GROSS: So what was Facebook's reaction? What was the executive leadership at Facebook's reaction when the cybersecurity team reported what they were finding about Russian hacks and Russian bots and Russian disinformation campaigns?
KANG: At this point, you know, I think people know that Facebook took a long time to inform the U.S. public about what they knew. They took almost a year to tell the American public what they knew about Russian election interference. We were shocked, to be honest, when we were reporting at how often they delayed going public and how often they went back to their security team and said, well, let's dig around more. Let's find more. Let's wait a little bit longer. They did not reveal the extent of what Russia had done until September 2017, even when six, seven months earlier, their own security team was urging them to go public and tell people what had happened.
GROSS: Well, you report that Facebook removed the Russian section from a security report. What did they remove, and why?
KANG: This was personally an interesting reporting point for me because I had written about the white paper that Facebook published in the winter of 2017 for The New York Times. At that point, I had heard from sources within Facebook that there had once been an entire section of that report which touched on Russia and which revealed that Russia had, in fact, interfered in the elections. And I went to Facebook. I asked for comment. And I said, you know, I'm hearing these things; did you take out a Russia section? And I was emphatically told that that was not the case, that there was never anything about Russia in the white paper. And it was only in reporting this book that we discovered there were multiple drafts of the paper that had very long sections on Russia. And in fact, there was a great amount of debate within the company about whether or not to include it.
GROSS: So what was taken out, and what was the rationale for it?
KANG: They took out the paragraphs that dealt with Russia. They took out the implications that Russia had been involved in election interference. And the rationale was, well, we don't know enough yet, and this isn't the right form in which we should go out with what we do know, and we should brief members of Congress first, we should perhaps brief intelligence officials first. And so it was, again, a case of Facebook really kicking the can down the road and telling its security team, why don't you go back and find more first?
FRENKEL: I would just add that Facebook today also emphatically says that they did include Russia because they note there is a footnote in the white paper where they link to a DNI report which has a reference to Russian interference. But nowhere in the white paper is the word Russia mentioned.
GROSS: At some point, Zuckerberg said he'd work with Congress in its investigation into Russia and turn over Russian ads that were on Facebook and that he didn't want to use Facebook tools to undermine democracy. That's not what Facebook stands for. What did he actually hand over? And was that everything?
KANG: So Facebook does eventually hand over more than 3,000 ads that were purchased by IRA-connected entities on Facebook. And they are all meant to sort of cause chaos and discord around the election. And they find - they give these ads and these images to a committee that's investigating election interference. The - what's really notable in the book is that the lobbyists who hand over this information, they initially really try to show political neutrality among the ads. They're trying to actually curate the ads and give the impression that the Russians who did buy these ads were not really particularly favoring one candidate over another, but that they were neutral in this, which the people in the committee, the committee investigators, found ludicrous. It was that kind of controlling of the message that I think has really quite angered members of Congress.
GROSS: At some point, Twitter started fact-checking Trump tweets and putting warning labels on false messages or, you know, totally misleading messages. And this was around the time of the election. How did that affect Facebook 'cause, you know, Twitter is a competitor of Facebook?
FRENKEL: Twitter doing that somewhat forced Facebook's hand to become more aggressive in their labeling. For a little while, Facebook had been experimenting with these labels that often directed people to an information center where they were trying to provide more accurate information about the elections or about COVID. But the labels themselves were often confusing. People didn't know what to make of a label that said, for more information about the election, please visit our - you know, and then a link. It didn't say something was false. It didn't really clearly state that something was misleading the way that Twitter's labels did. And so after Twitter really became more aggressive in labeling the Trump posts, we saw Facebook start to change their labels as well. And the language of those labels started to really shift to say this is actually misleading content. There's information provided here that isn't accurate.
GROSS: January 6 was a very violent day in the Capitol. And so many people could see what was leading up to that, and they could see it on Facebook and on other social media. How was Facebook used by the people who planned January 6 and by those who joined in or led the riot and broke into the Capitol building?
FRENKEL: The seeds for what happened on January 6 were sown very early on - really, I would say, the day after the elections. There were people forming Facebook groups called Stop the Steal. We, as reporters, were watching those groups, and we were astounded. I had never seen a Facebook group grow so quickly, adding thousands of users within hours to this group in which they were sharing all sorts of falsified videos and documents about election fraud and really, really churning up anger around this idea that the election had been somehow stolen from Donald Trump.
While Facebook took action on some of those groups, some of the stop-the-steal groups, they allowed others to persist. And, of course, Donald Trump was still on the platform using that moniker, saying stop the steal and claiming the election had been stolen from him. And so within Facebook, they were seeing that they were really not that effective in stopping that idea from spreading and that in the lead-up to January 6, people were getting more and more and more angry. And they were organizing themselves to come to Washington and to march.
Facebook security officials the day before were warned by reporters that there were Facebook groups in which people were posting photos of assault rifles and openly discussing how they were going to bring guns to Washington for this march. And they knew the potential for violence was very, very real, which is why, on that day, Facebook officials gathered to watch what was happening in Washington and to monitor those very groups. They even discussed at one point whether Zuckerberg should call Trump ahead of time. Ultimately, they decided not to because they were worried that it was going to leak to the press that they might do so. But it's very clear from our reporting that Facebook knew the potential for explosive violence was very real that day.
GROSS: Was there a debate within Facebook about whether to do anything to stop this kind of potentially violent organizing on Facebook?
FRENKEL: There was. The security team was constantly debating with other parts of the company about what should be done. And I would note that with their QAnon policy, for instance - I think that's a very interesting one to look at, QAnon obviously being a conspiracy group here in the United States, which has really taken off during the Trump presidency, has millions of people who believe in this idea of a vast sort of ring of cabal of global elites that are really controlling the world. And while they started to make moves towards banning them - they took down some of the groups; they took down some of the accounts - it took several months of seeing that the group was still spreading before Facebook actually took action to ban the group entirely.
And even then, things slipped through. And Facebook's security team was telling its own officials, well, we're not being effective. We're letting them continue to spread and recruit new members. And in these months that are going by, they're organizing on other platforms. They're telling their own Facebook groups, hey, if we get taken down here, come follow us over here on YouTube, or come follow us over here on a messaging app like Telegram. And so they were organizing ahead of time for the planned removal.
GROSS: After January 6, when executives at Facebook saw what happened at the Capitol and saw that Capitol Police were killed by the mob and that the mob breached the Capitol, that they were saying, hang Mike Pence, that they were going after Nancy Pelosi and others - what was the conversation like inside Facebook, and what action did Facebook take?
FRENKEL: There was immediate sort of understanding that this was a watershed moment and that they were going to have to have the discussion they've dreaded having for a very long time, which is, do they remove Donald Trump? And we see them debate that. We see them go back and forth. And really, it's not until Twitter takes action to ban Trump that Facebook sort of makes its announcement, at first that it's a temporary suspension. It's very unclear and muddled. Their messaging is, well, we're removing him for now, but we're going to reevaluate. And ultimately, it's finally announced that they're going to suspend the account, but they're going to refer it to the Facebook oversight board. They were essentially really, again, kicking the can to someone else and saying, we've created this outside body. I'm going to allow them to rule on whether or not we should have removed Donald Trump.
GROSS: And at first, the ban was, like, for a couple of weeks. Right? And then that was extended.
KANG: That's right. The ban was was for a couple weeks. The language was quite interesting. It was indefinite and temporary is the way they described it. They referred it to this body that they describe as a Supreme Court, third-party body that makes decisions on content. Interestingly, months later, the body, the Facebook oversight board, kicked it back, that decision on Trump, to Facebook. And they said, Facebook, you don't have policies that are clear enough on this kind of political speech and taking down an account like Trump, you have to write those policies. It was actually a pretty smart move by the Facebook oversight board. So currently, the final decision on Trump is in the hands of Facebook. They have said that for at least two years, Trump will be banned, and that two years expires, essentially, ahead of his ability to campaign again for the 2024 campaigns.
GROSS: Has Facebook clarified its policy on political speech that is not true, that is inflammatory, that is hate speech, and also its policy on people who amplify that and who threaten to show up with guns and, you know, breach the Capitol building? I mean, Trump might have, you know, started the fire, but people were stoking it.
FRENKEL: They have not clarified that policy. And really, Trump stepping down from office has helped them avoid discussing it. The daily questions that they used to get from reporters are no longer being received by Facebook executives, but that's really just here in the United States. We have to remember that in countries all over the world, this is still a huge problem. There are elections coming up in India. There are elections coming up in a number of countries where the current head of state is very active on Facebook and uses Facebook much in the way that was modeled by Donald Trump. And so by avoiding answering this, by avoiding coming up with a cohesive policy, they've - you know, they've extended the problem. And millions of people all over the world are being affected in democracies that are being threatened by populist leaders using Facebook.
GROSS: What are the changes to Facebook policy that have happened since the Trump administration?
KANG: Facebook now is coordinating much more with governments and with intelligence officials within governments. Every month, they report about disinformation and what they found, and they report to the public. They're trying to be more public, and they're trying to also coordinate with other technology companies to see - for what they're seeing and coordinate on what those other companies are seeing as well on the internet.
FRENKEL: While Facebook has made huge strides in how it reports publicly and transparently about disinformation and has hired, as they say, more than 30,000 people to work in their security apparatus, they still struggle with misinformation, which - the difference there is really interesting, right? One is spread intentionally by a government or by another body to try and influence people. Misinformation is really just bad information shared among people, Americans telling other Americans that the vote has been stolen. And on that, they still don't know what to do, and that's really what's becoming prevalent not just here in the United States but in countries all over the world.
GROSS: Is there a precedent from another social media company about how to deal with that?
KANG: The social media companies are all struggling, and they're creating policies as we go. I will say that Twitter, though it's much smaller, we do have to remember, compared to Facebook, especially when you put Facebook together with its other apps - WhatsApp and Instagram - Twitter's willing to be more experimental. It's quite public in its approach and writing of its policies. I'm not saying that they've got it completely right. YouTube is still very far behind. These social media companies are all struggling with how to handle misinformation and disinformation. And along the lines of misinformation, it is a very current and present danger in that just recently, the chief of staff of the White House, Ron Klain, was saying that when he talks to - when the White House reaches out to Americans and asks why aren't they getting vaccinated, they hear misinformation about dangers with the vaccine. And they - and he said that the No. 1 place where they find that misinformation is on Facebook.
GROSS: Is Facebook trying to do anything about that?
FRENKEL: Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg himself have said that they will not tolerate misinformation about COVID. However, I will note that just today I was curious, and I went to Facebook, and I checked a couple of different groups which I am a part of and which I track for misinformation, and I saw quite a few conspiracies shared about vaccines causing all sorts of problems, whether fertility or otherwise. I will note that scientists say that none of those problems are being documented. And they were sharing videos which had obviously been doctored. They were sharing very experimental information about what could cure COVID. And so just today I saw that the very type of misinformation that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg said they wouldn't tolerate about COVID is still online and very active on Facebook.
GROSS: So as you were wrapping up your investigation for this book, there were several suits filed against Facebook, one from the Federal Trade Commission. There was a group of over 40 state attorneys general which filed suit against Facebook. What were these suits about?
KANG: Just recently, a federal court threw out the lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission in more than 40 states and jurisdictions, and those lawsuits were seeking to break up Facebook. There were competition lawsuits. The feeling - I mean, there is, Terry, very few things right now in Washington that unite Democrats and Republicans than the idea that Facebook is too big and too powerful.
So these lawsuits were attempting to address the size and the dominance of Facebook. The Federal Trade Commission does have the ability. The judge in this case said come back to us and do a better job essentially of writing your lawsuit. But it was a big step back for any sort of regulatory pressure on the company. The company's stock soared after the announcement. It now - right after the announcement, the stock soared so much that the company was valued at over $1 trillion.
GROSS: You've been reporting on Facebook for years, so this book is kind of like the culmination of your Facebook reporting. Facebook was not always happy with your reports. What did you hear from Facebook when you reported something that made the leadership unhappy and that they wanted to criticize?
FRENKEL: Facebook is very controlling of their message, and they're always concerned about what journalists uncover that is not sanctioned by the company. And, of course, as journalists, that's what we're most interested in. We're most interested in hearing the unfiltered ideas and the raw discussions, what's happening behind the scenes that isn't the polished sort of formal thought that they present to the public but that where they got there. And that's what we want to do with this book is show people how Facebook got here. How did we arrive at our present moment? We went through a very thorough fact-checking process with Facebook for this book. It took several months. We went through every scene. We went through really every detail and gave them a chance to respond and correct anything that they might find inaccurate, because we want this to be a very thorough understanding of the company and the decisions made by its top leadership.
GROSS: What difficulty did you have getting people in Facebook to talk with you? What were they risking? Had they signed nondisclosure agreements about what happens inside Facebook?
KANG: Of the more than 400 people we interviewed for this book, many currently still are at Facebook. Many are former employees, and many did sign NDAs. So they spoke to us at risk. We are grateful that they spoke to us. I think that that speaks to the fact that they wanted their story to be told as they understood it from inside. It was not easy. This is a project that took over two years as a book, and our reporting has extended even further than that. But we just dug and dug and dug because we knew that there was more than just the sort of curated and scripted talking points that the company espouses. We wanted to take people behind the scenes. And the people who did speak to us spoke to us, and they put their trust in us. And we are so grateful.
FRENKEL: I would add that there's sometimes a notion that the people we spoke to were somehow disillusioned, disenfranchised or were coming to us as reporters because they were mad at Facebook. And that's not what we found. We found the vast majority of people still work there. And they actually love the company. And they care about the company, and they want it to do better. Their motivation for speaking to us was often wanting things to come to light publicly so that the company could change.
GROSS: Two people from Facebook who did not give you interviews were Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.
FRENKEL: Yes. At the start of this book, we asked Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to sit with us - an interview, and they declined. We repeated our request multiple times, and they continued to decline.
GROSS: Well, I thank you so much for your reporting and for joining us today. Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang, thank you.
KANG: Thank you, Terry.
FRENKEL: Thank you so much for having us.
GROSS: Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang are reporters for The New York Times. Their new book is called "An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle For Domination." Facebook contacted us with this statement in response to the book. Quote, "every day we make difficult decisions on where to draw the line between free expression and harmful speech on privacy, security and other issues. And we have expert leaders who engage outside stakeholders as we craft our policies. But we should not be making these decisions on our own and have for years advocated for updated regulations where democratic governments set industry standards to which we can all adhere," unquote.
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