Facebook's Uncertain Future
Uncanny Valley | WIRED15 Loka 2021

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(426)

YouTube Creators Want More From YouTube

YouTube Creators Want More From YouTube

Without video creators, YouTube wouldn’t be one of the world’s biggest social platforms. Without the platform, YouTubers wouldn’t be, well, YouTubers. But video creators are regularly facing new polic...

25 Loka 201933min

Facial Recognition Tech Is Coming to a School Near You

Facial Recognition Tech Is Coming to a School Near You

Despite a lack of evidence that more technology makes kids safer, facial recognition technology may soon be coming to a school near you. It’s part of a growing trend of increased surveillance and secu...

18 Loka 201929min

It's Time to Put Down Your Phone

It's Time to Put Down Your Phone

How long have you gone without checking your phone in the past week? 10, 15, maybe 20 minutes while you’re awake? Our screens have commandeered our eyeballs and taken hold of our lives. Our phones buz...

11 Loka 201941min

Panos Panay Says Microsoft’s New Phone Isn’t a Phone

Panos Panay Says Microsoft’s New Phone Isn’t a Phone

Microsoft surprised just about everyone this week by showing off a pair of new mobile devices with two screens apiece. The pocketable Surface Duo and the tablet-like Surface Neo won't actually go on s...

4 Loka 201943min

Spot, the Robot Dog, Learns New Tricks

Spot, the Robot Dog, Learns New Tricks

For 25 years, Boston Dynamics has been building robots and releasing videos of the terrifying things running around, opening doors, and fending off stick-wielding humans. The company’s most famous cre...

27 Syys 201935min

Your DNA Belongs on the Blockchain

Your DNA Belongs on the Blockchain

You may not realize it, but when you send a spit-filled tube off to a lab that’s going to analyze your DNA, you’re linking the most unique identifier possible (your gene sequence) to other sensitive p...

20 Syys 201934min

iPhones to the Max

iPhones to the Max

New iPhones! A shinier Apple Watch! So many camera lenses! On this week’s episode of Gadget Lab, it’s Apple week yet again. Lauren, Mike, and Arielle discuss all the new devices and services that made...

13 Syys 201930min

How Uber Went Down in Flames

How Uber Went Down in Flames

Once upon a time, there was a true unicorn, a startup named Uber. Led by CEO Travis Kalanick, the company broke all the rules of business and truly disrupted the way people move through the world. But...

6 Syys 201947min