YouSaid · the spoken record

Steven Levy

lines on the record: 129
first: 2020-02-24
most recent: 2020-02-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I think in some ways it looks like he was always Mark Zuckerberg. He always had those traits. And again, that was fascinating to me to learn his determination when he lit on computers, he was going to learn about them. And he had a tutor. His parents got him a tutor. They took him to a course when he learned his high school. Teachers couldn't teach him anything. He went to a college, and his father took him there. And they thought it to his father, you're going to have to leave your son behind. He said, no, no, no. He's the student. Put him in there. He always was able to skate by. In Harvard, we ran into big trouble with face mash. I saw the movie.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He always has. Let's talk a little bit about his background. So he grew up in a relatively wealthy area. His father was a dentist, but interested in math and computers probably should have been in computers rather than become a dentist. He was introduced very early. He was active. He seemed to have been the alpha male of his group of computer enthusiasts, essentially, and continued to do that at Exeter, always styled himself as the main geek on campus at Harvard. He used the Crimson really. It seems like the Crimson was quite used by him in a lot of ways.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And he adopted to it pretty well, and he has this determination to do what he wants. And that happened when he was at Harvard, and it happens now at Facebook. He is calling all the shots that he always has.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From the early, I mean, he is who he is. He's always had a fascination with power. He loved Augustus Caesar, right? He loved, he was a very competitive game player He was always the kind of person. He could deal socially well. He knew how to pull social levers. He figured that out. But he has a basic shyness to him. He's gotten a lot better intrapersonal communications. Interviewing him now was 100% different than interviewing him. No.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Horace Mann And he went to Phillips, Exeter. That's Right, right. It was really interesting. And I think I was trying to think if you meant to like, because what's interesting is what they tend to do at Facebook I've noticed is like that was previous mark, that was old Mark. And I'm like, it's the same friggin' mark.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what I mean? Like They're great people, but they deferred him. They told me a story where he wanted to go to a private high school because the public high school where he was wouldn't have all the courses he wanted, didn't have computer science. He wanted an accident. And they very much wanted to go, they hit him to go to Horace Mann, right? Correct. And he wanted to go to Phillips Exeter. And they said, well, at least do the interview at Horace Mann. And he said, I'll do the interview, but I'm going to Phillips Exeter. And he went to Phillips Exeter. That's it. He called the shots even when he was a kid.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's one of my wife's favorite anecdotes. She says, that really says a lot about him. It does. It says one of his friends said, and this is when he was at Harvard, he was with his girlfriend and now his wife. And she was worried because he was just like walking to the street. And his friend, it was Joe Green, said, there's this force field that protects him because he's got such confidence. And that's a great point you make about his early life. I actually wound up writing more about his early life than I thought because for that very reason he lived a charmed existence from the moment he was born. Everything went his way in his family. And I talked to his parents.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's talk about that journey of the past couple of years because I think pulling up the rock is correct, but it was always there. One of the things, let's start with the beginning of the book. I think one of the things that it reminded me of, you know, and again, this is a very familiar story to me and others who have covered them for a long time. I've also covered them since they were very small, but I'm not sure if you're meaning to do this, but a lot of what's happening now you can see in that. And a lot of what Mark tells you during these interviews is, oh, this is when I was a young person, I think he's been like this the whole time and continues to be like that there's a brazenness to him, there's an arrogance to him wrapped in shyness, wrapped in overconfidence or confidence in an extreme method you talk about it, the one scene in the street where he almost gets run over. It's funny, but it's not. I was like, oh.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There have been a lot of criticisms of Facebook over the years. You certainly won't totally on top of it. And the privacy people were totally on top of it. But they really didn't stick until that election. I believe that Donald Trump hadn't won the election. The narrative of Facebook would be different. But what happened was that instantly people started pointing fingers to Facebook. And it was like lifting this rock. And all of a sudden they saw all the things creepy crawling underneath it and they became top of mind rather than just one little complaint in this amazing social network that connected the world.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. The first thing I did for this book was I went to Nigeria with Zuckerberg. And I think that was peak Facebook probably. He was treated like a national hero, and one entrepreneur in Nigeria told me, From now on, our whole lives will be before Zuckerberg and after Zuckerberg. Everything was going well for them. And as you say,”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Silicon Valley in that regard, always making excuses for sloppiness or maybe not so much sloppiness. So talk a little bit about, you know, you were there when they were flying high, essentially. That's right.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some parts are damaging things. So when you went to write the book, I want to get into the book itself and the details of the things you found out in a second, but I want people to understand what most people's book experience is, which is not that, which is sometimes you get that. And there's a whole, you know, there's a history of all kinds of writers writing about tech that were writing about a journey or making something or something like that, which it tends to work better. When you appeared at Facebook, as you said, in 2016, they were hung the moon period. Everyone thought they were brilliant. There was the Trump situation, but you do start to talk about that sort of fatal moment when, speaking of David Kirkpatrick, Mark gave that interview, which I remember hearing it and thinking he's got to be kidding. And to me, that was a major moment of, you already had a sense from these people that they pushed lines a little farther than other people compared. I always felt they were the most compromised companies.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Insanely great. What you get to do is you understand the language that they talk to when they talk to each other. And when you can walk into an interview and speak that language, even with a PR person in the room, they're going to tell you more. They're going to think in their heads that it's kind of okay because this person is speaking our language there. And they'll say things in the room that they wouldn't say otherwise. And sometimes they're damaging things.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The access though helped me tell the whole story, get the shape of it. In a way, doing a project like this, when you really immerse yourself into the company.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you have to be conscious. I guess the worry is that you're going to get some sort of Stockholm syndrome kind of thing going on, that by listening to them so much, you see the world through their eyes and evaluate it on that. I would argue that doesn't happen there. I think even though it's a fair book, and only the most vicious Facebook hater would say it's too kind because as I wrote the book and it took its shape, it actually turned out more negative than I thought it was going to be just by the accumulation of things that they did wrong and the recklessness through which they emphasize growth. Yeah, which you discuss. And so I feel that”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nope. To me, access I'm asking you a different question. I'm talking about what is access due in tech for years and years, tech reporters were more fanboys and you and I both agree on. I think you must agree on that. Where it was sort of they hung the moon, these cover after cover of what geniuses they are. And it's a little more complicated. And then it's shifted to very negative, like which may not be fair either. And same things happening in Washington. It's happening everywhere. So talk a little bit about the, like when you do get that access, what does it do as a what did you think about when you were doing this book?”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't get your point, Carol. I mean, to me, they didn't control over the book. Nope. To me, access. I'm able to listen to things and I can make my own judgment on it. to hear that not listening to it would make me write a better book. I don't buy that. I was able to listen to all of it. And as you say, fair is what I promised them. And I think I delivered that.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More and more, I do have a lot of access, but I didn't like having access. And when I started to encounter companies that were more difficult like Uber and back and forth I had with Yahoo, I found access to be a real problem for reporters. So talk a little bit about that. Were you worried about telling their side of the story?”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's talk about our side of the story and the listening to this because, again, I think this is where you're going to get a lot of pushback. It's not a kind book. It's actually just a recounting of what happened, a lot of, especially the early part of it. It's a lot of stuff I had forgotten about his dumb hock pockets and loving Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar. And, you know, it was a lot of the stories of Facebook that we all have read in different programs. Yes, you got a lot of details. You got a lot of detail. A lot of new deals. So, a lot of it, but one of the things was that I think some people will find it too kind and some people I find it relatively fair and too kind in many places. So talk about when you get access, I want people to understand”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I had been told since that numerous times during the course of the last few years, they would say, gee, he's still around here. We're still talking to him. Is this a good idea? And they figured by then, look, he's going to write the book anyway. We might as well have someone listen to us. We tell them our side of the story.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And I think David's book was more reliable. But so much has happened since then. And when I first asked him, I said, is anyone writing a book about Facebook? And they said, no. And I said, well, I'd like to do that. And they said no. And then I said, let's take a meeting. And then they said, well, if anyone does it, it'll be you, but still no. But maybe you should write something that Mark and Cheryl can see, saying why it's a good idea for us to do this book. And I use the Google book as an example. I thought it was a way that instead of having to explain who they were, they could just give people the book and say, this is what we're all about. And that worked out for Google. And I said the same thing would apply here. And the next thing I knew, they said yes. And now this was before all their troubles. This is before the 20th.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While they knew And it had been a long time since any book had been written about Facebook. There was a pretty good one by David Kirkpatrick that came out in 2010, right? So think of all the things that happened.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm going to be a cynical person here, but I had access to AOL. It was up and down. And then they cut off access when they realized in the early days at various times. Talk about the ups and downs of access because there's a lot of books being written on Facebook, most of which have minor access, not very much access. This was unprecedented. Why did they invite you into their den, Stephen Levy?”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Want to do it these days or should do. And actually, I literally just showed them the book yesterday because our excerpt was about to come out and wired. It's all done. They can't change it. It's all been printed. And I just wanted to give them a heads up.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that would happen. And then the other thing, and this was incredibly valuable, that when I talked to former employees, some of them just talked right away, but other ones said, gee, I'm a little worried about Facebook. I'll only do this if Facebook says it's okay. And Facebook always said it's okay. You can talk to him. So I got the benefit of what they said. I went to some Facebook things. Not a lot. I wasn't a fly on the wall, but I talked to over 300 people for this book and was able to. Put together the story with the help of other kinds of sources, of course, of the whole story of Facebook. And Facebook didn't get any approval over it. I promised them I would fact check it, and I did. I hired fact-checkers to go over it. That's something that nonfiction authors...”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. So here's the deal I have access to their employees. Usually when I do the interviews on campus, there was a PR person.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From very early on. Yeah, I'm covering them. I did the cover story for Newsweek in 2007. And so I had done the previous book in the plex about Google with access under the conditions that I wrote my book. They didn't get to see it in advance. They didn't get to edit it. But I had access to their employees. And I wanted to do the same thing for Facebook. It took me a longer time to convince Facebook that that was a good idea. But they signed on.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You did it. You did it I joined an internet company. Yes, that's Sure. Well, when I started the book, it was in mid 2016. And I actually got the idea for the book in late 2015. I was looking around for a book topic and I saw that a billion people have been on Facebook on the same day. And I thought, who are you kidding? This is your next book. This company, Facebook.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did we? Oh, that's. Oh, yeah, that was a fake company, though. We never did it. It's a long story. We were all in the dawn of the internet age. We thought that maybe reporters should start these interesting new companies. I went ahead and did it. You did it. You did it. I did it. I did it. And none of you did, but it was on the, we were going to get money from. Oh, I joined an internet company. Yes, that's true. That's a fair point. So that's right, you were at Medium. So let's talk a little bit about, I'm going to get into your background in a second, but I want to talk about this book because having access is not always a good thing in some cases. I talk a lot about this with a lot of young reporters. Is the trade-offs between having access? So talk a little about how this worked out, how you got this access, and what you thought you were trying to do when you started the book.”
2020-02-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steven Levy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT