of humanity into
a single network,

thereby creating a social entity
almost twice as large

as the United States,
worth more than $80 billion.

It has turned into something that
has changed the way human beings

relate to one another on
a species-wide scale.

Anybody. Literally anybody
with no technical skills

had the power of the mainstream
media outlet and in their hands.

REPORTER: Mark Zuckerberg says

Facebook's almost guaranteed to
reach the 1 billion user mark.

We were empowering people,

people who previously
have been disempowered

and that was a noble mission,
and we were all signed up for that.

And that's what got you
out of bed in the morning,

was putting the power of a major
communication platform

into the hands of
an ordinary person,

wherever they were
in the world, at no cost.

Back in 2010, we had some Arabic
speakers already in the team

who were looking at content
and they flagged the fact

they were seeing interesting stuff.

(INDISTINCT ARABIC SHOUTS)

In particular,
there was an Egyptian page

calling for a massive demonstration.

Did you plan a revolution?

Yeah, we did.

Here were all these people in
countries like Tunisia,

Syria and Egypt

who could create their own
alternative media

in opposition to a state that
control the media

to within an inch of its life
and allowed them no space.

They created the revolution, not us.

We weren't there on the barricades,

but we had given them a media tool.

First Tunisia, now Egypt.
What's next?

At Facebook.

Facebook? You're giving Facebook
a lot of credit for this.

Yeah, for sure.

I want to meet Mark Zuckerberg
one day and thank him, actually.

(ALL SINGING IN ARABIC)

An Arab Spring was the point
at which, I think,

a lot of the world
woke up to the fact

this wasn't a platform for kids.

It was actually influential
and potentially world-changing.

And Mark was feted.

I would go and see government
ministers in Europe

who previously had not been
particularly interested

who was suddenly going, "Oh,
you know, this Facebook thing,

actually I want to know about it.
It is interesting.

I want to meet Mark Zuckerberg."
Because now politicians

see the platform
as politically powerful.

And there was a glow for
a period of time after that.

REPORTER: Today, an astronomical
benchmark

as Facebook officially announces
it now has 1 billion users,

one seventh of the
world's population.

I joined a month
after the Arab Spring.

I knew that they had made me the
offer on Valentine's Day of 2011.

And so I posted, "I'm excited
that I'll be joining

the Facebook DC team very soon."

In all honesty, I'm having a lot of
feelings kind of flood back

of what that felt like on that first
day,

walking through the doors,
having no idea

what the next ten years were going
to have in store for me.

In 2011-ish, 2012,

Facebook moved to the old
Sun Microsystems campus.

Sun Microsystems was a very
prominent company in Silicon Valley

and ended up going under.

Mark was very worried
about being out-innovated.

You don't want to become Friendster.
You don't want to become MySpace.

You had to keep moving.
You had to keep doing stuff,

because if you didn't, someone
was going to run faster than you.

Every day when you left, seeing
that Sun Microsystems logo

was meant to be a reminder.

You could be this
big behemoth one day

and tomorrow you could be having a
rummage sale to sell your desks.

KIRKPATRICK: He did not want
competition

in the social media industry.

No business leader
likes competition.

He always saw Facebook
as an industry in itself.

FRENKEL: Mark has always been
a deeply competitive person.

He didn't just want to be famous.
He wanted to be historic.

CHAFKIN: Facebook is like the
largest media company in history,

and one person, Mark Zuckerberg,
is its dictator.

And that was set up early
on by Peter Thiel.

Thiel was instrumental in creating
a situation where Zuckerberg

had this kind of like,
controlling share in the company.

He set Facebook up

so that Zuckerberg could do
whatever he wants.

Peter Thiel really backed
the idea of the 'founder-genius'.

You founded this company.

You came up with the idea
of a social network.

You are the genius and you need
to be in control of this.

You need to be calling
all the shots.

To the degree that
we will structure your company

so nobody can hold you accountable.

That gave Zuckerberg essentially
complete control over this company,

which continues to this day.

Basically, Zuckerberg could do
whatever he wants.

Facebook is buying Instagram.

That's a popular
photo sharing service

for $1 billion in cash and stock.

Zuckerberg reportedly negotiated
the deal to acquire Instagram

for a billion dollars without
alerting the board

or consulting with the board.

Instagram was tiny, but it was
growing very, very rapidly.

It was obvious that it was cool

and the cool people
were already using it,

even though it only
had 30 million users.

It had every major, you know,

smart person in Silicon Valley
using it.

He already knew that he was
a little behind the curve

on adapting to the smartphone era

because Facebook had been
built for the PC era,

and Instagram was designed
for the mobile age.

He was very concerned that if
he didn't buy Instagram,

it would be a major competitive
problem for him.

Everyone was convinced
that Zuckerberg

spending a billion dollars
for Instagram was a sign that,

you know, the world had gone crazy
because, like, how could a company

with few dozen employees possibly
be worth a billion dollars?

What is that?I know!
(OVERLAPPING CHATTER)

It's got 30 million users. Just like
a social media platform for photos?

It's retro. Retro-
Can it make me look younger?

ANNOUNCER: Give a hand to the
Instagram founders!

The idea is to sell
your company to a company

that's gonna be a rocket ship.
And I remember Mike and I talking

about, like, do we believe that by
being part of this larger company,

Instagram can reach an even higher
potential even more quickly?

And that was the bet that we made.

Facebook makes money by collecting
data on its users and selling ads.

Instagram was important because you
were that much more likely

to share photos
which showed things in them

of what you might be interested in.

And if you're trying to sell
somebody a product, be it a car

or T-shirt, it could show where
you were in terms of income bracket.

And so a lot of these things
would have been really lucrative

for Mark Zuckerberg.

REPORTER: There's a clue to the
potential financial attraction

the moment you download Instagram.

30 million worldwide
now have the app.

Every one of them has handed over
their personal details,

creating a bulging database,

now the property of Facebook.

CHAFKIN: The same with WhatsApp,
you know, paying billions of dollars

for this messaging platform
that had almost no revenue.

SENATOR: Mr Zuckerberg, would you
be comfortable sharing with us

the name of the hotel you
stayed in last night?

Um. (AWKWARD CHUCKLE)

Uh, no.

If you messaged anybody this week,

would you share with us the names
of the people you messaged?

Senator, no, I would probably not
choose to do that publicly here.

I think that may be what
this is all about.

Your right to privacy.

The limits of your right to privacy

and how much you give away
in modern America,

in the name of, quote, "connecting
people around the world."

Question, basically of...

what information
Facebook is collecting,

who they're sending it to,
and whether they ever asked me,

in advance,
my permission to do that.

Is that a fair thing for
a user of Facebook to expect?

The Zuckerberg Files came out of...
a project where I was thinking

about how does Zuckerberg
talk about privacy?

So I started collecting blog posts
and speeches or interviews

that he gave around privacy

and decided to build
a digital archive.

And so we've created
the Zuckerberg Files

and have been collecting every
single thing that he says in public.

One of the earliest clips
that we have is a family video

of when Mark Zuckerberg received

his acceptance letter
into Harvard University.

One of his other first interviews
he gave to some filmmakers

is him sitting on a couch
in shorts with a red cup,

probably with beer in it,
and a T-shirt just hanging out

and giving an interview.

I mean, whether we have something
that will last for a long time

or is this just, like,
kind of a cool toy

for people to play with now?
We'll see.

And that's one of the fun things
about the archive.

We can see how he's kind of evolved
and how his image changes.

And one of the moments when that
happened was an interview he gave

where there were really hot lights,
some controversies going on,

some really hard questions.
He was sweating onstage.

INTERVIEWER: You want to take off
the hoodie?Woah.

Alright. That's OK.

You could tell he was uncomfortable.
He took off his sweatshirt

and inside of his sweatshirt is like
this kind of weird company logo.

We print our mission on the inside.
What?

What is it? "Making the..."

Making the world
more open and connected.

Oh, my God. It's like a secret cult.

(LAUGHTER)

And really, from that point on,
I think then they brought in

the corporate communication
heavyweights,

gave him some speech training.

That's when we start seeing the jokes
about Zuckerberg as a robot.

And, you know, and that there's this
kind of coldness to how he engages.

More recently, he's been posting
more about his family...

..including now occasionally
pictures of his children.

But interestingly, we rarely
see his children's faces.

So, I'm assuming he wants
to make sure his kids faces

don't get put online
for privacy reasons

or any kind of face recognition
or for their own safety.

But of course,
his platform has built tools

to scan our pictures and our faces.

So, he's taking these steps
to protect his family, you know,

in ways that maybe many users
don't understand how they should be

doing similar things to protect
their own privacy on his platform.

Facebook, as I said, Josh, hitting
another new all time high today,

above 70 bucks.
It just seems unstoppable.

They like every move he makes, now.

I don't know how much longer this
lasts, but for right now,

it seems he can do no wrong, and the
stock price reflects that.

(CROWD CHEERING)
(CAMERAS CLICKING)

Ladies and gentlemen,
I am officially running...

..for President
of the United States.

HARBATH: When Trump first
came down that escalator...

to announce that he was running
for president, myself,

like a lot of others, was like,

"This is probably not
going to last very long."

I got an email one night
from Trump's PR that said...

"Trump's thinking about running
for president. You want to help?"

I was like, "Yeah, sure."

I walk into this big room.

So, I listened for an hour

to a pitch of all this stuff
they're gonna do.

And they asked what I think,
and I just said, "No."

I just said, "We're going to do
something completely different."

I said, "We're going to win
this thing on Facebook."

I went home, and I focused all day,
every day,

creating most of the content,
doing everything myself,

my laptop at home, just me.

We need to talk directly to every
single person individually

so that they can have
the proper understanding

of who Donald Trump is
and what he wants to do.

Voters have busy lives,
they're doing things,

but they're on Facebook during
lunch. Facebook in the evenings.

They're on Facebook in the restroom.

So, you have these moments of time
where you can get into their brain.

Facebook said,
"We'll give you a team.

They can sit in your office all day
and ask them whatever you want.

Anything breaks, they'll fix it,
if you spend this much money."

I said, I'm going spend
$100 million."

They're like, "Well, that's plenty."

THOMPSON: Zuckerberg's ideology is
to 'bring the world together'.

Donald Trump,
whether you like him or not,

that is certainly not his ideology.

I think he probably thought it was
going be the best possible outcome.

Donald Trump driving
lots of engagement,

Donald Trump buying lots of ads
and then Donald Trump losing.

I think they thought
they'd take the money

and Trump would be a joke
and they'd benefit from it.

I don't think they saw what was
coming at all. I did.

And yes, we will build a wall.

MCNAMEE: The way you work with
Facebook as you say,

the people I want to reach
look like this.

Find all the people in Facebook...

who look like the people I want.

And when you have one in seven
voters in your custom audience,

the precision with which
you can target

is completely unprecedented.

THOMPSON: So he says, "I'm going to
sell a ton of hats

that say, 'Make America Great'."

Somebody buys one of those hats,
and then he says to Facebook,

OK, now put a Trump 2016 ad

in front of everybody
who has characteristics

similar to the person
who bought the hat.

Facebook knows everything
about everybody.

So it finds all of these people
who are similar, in whatever way

the Facebook algorithm can determine,

to the person
who just bought the hat.

HARBATH: Anything we were offering
to the Trump team.

We're also offering
to the Clinton team.

Hillary's folks were like,
"Thanks, we've got it.

Don't call us. We'll call you
if we need help.

Donald J Trump is calling for a
total and complete shutdown

of Muslims entering
the United States

until our country's representatives

can figure out what
the hell is going on.

(CROWD CHEERING)

THOMPSON: Facebook was a perfect
medium for Donald Trump.

He appeals to the emotions
that work on Facebook,

our lizard brain emotions, and not
our thoughtful brain emotions.

Hate him, love him. You have
immediate reactions to Donald Trump.

That's how the Facebook algorithm
was tuned, particularly in 2016.

I went to go check my phone
and I see Trump's post

and immediately I'm like,

"Oh, no, this is not good."

And I ping some folks on my team
and I'm like,

"Make sure nobody takes down
this post

without escalating it
up to leadership."

ALLAN: They are crossing a line
and we've not had that before.

We want to protect political speech.

And the assumption was that
political candidates

will not say completely unreasonable
things that break our rules.

You got to see this guy.
Oh, I don't know what I said.

Aagh! I don't remember.

He's starting to put things on
Facebook that are challenging us

that we never thought
we'd have to grapple with.

So if you see somebody getting ready
to throw a tomato,

knock the crap out of it, would you?
Seriously?

Are we seriously now in a spot
where we're have to think about...

taking down content from a potential
President of the United States?

Normally we'd have that
discussion with Sheryl.

If it's sufficiently momentous,

then Sheryl will then
take it to Mark,

and then he'll either
go with it or he won't.

When Mexico sends its people...
they're bringing drugs.

They're bringing crime.
They're rapists.

Mark did understand
the scope for abuse,

and he felt that
the way you avoid that

is you say we, the platform,
are neutral.

We don't decide
what's in your news feed.

You, the user, decide
what's in your news feed.

HARBATH: Mark does
an interesting interview

where he is in a room
full of people,

and you can see he really held on to
this idea that all speech is good

and that people would see
the misinformation for what it was.

This is tricky, right?
Because lies....

What the line is between something
which is factually untrue

and what is a disagreement of opinion

is not always a black and white line.

we don't want to block people from
sharing something on Facebook,

even if it's untrue.

Forget the press. Read the Internet.

Study other things.
Don't go for the mainstream media.

I saw how Facebook was polluting
the news ecosystem,

and I saw that
it was making media worse.

I noticed that stories
with no information,

salacious headlines,
all kinds of problematic features

were doing much better
than other stories.

That's when I started to really say,

"Oh, wait, what's going on here?"

And then, of course, we have Crooked
Hillary. Crooked Hillary!

(INDISTINCT CROWD CHANTS)

What should we be thinking
about fact checking?

Should we be thinking about this?

Is there anybody more
crooked than this woman?

We're in the middle of an election.

We don't want to look like we're
putting our thumbs on the scale.

I was like, "He might win?
No, he's not going to win."

I kind of had this...

two sides in my brain fighting
against one another.

And I think a lot of others
at the company did, too.

ANNOUNCER: Please welcome
the co-founder of PayPal

and first investor in Facebook,
entrepreneur, Peter Thiel.

Good evening. I'm Peter Theil.

I build companies and I support
people who are building new things,

from social networks to rocket ships.

I'm not a politician,
but neither is Donald Trump.

He is a builder,
and it's time to rebuild America.

REPORTER: He's a self-described
libertarian,

but he's a delegate
for Donald Trump.

He's an immigrant from Germany, pro
tech, obviously.

And is openly gay.

Tonight, I urge all
of my fellow Americans

to stand up and vote
for Donald Trump.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CHAFKIN: Peter Thiel is very
interested in business,

but has spent two decades as
a right-wing political activist.

I think Thiel...

has had an influence
on Zuckerberg's politics.

And insofar as Zuckerberg is kind
of a libertarian who thinks that,

you know, the world be better
off if tech companies could just

do whatever they want and the
government should get out of his way

and that he's kind of more OK with
Donald Trump than a lot of people.

Those are things that Thiel,
I think, had an influence on him.

But I don't think Zuckerberg has
deep political views at all.

I think his politics are Facebook

and his politics are
Mark Zuckerberg.

PARSCALE: I'm upstairs
with Trump in his residence,

and I get a phone call from my data
staff that's pulling out the numbers

and they're like, "Brad you did it.

The numbers are there.
Trump's won. I can't believe it."

I walked out and I told Donald
Trump, I shook his hand

and I said, "Congratulations,
Mr President."

He said, "Really?"
And I said, "It's done.

They'll recount it two or three
times before they announce it.

But you won.

REPORTER: And confirmed
that Donald Trump

will be the 45th President
of the United States.

THOMPSON: People are just shocked.

How did this happen? What's going on?
What does it mean?

And one of the quick
and early hypotheses is,

"Oh, wait, it's because of Facebook.
Because the fake news on Facebook.

It's because the way
the Facebook algorithm worked.

Stories start to come out
about Russian influence.

And the stories are overcooked,

and they give too much credit
to the Russians.

But suddenly it looks like
Facebook missed something.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

I ran a company which put-on
high-end tech conferences,

and for years I had been trying to
get Zuckerberg to come and speak.

And finally, you know, I hit it.

Hey!
Hey. Good to see you.

I wasn't even associating his
speaking at the conference

with the fact that it was
two days after the election.

And I do remember thinking...

before he was on stage with me
that he seemed very preoccupied.

But thank you so much
for being here.Glad to.

Post election you've been getting
a lot of pushback

from people who feel that you didn't
filter out enough

fake stories during
the course of the campaign.

You know, personally... I think
the idea that...

..you know, fake news on Facebook

of which, you know,
it's a very small amount

of- of the content,

influenced the election in any way I
think is a pretty crazy idea, right?

I was still fundamentally
sympathetic to him

up to that point.

But it was clear that,
no, it wasn't a crazy idea at all.

That, in fact, whether they swung
the election or not

is still a subject of debate,

but fake news on Facebook had
had an impact.

I was deeply disappointed in him.

I was forced to think very hard.

What do I really think about him?

Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, guys.

I was really alarmed by what was
increasingly obvious

to be the consequences of his
failures of governance.

Overnight, we went from everything
we touched to turn to gold.

To everything we touched
turned to dust.

And now we're grappling with...

..the downsides of this thing
that we built.

When I first joined,
movies were being made.

The founder is on the cover
of Time magazine.

You're overthrowing dictators.

And now seven years later, you're
being told you destroyed democracy.

KIRKPATRICK It wasn't until
Donald Trump was elected

that it began to be apparent

just how dangerous a system
like this could be.

And don't forget,
it was also Brexit.

The sun has risen on an
independent United Kingdom.

Erdogan in Turkey.

Duterte in the Philippines.

Orban in Hungary.

All elected using Facebook,
in every single case.

Everything changes from,
sort of, 2016 onwards

after that Trump election.

People in the company went
from feeling the sense of loyalty

to feeling they had a wider loyalty
to something outside.

They went from being proud to go
out and say I work for Facebook

to being ashamed of it.

You start to think,
maybe we are the bad guys.

In terms of Mark's persona,
his big positive persona

becomes a big negative persona
from that point onwards.

Alright. Hey, everyone.

I'm here with my friend

and Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg,

for our typical one-on-one.
(LAUGHTER)

Welcome to our one-on-one.
Here we are. (CHUCKLES)

FRENKEL: Sheryl Sandberg and Mark,
do these twice a week, one-on-ones.

But it's put on for show
to make people feel that

Facebook is a place largely for
good, rather than with conspiracies,

hate speech and misinformation that
was really flooding the platform.

It's been a really important year
for sharing

because a lot has happened
and not all of it positive.

This has been a year of
a lot of angst,

a lot of people having issues,
really serious issues,

violence, war, terrorism
all around the world.

But you also see these
other moments.

You see, you know, the number one
live video of the year

was the Chewbacca mom.
Hey.

I'm really excited to
share with you something I got.

Here we go.

I got to take of my glasses
for it. (LAUGHS)

Naturally.
OK, here we go.

So, yes.

Now, watch when my mouth
actually moves.

(CHEWBACCA ROAR)

(CHEWBACCA ROAR)

(LAUGHS, CHEWBACCA ROAR)

Oh, my gosh. I'm in tears.

REPORTER: We see the Jewellers
and other Muslim-owned businesses

being ransacked by Buddhist
residents and monks.

In my mind, Myanmar
is the starkest example

of what can go wrong with Facebook.

It comes at a moment
where Facebook is desperate

to expand to the rest of the world.

They are committed to bringing
on the next 1 billion users.

There is virtually no research done
into Myanmar as a country

or understanding that
this is a place in the world

where there is no free press,
there are no, you know,

independent government institutions.

They were buying their own PR,

that the most important thing was
to bring people online.

And if you brought people online,
inherent good would come from that.

And they didn't want to listen
to the many people

who were telling them
that in some cases,

bringing people online
when there wasn't media literacy

or a Free Press
or any other institution

to hold it in account
could lead to hate speech.

REPORTER: From a hilltop, we see a
young man, presumably Muslim,

attacked by men wielding sticks.

He staggers, attempting to flee...

..but he is forced to the earth.

I was a reporter in Myanmar,
and I wrote an article...

..and part of that article
documented the rise in hate speech.

I interviewed people
in Myanmar who said,

"I didn't know the Rohingya
were raping and killing our women.

But now that I'm on Facebook,
I know the Rohingya are actually

these horrible creatures, you know."

And I took that to Facebook,
as a reporter and I said,

"Can you please look at these posts
that I'm sending you?

Because I can tell that
this is actually footage

that's been manipulated to make it
look as if

the Rohingya are
carrying out atrocities.

And Facebook told me to take a hike.

Later, I found out
even more activists

begin to send Facebook warnings

and saying hate speech
has just gone off the rails.

Report after report after report

and Facebook does nothing.

They even bring in an activist to
speak to them in their headquarters

who says, "If you do nothing,
a genocide could happen."

People that walk out
of that room with him and go,

"I think he's exaggerating.

I don't think he knows
what he's talking about.

That's not gonna happen.
That's not gonna be our fault.

SENATOR: You know, six months ago,
I asked your general counsel

about Facebook's role as
a breeding ground for hate speech.

This is a type of content I
was referring to,

it calls for the death
of a Muslim journalist.

That threat went straight
through your detection systems,

it spread very quickly.

And then it took attempt
after attempt after attempt

to get you to remove it.

Senator, what's happening in Myanmar
is a terrible tragedy

and we need to do more-We all
agree with that.OK.But...

..UN investigators have blamed you,

blamed Facebook for playing a role

in citing possible
genocide in Myanmar.

He sees himself as having built
a platform for all humanity.

And in his mind,
that's a good thing.

There will be tremendous benefits

from making the world more open and
connected, et cetera, et cetera.

But humanity includes
some bad actors.

There's a lot of nasty people.
That's not his problem.

Yeah, there's going to be some
nasty shit that happens.

People are going to do things that
are illegal, immoral, cruel,

hateful, murderous, even.

"But don't blame me.
That's human nature."

REPORTER: It is reported that both
the Justice Department and the FBI

are investigating the now-defunct
political data firm,

Cambridge Analytica.

REPORTER: The data firm hired by
Donald Trump's presidential election

campaign used
secretly-obtained information

from tens of millions of
unsuspecting Facebook users.

Misuse of Facebook data is at
the centre of this scandal

involving both Facebook
and Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook now says 87 million users

may have had their information
shared with Cambridge Analytica.

We, as the public were impacted by
it,

notably have not heard
from the brand name of Facebook,

Mark Zuckerberg or
COO, Sheryl Sandberg.

Neither one of them wanted
to be the face of this.

And Zuckerberg was probably like,

"Well, it's your thing,
it's your department."

And she was probably
like, "You're the CEO."

And neither one of them could decide
who would go out and take the heat.

And eventually, five days later, it's
clear that someone has to come out.

I want to start with just
a basic question, Mark.

What happened? What went wrong?

So, this was a major breach of trust.

And I'm really sorry
that this happened.

SENATOR: You know, you have
a long list of apologies.

In 2003, it started at Harvard.

"I apologise for any harm done
as a result of my neglect."

2006, "We really messed
this one up."

2007, "We simply did a bad job,
I apologise for."

2010, "Sometimes we move too fast."

2011, "I'm the first to admit that
we've made a bunch of mistakes."

2017, "I ask for forgiveness.
I will work to do better."

So it seems to me...

that self-regulation
simply does not work.

Mark Zuckerberg's experience
as an individual

is that he does things
which upset people.

He apologises
and everybody moves on.

But there comes a moment in-
after Cambridge Analytica in 2018

where it's not working anymore.

REPORTER: Senator, do you think that
you really can trust a company

to police itself
when it comes to our privacy

and when it comes to things like
not censoring our freedom of speech?

As of right now, no.

Lawmakers in Washington were
getting impatient because

the controversies were stacking.

Sentiment was turning against
the technology industry.

They had wanted Mark Zuckerberg
to testify for more than a year

and Facebook declined, they refused.

And then they threatened
to subpoena Mark Zuckerberg

if he didn't appear in hearings
in Washington.

And so finally, they agreed that

Mark Zuckerberg would come
to testify.

There's a reason all these
incredibly important

and effective disruptors of
social media communications,

shopping, started in America because
we had light touch regulation.

Now they've gotten big.
So we have a job to step in.

If they don't perform according to
the rules of the road.

Facebook has not been regulated
at all at that point,

and any sort of regulation
that could pop up

would be catastrophic
for the company.

Any regulation and privacy,
and data collection

would impede Facebook's
business model,

which is to collect
as much data as possible

and to sell that data
to advertisers.

That is the heart of
Facebook's business model.

ALLAN: Mark knows
that it's high stakes.

You know that the chances of getting
something wrong are quite high.

So I think he's absolutely
laser-focused.

Facebook hired one
of the biggest law firms,

and for two weeks this law firm went
to Menlo Park

and spent time with Mark Zuckerberg
holed up in conference room,

grilling him in, sort of,
mock hearings,

grilling him on the names
of members of Congress,

on what questions they'd ask. It was
almost a mock debate preparation.

I think what he wants is,
to get in there.

Don't screw up. Get out.

REPORTER: It's a monumental moment
for Facebook.

This is a company
that's become ubiquitous.

It's now under fire for not being
transparent with its users

about its use of our data.

Now, CEO Mark Zuckerberg,
will have his moment on Capitol Hill

testifying before Congress.

The stakes are very, very high.

Mark Zuckerberg walked into
the hearing rooms

in the navy, blue suit

and surrounded by an entourage
of lobbyists.

He came in with almost, like,
a slight smile on his face,

trying to look cordial, trying to
look cool and calm and collected.

They're unfazed.
They don't want to show that

they're deeply inside
very, very nervous.

CHAFKIN: I think there was
a sense among lawmakers

that this was an opportunity to
arrest this...

incredibly fast-growing, dominant
social cultural business phenomenon.

Mark, are you putting
privacy over profits now?

KANG: His lobbyists had negotiated
with staff to make sure that

the air conditioning was jacked up

so that Mark Zuckerberg
wouldn't sweat on camera.

Not only is the public, competitors

and lawmakers all watching
this hearing,

but so is the stock market.

Investors were watching the hearings

to see if Mark Zuckerberg
might trip up

and say something that could hurt
the future of the business

and therefore hurt the stock.

(BANGING GAVEL)

Committee on the Judiciary
and the Commerce,

Science and Transportation
will come to order.

The beginning of the hearings
with Mark Zuckerberg are tense.

You could tell the Facebook
flock in the room are tense.

You could tell Mark is tense,
the way he's sitting.

He's kind of very squared off.

I was captivated. What are the
questions they're going to ask?

What are they going to uncover?
What are they going to learn?

SENATOR: Mr Zuckerberg,
what is Facebook doing

to prevent foreign actors from
interfering in US elections?

How will you protect user's data?

Do you collect user data
through cross-device tracking?

Are you willing to expand my right

to know who you're sharing
my data with?

Do you believe European regulations
should be applied in the US?

Are you willing to change
your business model

in the interest of protecting
individual privacy?

Congresswoman,
I'm not sure what that means.

It would seem like
that would be the start

of what would be
a really intense grilling.

But I was really surprised
to hear how many times

Mark Zuckerberg was able to say...I
can have my team follow up with you.

I'll have my team get back to you.

I'm happy to have my team follow up
with you if that would be helpful?

..without answering
the question at that moment.

And there was no follow up.

Some of the questions
were very basic and very simple.

And I was watching this and I was
communicating with other people

who follow the industry well and
they were saying the same thing.

Why is there no follow up?

Mark Zuckerberg was probably
thinking the same thing,

that some of these questions
were not so hard

and that the hearings themselves
would not be the grilling,

the, sort of, slaying
that he had feared.

You're supposed to answer 'yes'
to this question.

OK, come on.
I'm trying to help you, right.

I mean, give me a break.
The answer is 'yes'.

OK, so thank you.
(LAUGHTER)

FRENKEL: The hearings could have
been a turning point,

but some of the members of Congress
asked these incredibly fumbling
questions.

'What is this Facebook machine?'
You know,.

they just they sound like your dad
is asking a question about Facebook.

How do you sustain
a business model in which
users don't pay for your service?

Senator, we run ads.

I see.

It became so clear that these
members of Congress

didn't know the very basic
technology that Facebook ran on

and that they were so out
of their league in understanding

the fundamentals
of Facebook as a company.

How could they possibly
hold them to account?

You want to break now? Or you want
to keep going. (CHUCKLES)

Sure. I mean, that was that was
pretty good. So, alright.

In the room at that moment you
understood,

like, he's got this.

He's got these members of Congress
wrapped around his little finger.

I remember talking to
a Facebook executive

who was fairly sceptical of
Zuckerberg, talking about

everybody in a cafeteria celebrating
as he knocks the senators back.

And just that was a moment
where a company,

which had lost a bit of faith
in their leader,

decided they loved him again.

The hearing is adjourned.

He came out of it pretty well.

Much better than
I would have expected.

ALLAN: I mean, at the end, I think
we feel we've done a good job.

We prepared our CEO, we've
negotiated the terms of the hearing.

And if he gets away, you know,
at the end of it

and nothing has gone
terribly wrong...

..that is-
You feel professionally...

Tick. You know,
you've done your job.

The upshot was that any hopes
for regulation

to curtail the power of Facebook

would never really happen
any time soon

because lawmakers
were incapable of doing so.

REPORTER: Do you feel that any
senator here

has really laid a glove on
Mark Zuckerberg?

If you think being slapped
with wet noodles is hard,

I guess that's hard.

The real proof that the hearings
were not so terrible

for Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg

was that Facebook stock rose.

Mark Zuckerberg became, personally,
billions of dollars richer.

He left that day back to Menlo Park,

and his lobbyist went to a wine bar
in Georgetown to celebrate.

The hearings were a success
from their point of view.

REPORTER: You might think this is
a map of the world, but it's not.

It's a blank screen.

And for every person who's using
Facebook, we put a dot.

And when you do that, it
effectively draws the world.

HAUGEN: When I joined Facebook
in 2019,

I think it was actually
in kind of a momentary calm.

The year before they had
Cambridge Analytica,

which had blown up catastrophically.

So I think if you had asked
a random employee,

they would have said
things are looking up. Right.

We've survived Cambridge Analytica.
We've weathered it.

Our stock is on the upswing.

You know, I worked
on civic misinformation.

So that's, you know,
things like ethnic violence.

And just a few months before,

they had realised that
they didn't have a policy

against politicians
calling for violence.

There were now political parties
in the world

that were explicitly doing things
like demonizing minorities

by calling them, you know,
'rodents', that kind of thing.

And a working group was formed
to start figuring out

what should the policy be when
situations like that happen.

It took a working group
of maybe 30 or 40 people,

months to write
the political speech policy

for Facebook,
and they present it to Mark.

And Mark takes a look at he
goes, "I don't like this.

I can do better."
And he goes home that weekend

and he writes the political speech
policy for the company.

So think for a moment about
the arrogance of this. Right.

So Mark takes the work of
like 30, 40 people.

Many of these people have PhDs in
ethnic violence and he says,

"Oh, no. I can write a better
political policy over the weekend.

I don't think that
we want private companies

censoring politicians in the news.

I generally believe that
as a principle,

people should decide what is credible

and what they want to believe
and who they want to vote for.

I don't think that that should be
something that we want tech companies

or any kind of other company doing.

2020 was a make it or break in
moment for Facebook.

You had a sitting US President,
Donald Trump, who was,

daily, pushing the limits of what
should be said on their platform.

He was using it every single day
in ways that were challenging

for Facebook to defend
or make decisions on.

And there was this real sense inside
Facebook of almost daily panic

of what's he going to say next?

What kind of PR storm is
this going to create for us?

What kind of negative headline
is going to get written today

about our company?

I remember the day after the
US election speaking to someone

at Facebook who was on their
election team who said,

"God, what a relief, it's over.
Trump has lost."

Good evening.

I'd like to provide the American
people with an update on our efforts

to protect the integrity of
a very important 2020 election.

If you count the legal votes,

I easily win.

People knew prior to
the 2020 election that

Trump was gonna try to delegitimize
the election if he failed,

and we know this because he had been
threatening it for a long time.

The lead up to January 6th
was not random.

Take me inside Mark Zuckerberg's
head to like the moment that

you decided you needed to change
Facebook's core mission.

I feel like we have a responsibility
to do more in the world.

So, what is the new mission
of Facebook?

So, our new mission is to bring
the world closer together.

What we need to do is empower people

all around the world
to build communities.

Things like church groups
and sports teams

and neighbourhood groups...
(FADES)

MCNAMEE: Facebook was created
initially for people

who shared an interest
to get together

and which evolved into
this gigantic system

that included both chess clubs

but also white supremacists
and terrorists.

Facebook groups wound up
becoming the home

to politically engaged extremism.

That we had not seen before.

There had been a study,
internal Facebook study

what they discovered
was that 64% of the time

that people join
an extremist Facebook group...

..the trigger for joining was
a recommendation made by Facebook.

FRENKEL: A group called Stop the
Steal started to post on Facebook

and it is committed to spreading
the false idea that the election

was stolen from Donald Trump,

and they managed to get hundreds of
thousands to join their group.

Internally in Facebook, there's this
kind of moment of panic

when they realise this is
one of the fastest growing groups

in Facebook's history
and it is committed to spreading

the false idea that the election
was stolen from Donald Trump.

(INDISTINCT SHOUTS)

And then January rolls around and
you have these rallies of people

all over the United States that are
coming together under the banner of

the election was stolen and they're
organizing themselves on Facebook.

TRUMP: We will never give up. We will
never concede it doesn't happen.

You don't concede with this theft.

And then you have Trump himself
issuing calls on Facebook saying,

"Come to Washington on January 6th,
come rally in my name.

The election was stolen from me."

And it is that moment
that Facebook understands

this is a four alarm fire.

And will this finally be the moment
where they have to

take down Donald Trump's account?

And Mark kind of sits there and you
think, should I call Trump?

Should I try to use backchannels
to him to say,

"Hey, we're thinking
of taking down your account?

And people close to him say,
"I don't think it's a good idea.

Like, you could be seen as
colluding with this."

People are sharing on Facebook
live videos and photos

of themselves marching through
the halls of Congress

looking for Nancy Pelosi, looking
for Vice President Pence.

If you're Mark Zuckerberg
and you've created technology

whose sole purpose is to connect
people, that's your worldview,

that connecting people is inherently
good

and introducing that
technology to the world

has made you one of the world's
wealthiest and most powerful men.

It is very, very hard, I imagine,
to then sit there and think,

is my underlying premise wrong?
Is connecting the world bad?

And it really is only
when it gets to the point where

people sitting next to me are
saying, "This is gonna go to trial,

there are going to be congressional
hearings about this."

And Donald Trump can continue to
use this Facebook page

to agitate for violence.

And we're going to get held
responsible

that Mark Zuckerberg sits there
and goes, "It's gone too far.

We need to take down his account."

REPORTER: Good afternoon and we
start with some breaking news,

President Trump has been banned,
indefinitely, from Facebook,

according to Mark Zuckerberg.
In a statement, he said,

"The current context is now
fundamentally different,

involving use of our platform
to incite violent insurrection

against a democratically
elected government.

FRENKEL: When I started reporting on
Facebook, I realised very quickly

that you needed to have sources
at all levels of the company.

People who work at Facebook are not
used to speaking to the press

because they've been instilled
with such a fear of what

talking to the press
can do for their careers.

There is a very serious top-down
threat of if you speak to the press,

you will not just be fired.

You will never work in tech again.
Your name will be blacklisted.

It's compounded by these
very fierce NDAs,

which stands for
non-disclosure agreements,

that the people who work there
have to sign.

I used to work in the Middle East,
and I used to speak to people

who were dissenters in governments
with dictatorships and monarchies

where speaking to the press
meant being imprisoned.

And I had an easier time getting
people in those countries

to speak to me sometimes than I did

getting employees at Facebook
to speak to me.

Facebook for most of its history,

has had an entire department
dedicated to finding leakers.

People who speak to journalists
are rooted out

and fired in very public ways
within the company.

They're constantly talked about.

At one point, it was fairly common
to talk about them as rats.

In the aftermath of January six,
I realised the only way Facebook

could save itself is if they
got help from the outside

and so I was ready
to blow the whistle.

Imagine you come in and you think
it's a crisis,

and then you actually sit there and
start accumulating the case

to prove the crisis.

You know, you think you
know how bad it is.

And now you're like, you're looking
at the whole stack of evidence.

You're like, "Oh, this is far worse
than I thought it was.

It took me a long time to figure out
how could I document what the public

needed to know in a way
that would be effective?

And I took a bunch of screenshots.

Every time there'd be something
that was sufficiently embarrassing,

they would put up a wall
around information.

And so my fear was that, you know,
this was like the last chance,

like I had to do a good job because
the public might never know.

Blowing the whistle
is very complicated,

and at some point my screen shot
stopped working.

And so I was like, "Oh,
so I know I'm being spied on."

I totally align myself with all
the possible consequences

of what Facebook might do
to me if they caught me,

because I assumed as soon
as that journalism happened,

they would know it was me
because they can go and triangulate

these are the documents. She's
the only way to access them.

In the run up to when the Wall
Street Journal began publishing,

my lawyers basically told me
that I was delusional,

they thought my identity
could stay a secret

because Facebook
at any point could out me

and a lot whistleblowers
are discredited.

And so I got basically gotten
presented with the choice, like,

do you want to tell your own story

or do you want them
to tell your story?

REPORTER: Scathing accusations
from a former Facebook executive

about how the company handles
hate content and misinformation.

REPORTER: She is the former employee

who is now accusing the social
media giant of knowing how harmful

their algorithm is
for our entire democracy.

KANG: When Frances Haugen
comes out from the shadows

as the whistleblower.

It was an astonishing moment.

A lot of what she had been saying
was what we had been hearing.

We had many Frances Haugen's,
but she had documents

and she was willing to put her face
and her name behind that.

She was willing to testify.

Facebook's products stoke division
and weaken our democracy.

Almost no one outside of Facebook

knows what happens
inside of Facebook.

The company intentionally hides
vital information from the public.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing

and surprising revelations
from Frances Haugen

was that there were internal studies

on how Facebook's
recommendation engines

can lead teenagers
into these rabbit holes.

REPORTER: A troubling new report
today spells out

what all that time on social media
is doing to our teenagers.

For example, a teenager looking
at some influencer of fitness

would then get served to them,
recommendations to diets,

and then that would then lead to

recommendations
for eating disorders,

things like bulimia,
how to become anorexic,

really destructive behaviour.

Content that elicits
an extreme reaction from you

is more likely to get a click,
a comment or reshare.

These are the kinds of rabbit holes
that were leading to suicide.

Thoughts of suicide ideation.

And Facebook understood this.

It was, in fact, studying this.

The company's leadership knows
how to make Facebook

and Instagram safer but won't make
the necessary changes

because they have put their
astronomical profits before people.

It is time for us to adopt
a new company brand

to encompass everything that we do,

to reflect who we are
and what we hope to build.

I am proud to announce
that starting today,

our company is now Meta.

I gotta pause that.

Look. L- Look!

Let's remember, all this pride

and this cocky stuff
was at the exact moment

when all of Frances Haugen's
whistleblowing revelations

were cascading
across the news media.

When they were getting new
articles every day

based on Frances Haugen's
documentation that, basically,

proved their culpability,
at the height of that period.

They had a big press conference
to change their name

and make their new strategy,
the Metaverse!

And you know what? It worked.

Now...

You know, I really just cared about
building something that

my girls are going to grow up
and be proud of me for.

And I mean, that's what is kind of my
guiding philosophy at this point is,

and I- you know, come and work on a
lot of hard things during the day.

And I go home and just ask, "Will my
girls be proud of what I did today?"

FRENKEL: There's no doubt history
is going to remember Mark Zuckerberg

for creating the first really
global social media company.

I don't see how we as a society
go back in time to a point where

we're not all instantaneously
connected to everyone

we want to be connected
to all over the world.

It really has created a new reality.

I think the people closest to Mark
that have now left the company

and reflect on their time
there say that

the biggest problems
at Facebook come

because of the absolute power
that was handed to one individual.

It's the President
of the United States!

And that no matter how smart
you were as a 19 or 20-year-old

in creating a very specific type of
technology,

there is just no situation
in which it is appropriate

for one person to have
unbridled power

and decision-making over
such a large group of people.

And that by having really no cheques
and balances

on Mark Zuckerberg's
power or his decision making,

Facebook ultimately made
a number of mistakes

that affected millions of people
all over the world.

When someone becomes
worth $100 billion

and is the richest person
in human history of that age,

it makes them feel magical...
unchallengeable

and, I feel, self-justifying
to a tremendously harmful degree.

KANG: The main question of Facebook
going forward is,

who keeps Mark Zuckerberg in check?

There are very few people
that hold him accountable.

Who's the one who tells him, "Mark,

that decision may not be good
for the company?

It may not be good
for the business model."

And very importantly,
who is asking him,

"Mark Zuckerberg, is that decision
you're making good for the world?"

AccessibleCustomerService@sky.uk