Facebook's Uncertain Future

Facebook's Uncertain Future

Facebook has once again found itself in the hot seat. Things heated up for the company after a whistleblower shared thousands of pages of Facebook internal documents with The Wall Street Journal and Congress last month. The documents reveal that the company had researched how its apps affect the people who use them—and that Facebook often chooses to put its business interests ahead of the wellbeing of its users.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED politics writer Gilad Edelman about the overall impact of the whistleblower’s revelations, whether anything will change internally at Facebook, and how plausible it is that even big, sweeping changes to the platform here in the US could fix Facebook’s issues overseas.

Show Notes:

Read The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files series. Read Gilad’s story about the Facebook whistleblower. He also wrote about why Facebook is not too big to moderate. Here’s Gilad’s story about Section 230 (and also our episode of this show about it). And here’s how you can permanently delete your Facebook account.

Recommendations:

Gilad recommends listening to CDs. Mike recommends the segment from Last Week Tonight about misinformation. Lauren recommends swiping right on dates (the fruit, that is) and also Kara Swisher’s Sway podcast, particularly the episodes with Monica Lewinsky and Matthew McConaughey.

Gilad Edelman can be found on Twitter @GiladEdelman. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

If you have feedback about the show, or just want to enter to win a $50 gift card, take our brief listener survey here.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jaksot(427)

What Would Elon’s Twitter Look Like?

What Would Elon’s Twitter Look Like?

It probably won't surprise you that Twitter's a bit of a mess right now. Last week, billionaire Elon Musk made a play to buy the whole company, stating that his goal was to turn it into a bastion for ...

21 Huhti 202234min

Browse Better

Browse Better

Even if you spend a lot of time on the internet, you may not give much thought to your browser. Once you find one you like (probably Google Chrome, if you're anything like the other 3 billion people w...

15 Huhti 202231min

Peloton Bets Big on Body-Tracking

Peloton Bets Big on Body-Tracking

Peloton has had a turbulent couple of years. After the ups and downs of the pandemic economy came a rash of bad press spurned by a series of tragic product accidents. The resulting stock dips and exec...

8 Huhti 202236min

Who's Behind the Okta Hack?

Who's Behind the Okta Hack?

Even if you aren't familiar with Okta, you've probably used it. The digital login system is used by thousands of companies across the world to manage employee logins to various cloud services. Which m...

1 Huhti 202227min

How You DAOing?

How You DAOing?

If you wanted to create an exclusive online community with a shared goal, how'd you go about it? If your answer is, "with crypto, obviously!" then you're in luck. DAOs (those are decentralized autonom...

25 Maalis 202235min

When Facial Recognition Tech Is Wrong

When Facial Recognition Tech Is Wrong

Like a lot of tech solutions to complex problems, facial recognition algorithms aren't perfect. But when the technology is used to identify suspects in criminal cases, those flaws in the system can ha...

18 Maalis 202234min

And Apple Marches On

And Apple Marches On

Apple held its first product announcement event of the year on Tuesday. It showed off a bunch of new devices, including a new iPhone SE, a revamped iPad Air, and a big, beefy, expensive system called ...

11 Maalis 202234min

Swift Sanctions

Swift Sanctions

Russia's armed invasion of Ukraine has already exacted a terrible human cost. Thousands of people are dead and over a million have been displaced. In condemning Russia's actions, other nations across ...

4 Maalis 202227min