YouSaid · the spoken record

Nicole Wong

lines on the record: 122
first: 2018-09-12
most recent: 2018-09-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Before you get to it. It felt to me like they had to update their policies to meet the level of vitriol he was propagating on the process.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This democracy are tools that will be used in China, in Russia, in Turkey, in Saudi Arabia. Appreciate the fact that we are the global platform and that what we build, everybody will have the right to demand”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do worry about it, but I also think that we have to have an honest conversation about what they are looking for. Some of the solutions that I see get bandied about by folks who are not as sophisticated but understanding what's happening, like, well, there should only be verified users on these systems. Or we should have these really blunt instruments and we just don't allow that type of content at all. Verified users, large blunt instruments of censorship, those are authoritarian government tools. And so at some point, both we and these companies are going to need to stand up and say, like, the things you are asking us to build in service for.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Do you feel there's an actual risk when you have Orange Hatch all of a sudden who didn't talk about antitrust, is talking about antitrust, or maybe the president tweeting that Google's trying to skew his search results?”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I don't know. And in this environment, and because they are put on their back foot, I think it's going to be super hard. And what that might mean is that folks like me or you or others outside of that environment say like, hey, that's not actually the thing that we think is happening, nor are we worried about that”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right? From what I can understand. It's algorithmically based and it is not about, hey, I like this political decision better than that political decision. No one's got time.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I don't think so. Unfortunately, I think they got their hair on fire, is what their inlinks put out the hair, right? I mean, what do you make of it? Like Jack will be in front of the House members who will only talk about diamond and silk and everything, like being pushed down and with Laura Ingram talked about nationalizing Google and Facebook. I know. I know you're rolling your eyes and rolling my eyes too. But these are being talked about by people who have serious impact on potential people who could have serious impact.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right? So, some things are going to, there's going to be cost of refocusing this principles, but maybe that's a different world that we actually ought to be trying to build. Yeah.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And maybe that slows it down. Right? So maybe that means that things like Black Lives Matter or to Hare Square have a little bit more trouble getting off the ground quickly. Maybe the Ferguson thing you don't hear about that as fast as you do now and as quickly among your words.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is not relevance, right? It's not what meets your answers, your question, but what more stuff that you like. Personalization. Engagement, what keeps you here, which today we now know very clearly, the most outrageous thing you can find, and speed. So speed is still there, but the first two have changed. And that has, I think, propelled. You're absolutely right crazy environment that we're in now. So what if we change the pillars again? What if now everything that we've learned in the last two years, we say, that's not the internet we want to live with?”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so here's, I was thinking about, and I'm not sure I'm going to directly answer that question, but when I first started at Google, I remember having conversations around the pillars of design for search. I don't think they called it exactly that, but it was like the principles on which you design search. And it might have been Matt Cutz that said there's comprehensiveness. We want all the information we can get. There's relevance, meaning we delivered the right response when someone asks a question. And speed. Those were the three pillars of search. And then in the mid-2000s, when social networks and behavioral advertising came into play, there was this change in the principles that we just weren't as concerned, I think, about search anymore. And instead, we were focusing on this other part of the platform. And the dynamics were around personalization.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the question is, do we want to slow that down? Yeah. Is this the moment where we have kind of like a slow food movement for the internet?”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You are going to get so many mistakes doing that. It's the life they chose. It is the life they chose. And the billions they accept.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To say my folks would level up something for me to see And I would get a day. Right, to sort of think about it and get some more information about what does this mean in India, right? What are the ramifications and to touch base with people in India to say like, should I do this or that? They appear not to have that latitude anymore. And what I'm hearing is that they have like four or five seconds per piece of controversial content to make a decision”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Facebook's in this really awkward position where it's trying to have a global platform and one set of rules imposed consistently. And the fact of the matter is that every understanding of content is incredibly nuanced from a perspective of what it is in the culture, what it is in the political system, how the legal environment handles a content problem. And so I know what they're trying to do, and I understand that that's the only way to scale it. I just think it's really hard. And I will say that as someone who gets to say that in hindsight, because I'm not that cider anymore. And in the days when I did it, it was millions, not billions of users, right? It was hundreds of, I don't remember in the tens or scores of hours per minute on YouTube, not in the hundreds of hours of YouTube of content on YouTube. And so I actually had the time.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Super complicated. No silver bullet. And I think And somewhat frustrated by the level of conversation in each of the countries that is trying to wrestle with it because they are all dealing with it as if it were not global. Right. And so”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not a human Like human voice About the response from the anticipation. Let me just say tech companies did not anticipate any of this stuff and they didn't anticipate and they were sloppy. Those two things are enough to fix that, please, which is interesting. So these hearings, what do you expect to come out of them? Because there's one in October about antitrust. There's one later in the afternoon tomorrow, which will already have been news with Jack Dorsey by himself around content moderation. So let's talk about that one. And then I want to know what to expect, actually, content moderation, which is a nice way of saying. Censorship, or possibly not, or First Amendment. You're a First Amendment lawyer. How do you look at this incredibly fraught?”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And I think at that first category, I don't know if you were including the use of bots. Like, I think these companies ought to be labeling bots. Like, I should know if I'm interacting with a human or not a human. And I think that that's not just like a bot, but like a robot. Because I think Google did like a demo of its new voice, like human voice. It was super convincing and eerie. We should know that we're not interacting with a human being because as we go forward and as this human-like AI becomes more and more prevalent, there ought to be a clear understanding of when I'm dealing with a human and when I'm not when I have to care about the response. That's called anticipation. You're anticipating. Let me just say...”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I get that. But I do think the three things for them are one, clean up the fake accounts, which they let grow rampant because they want a growth, growth, growth. Fake accounts, an anonymous account, like that we can't track in any way too, is clean up transparency and political ads. They just didn't do that. They just didn't do their job. That's it. And they're transparent everywhere else. They should be transparent there. And the last thing is the fake news. Again, the sloppy management of fake news.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I think that's absolutely true. And I think figuring out how to, what is tech's role, right, for the coming election, especially we're less than 100 days out now, right? So what is the role? That's super important, but I just didn't want to lose sight of that.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, like, I agree. I just literally made that argument. I actually agree with you. Could have shifted. I think we will never. Or how it echoed into the media. Or it was a huge number.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Vote for Misogynist. Anti-Semitic intolerant. Right. Right, absolutely. I agree with you. I just literally made that argument. I actually agree with you. Someone was like, we were talking about talking to Bannon. I'm like, Bannon got him elected. Like, that's what you need to, like, no amount of amplification by the media will make it any worse or less as he did it, which is interesting. But I see why people are offended by him, obviously. But one of the things that I thought was interesting, though, even though 63 million people did, it's where those edge cases where things could have shifted differently. I think we will never know that. I think that's the problem is there is no way to trace it anymore. There's no way to find it. It's almost like an episode of scandal. It's like you're never going to figure it out. And so I think that will haunt this entire election process because it's never going to be known if there was 50 ads that changed everything or not. That could have gone. Or you could also blame it on six things Hillary Clinton said that could have shifted it to the deplorables thing didn't work very well. Or how it echoed.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way this election turned out is not because of tech or Russian disinformation. We had 63 million people vote for a man who was blatantly misogynist racist, anti-Semitic, intolerant, right? Like all of those things, and he wasn't hiding it from us. And 63 million people didn't find that disqualifying.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but there was also he accepted the outcomes of elections both here and in Europe as like Facebook had, that was Facebook's issue. And it's not.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not, absolutely. And it could go really wrong, right? Like if we do it poorly Absolutely. My issues with them were the water under bridge. Let's put the water under bridge. Let's focus on solutions. I'm like, let's reflect on the problems. I know you talk that about blame, but I think there's something very good in thinking about why you went wrong.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You thought that was supposed to be a silver bullet, and it's not. It's not, absolutely. And it could go really wrong, right? Like if we do it poorly, we will replicate all the mistakes we're currently making. Absolutely. My issues with...”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He did wear a second day and their questions were better second day. Yes, yeah, yeah, for some reason I have. Yes, I agree. Which, like 10 hours in that seat, that sucks for anybody. So I thought you did fine. And I thought the thing that I think really kept sort of bothering me during that was I think on the second day and maybe it was because he was a little bit worn down, he kept referring to AI as the solution. Like, oh, we're going to start handling this using more AI. And this notion that we can resolve content and disinformation problems just by throwing some AI about it. AI can help, but it's not going to solve the problem. And I think that if you were not well informed about how AI or just machine learning works.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That something will be done, but you can't actually devise a system. My point being is that these companies have operated largely unfettered for a long, long time. And that's, I mean, they would say not, but I don't know. I think if you were a broadcast company or a media company, you'd be like, hey, get on the legal train that we've been on for years. So how did you assess the MARC hearings? I thought he did well only because they were terrible. That's really pretty much.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And so all the hard work and all the commit. You can use the hearing to get a commitment that something will be done, but you can't actually devise a point.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That he's going to have to do it many more times. Oh, for sure. But whether it'll be a CEO or not, I think is up for debate. And here's the thing is. You don't create solutions in a hearing. No.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, but not that they're not big, but you know what I mean? No, but no, but no, but no, Right. Mark was the first big one. How do you assess that encounter? I think it's just the beginning. This is going to go. I was like strap on your wooden chair. That he's going to have to do it many times. All of them on everything. And by the way, it's not just Russia. It's going to go to AI. It's going to go to IoT. It's going to go to everything, everything.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I got sent out. Yeah, yeah, but yeah. Not that they're not big, but you know what I mean? No, no, but totally. Like you send your vice president of public policy or you send your head of comms or head of product. Right. Mark was the”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Easy stuff. Questions Now, this has been a relatively new thing for tech. Now, Jerry Yang did go and get his head handed to him during the moral pygmy. Moral pygmy, if you recall. I do. I remember saying, don't go. I'm going to do something bad to you there. And he's like, I'm like, no. There's no winning on this one. He really did screw it things going on there. This was in China. But it's been very little. I think Mark was the first really big correct. CEO.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alex Jones, whatever it is, find the easy stuff and decide we have agreement on how we're going to handle that easy stuff. Whether it's by legislation or something else. And then lean into the hard questions because there's lots of hard questions and figure out what can we make progress on even if imperfect, what can we not, that this is not a tech company solution, it's a different solution.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And here's what we've done to fix it. And that's also like, that's a really good knowing that they'll be held accountable, that's a good function of a congressional hearing. What I think it sometimes gets used as is a platform for assigning blame. A platform for a political grandstanding. That's unuseful. And anyone who thinks someone's going to go in there, they're like, we found the silver bullet, that's so not going to happen because this problem is so complex and so beyond just what the tech companies can do, right? Like any expectation that that's going to happen, we should kill that part now. Right, right. But to me, optimal results would be that you find some agreement about what's the easy stuff.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, right. That's always a good thing. About a thing. Look at this. And that's an important reason. They made progress since the last hearing that they did. So, what they want to do is say, here's what we did wrong, and here's what we're doing.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's true. But I think it's important to think about what are hearings good for and what are they not good for? And I've done like five, right? So hearings are super good for putting executives or companies feet to the fire, right? That's always a good thing. It's always a good thing. And educating the policymakers and their staff, as well as the public about a thing. Look at this. And so educating Russian disinformation campaigns, that's good for all of us. And that's an important reason to have them there. It's good for, again, like holding them to a schedule. So my assumption is if Jack and Cheryl are showing up, they have some good news to report, right? They've made progress since the last hearing.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Screw you, like either show up or you don't. And they're going to have a wooden chair there, apparently. That's what they tell me. So talk about the implications of this. These hearings, I think, are actually more important because they're actually, they're serious politicians who actually know a few things about things.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mom, please. Were they teenagers now? They are. They are both in high school. It's awesome. And I haven't seen him since. I love the myth, Jeremy, and it's an amazing time. So, yeah, so part of it is being home. Part of it is I consult for some companies. I do some work with nonprofits like Mozilla Foundation, which is doing a lot of work on the area of internet health witness, which is a human rights organization that was founded like 25 years ago by Peter Gabriel to do”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mom, please. Are they teenagers now? They are. They are both in high school. It's awesome. My son left the other day and I haven't seen him since. He was like, bye mom. I'm like, where'd you go? He's a baby again for lunch. I love them both, Darren. It's an amazing time.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Years ago, you say so. Like they're reading Wikipedia page. Yes. Right, you're not quite. And there's a money thing. No, yeah, right. This is our government. And they should serve. So you were there for a couple of years and then came back So, what have you been doing since?”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, because they don't understand it very well. So there's some weariness. I think that's going to change over time. I think that the growing ranks of those at the staff level and at the congressional level are much more savvy than they used to be. If you even just look at not all the questions in congressional testimony are great, but they're way better than they were five years ago. Zuckerberg once. Like they're reading Wikipedia page. But they're way better than they once were. And I think we're getting better at educating them. I think that, you know, we still face a lot of competition. If you're coming out of school with a CS degree, are you going to a private company or are you going into the public sector? Right, you're not going to. And there's a money thing. No, yeah, right? And we haven't instilled in people the sense that they should serve for a time. This is our government, and it's only as good as we are. And they should serve.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're there to fix the email servers, right Amazon and have it delivered that day. Right. So, like Why is that from your experience in government? I had some thoughts about it, but I mean that they just don't think about it. They're not technologically literate people from many of the people that go into it, and they operate in the very old system that resists that kind of change. And also they're fearful of it and wary.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. They think that you're there to fix the email servers, right? As opposed to thinking about forward thinking policy and the ramifications of what it means to use all this technology in our world. And I think we are doing ourselves a disservice by not doing that. I think that there are big and small things that I've been talking with people about. Like what should be the tech agenda for social impact? Part of it is government. Part of it is like, just make shit work, right? Right, right. Like if you can order a chocolate cake on Amazon and have it delivered that day, then you ought to be able to get your Social Security benefits just as easily. Right. So there's that. And then there's the broader vision, which is like, what's our moonshot knowing what all of our capabilities are? How do we power?”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The most important lesson and the one that I continue to try and work on is I think that we have not done a good job of filling the ranks in government and in the public sector with Technologically capable, savvy people.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was all there was. Yeah. No, it was, it's all consuming. It was fascinating. Right. Like there's no other experience like it”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Snowden disclosure. Like, that was done. Like, you weren't going to talk about anything else. You've been spying on it. Exactly, which I think was, you know, which the government resisted the government the companies were cooperative with. They said they were not. It just went on. It just seems like a lot of what would happen in the Russia thing, you can draw a very bright line, is that they were not cooperating in the way they used to, in the way they used to, which is interesting. But that's a topic for another day. We may get into that. So you did that. And what was the experience like? You're in the middle of that. That's all there is. That was all there was. Yeah.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's right. The notion that I would go and talk about internet governance or free expression at a time when the Snowden disclosures happen, that was done. You weren't going to talk about anything else. You've been spying on it. Exactly, which I think.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fix the government Started. Right, right, which has been the story ever since. And also, you know, it was interesting, I was writing a column today for the New York Times that I write for, and one of the things that I left out was the damage that Snowden thing did to the relationship between the government and Silicon Valley, which had been relatively cooperative until then. And then it was broken rather. I think that's right.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Huge, and like when you go into government, they tell you fix the government, don't break the internet. They tell you, focus on three things. Like you got to have three priorities because every day is an emergency and you're going to get distracted. Going in in like April, I was like getting ready to move and I was like, where are the kids going to go to school? And I was like, okay, so I'll do maybe internet governance and free expression, which is sort of where my passions lie. And maybe I'll do some privacy. And we were planning to move in July of that summer. June 9th, if you remember, is when the Edward Snowden disclosures started. And they were like, how soon are you getting here? So I started the next week. And honestly, like the first half of the time I was there was spent on privacy surveillance issues. And most importantly, I think the work that I'm most proud of was public policy implications of big data. Right.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT