
Don't Be Afraid To Break Things
07/20/22 • 38 min
3 Listeners
If our first episode brought you into the beginning of Zuckerberg’s vision for connecting at scale, this story is about the consequences of pursuing that vision at full speed. In the 2000s, Facebook made a big bet to become a platform for developers – and all social activity across the web. It would bring us FarmVille and “Log In With Facebook.” But years later, it would lead the company into one of its biggest scandals: Cambridge Analytica.
- Hosted by Shirin Ghaffary (@shiringhaffary) and Alex Heath (@alexeheath)
- Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear next week's episode by hitting the plus sign in your favorite podcast app
- Follow @recode and @verge for more coverage of Meta and Big Tech
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
If our first episode brought you into the beginning of Zuckerberg’s vision for connecting at scale, this story is about the consequences of pursuing that vision at full speed. In the 2000s, Facebook made a big bet to become a platform for developers – and all social activity across the web. It would bring us FarmVille and “Log In With Facebook.” But years later, it would lead the company into one of its biggest scandals: Cambridge Analytica.
- Hosted by Shirin Ghaffary (@shiringhaffary) and Alex Heath (@alexeheath)
- Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear next week's episode by hitting the plus sign in your favorite podcast app
- Follow @recode and @verge for more coverage of Meta and Big Tech
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Previous Episode

"Facebook Gets A Facelift"
Long before Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook Meta and made an unprecedented pivot into the metaverse, he invented a feature that turned Facebook into a social network behemoth. The News Feed, which put your friends’ status updates onto your homepage, changed the way we interact online. It was a strong statement of Zuckerberg’s values: that connecting, and sharing, at scale would be de-facto good for the world. It was also his first public controversy.
- Hosted by Shirin Ghaffary (@shiringhaffary) and Alex Heath (@alexeheath)
- Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear next week's episode by hitting the plus sign in your favorite podcast app
- Follow @recode and @verge for more coverage of Meta and Big Tech
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Next Episode

Why Instagram Broke Its Square
When Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram in 2012, he promised he would be hands-off with the company’s curated aesthetic and simple features. But as Facebook scaled the startup into a social media juggernaut, tensions flared. Instagram’s founders would leave, and it’s now a very different app than when it first started. But are the changes setting the company up to compete in the future? Or is Instagram losing the magic that made it great in the first place?
- Hosted by Shirin Ghaffary (@shiringhaffary) and Alex Heath (@alexeheath)
- Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear next week's episode by hitting the plus sign in your favorite podcast app
- Follow @recode and @verge for more coverage of Meta and Big Tech
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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