On this edition of Your Call, we speak with New York Times tech reporter Sheera Frenkel, co-author of the new book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination.
It reveals Facebook’s growth-at-any-cost-business strategy, how the platform became a haven for disinformation and hate speech, and how the company’s ad business model was predicated on mining user’s personal data. In 2020 alone, Facebook brought in $85.9 billion in revenue. What will it take to regulate Facebook and hold them accountable?
Guest:
Sheera Frenkel, award-winning tech reporter for the New York Times who covers cybersecurity. Previously, she spent over a decade in the Middle East as a foreign correspondent, reporting for BuzzFeed, NPR and more. She is co-author of the new book, “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination”
Web Resources:
The New York Times, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg’s Partnership Did Not Survive Trump
The New York Times, Sheera Frenkel: The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online
Knight Columbia: Researchers, NYU, Knight Institute Condemn Facebook’s Effort to Squelch Independent Research about Misinformation
The Guardian, Chris McGreal: Facebook let fossil-fuel industry push climate misinformation, report finds
