Chapter 11: Coalition of the Willing
1. An op-ed published in the New York Times: Chris Hughes, “Opinion: It’s Time to Break up Facebook,” New York Times, May 9, 2019.
2. When a reporter for France 2 television news: Zuckerberg’s May 10, 2019 interview with Laurent Delahousse of France 2 television can be viewed on the francetvinfo website.
3. “If what you care about”: Ibid.
4. the FTC was poised to fine the company: Lauren Feiner, “Facebook Says the FTC Privacy Inquiry Could Cost as Much as $5 Billion,” CNBC website, April 24, 2019.
5. the plan to break down the walls: Mike Isaac, “Zuckerberg Plans to Integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger,” New York Times, January 25, 2019.
6. Making the apps “interoperable”: Mark Zuckerberg, “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking,” Facebook blog post, March 6, 2019.
7. Blue, Instagram, and WhatsApp: U.S. House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law of the Committee of the Judiciary, Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets, October 6, 2020, page 136.
8. 2.6 billion users globally: Isaac, “Zuckerberg Plans to Integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.”
9. After the merger, Instagram had stayed at arm’s length: Mike Isaac, “When Zuckerberg Asserted Control, Instagram’s Founders Chafed,” New York Times, September 25, 2018.
10. Zuckerberg, who feared Instagram: Sarah Frier, NO FILTER: The Inside Story of Instagram (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020), pp. 226–28.
11. Instagram introduced its first ads in November 2013: Vindu Goel and Sydney Ember, “Instagram to Open Its Photo Feed to Ads,” New York Times, June 2, 2015.
12. an estimated value of $100 billion: Emily McCormick, “Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More than $100 Billion,” Bloomberg, June 25, 2018.
13. Zuckerberg and Sandberg’s involvement: Sarah Frier, “Zuckerberg’s Jealousy Held Back Instagram and Drove off Founders: An Excerpt from No Filter,” Bloomberg, April 7, 2020.
14. The story was similar with WhatsApp: Parmy Olson, “WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton Gives the Inside Story on #DeleteFacebook and Why He Left $850 Million Behind,” Forbes, September 26, 2018.
15. “The files show evidence of Facebook taking aggressive positions”: Isobel Asher Hamilton, “Emails Show Mark Zuckerberg Personally Approved Facebook’s Decision to Cut off Vine’s Access to Data,” Business Insider, December 5, 2018.
Chapter 12: Existential Threat
1. Sandberg met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Emily Birnbaum, “Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg Meets with Senators on Privacy,” The Hill, May 7, 2019.
2. “What a pleasure to visit”: Nancy Pelosi, Facebook post, July 22, 2015.
3. On Wednesday, May 22, 2019: Drew Harwell, “Faked Peolosi Videos, Slowed to Make Her Appear Drunk, Spread across Social Media, Washington Post, May 23, 2019.
4. It racked up more than two thousand comments: Ed Mazza, “WHOOPS: Giuliani Busted with Doctored Pelosi Video as He Tweets about Integrity,” Huffington Post, May 23, 2019.
5. She doesn’t drink alcohoclass="underline" Sarah Mervosh, “Distorted Videos of Nancy Pelosi Spread on Facebook and Twitter, Helped by Trump,” New York Times, May 24, 2019.
6. In the original broadcast: The May 22, 2019 “Speaker Pelosi at CAP Ideas Conference” video can be viewed on C-Span’s website.
7. Within hours, YouTube had removed the clip: Brian Fung, “Why It Took Facebook So Long to Act against the Doctored Pelosi Video,” CNN website, May 25, 2019.
8. Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island tweeted: David Cicilline, “Hey @facebook, you are screwing up,” tweet posted May 24, 2019.
9. Sen. Brian Schatz called out the platform: Brian Schatz, “Facebook is very responsive to my office when I want to talk about federal legislation,” tweet posted May 24, 2019.
10. Macron and Jacinda Ardern: Ryan Browne, “New Zealand and France Unveil Plans to Tackle Online Extremism without the US on Board,” CNBC website, May 15, 2019.
11. Weeks later, during a paneclass="underline" “Sheryl Sandberg Talks Diversity and Privacy at Cannes Lions,” June 19, 2019, video can be viewed on Facebook.
12. “Chopping a great American success story into bits”: Nick Clegg, “Breaking up Facebook Is Not the Answer,” New York Times, May 11, 2019.
13. in an internal post in March: Ryan Mac, “Mark Zuckerberg Tried Hard to Get Facebook into China. Now the Company May be Backing Away,” Buzzfeed News, March 6, 2019.
14. The Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation: Cecilia Kang, David Streitfeld, and Annie Karni, “Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In,” New York Times, June 3, 2019.
15. Led by New York, eight state attorneys generaclass="underline" John D. McKinnon, “States Prepare to Launch Investigations into Tech Giants,” Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2019.
16. The House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee began a separate inquiry: Cecilia Kang, “House Opens Tech Antitrust Inquiry with Look at Threat to News Media,” New York Times, June 11, 2019.
17. In two Q&A meetings in July: Casey Newton, “All Hands on Deck,” The Verge, October 1, 2019.
Chapter 13: The Oval Interference
1. Behind Zuckerberg, a small gold statue of Poseidon: Chip Somodevilla, “President Donald Trump Welcomes NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to the White House,” www.getty.images.com, News Collection #1139968795.
2. “Facebook was always anti-Trump”: Maya Kosoff, “Trump Slams Zuckerberg: ‘Facebook Was Always Anti-Trump’,” Vanity Fair, September 27, 2017.
3. dinners and meetings for Zuckerberg with influential conservatives: Natasha Bertrand and Daniel Lippman, “Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Private Meetings with Conservative Pundits,” Politico, October 14, 2019.
4. From the fourteenth floor of an office tower: Don Alexander Hawkins, “Welcome to Rosslyn, Team Trump. Here’s All You Need to Know,” Politico, December 16, 2018.
5. They were planning to spend at least $100 million: Grace Manthey, “Presidential Campaigns Set New Records for Social Media Ad Spending,” ABC7 News online, October 29, 2020.
6. more than double the amount from the 2016 campaign: Bryan Clark, “Facebook Confirms: Donald Trumped Hillary on the Social Network during 2016 Election,” TNW, April 4, 2018.
7. she traveled to Atlanta as the featured speaker: Jeff Amy, “Advocates Fault Facebook over Misleading Posts by Politicos,” Associated Press, September 26, 2019.
8. On June 30, 2019, she had: “Facebook’s Civil Rights Audit Progress Report,” June 30, 2019. PDF can be accessed on FB website.
9. Clegg dropped a bombshelclass="underline" Nick Clegg, “Facebook, Elections and Political Speech,” Facebook blog post, September 24, 2019.
10. When she took the stage: A.R. Shaw, “Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Confronts Race, Diversity at ‘Civil Rights x Tech’,” A.R. Shaw, Rolling Out, October 4, 2019.