November 27, 2023 • 32 mins
While Meta communications director Andy Stone has ruffled more than a few feathers since joining the company in 2014, it seems that in Russia things are a bit more serious. Apparently, he's on a wanted list created by Russia's Ministry of the Interior. But why?
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Tech are you? If you've been listening to tech Stuff
for a while, or if you keep up with tech
(00:25):
news in general, the name Andy Stone might ring a
bell now. Unlike a lot of the other folks that
I talk about on the show, you know, like geniuses
like Ada Lovelace or Nikola Tesla, or you know, company
founders like Gordon Moore or Steve Wozniak, or even controversial
(00:46):
corporate leaders like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, Andy Stone
isn't that deeply rooted in the world of tech. In fact,
until twenty fourteen, he spent his professional career working in
government and campaign positions and stuff related to that. And now,
according to reports, Russia's Interior Ministry has added Andy Stone's
(01:10):
name to its wanted list. So I thought we could
do a short episode about Stone, the job he's held
since twenty fourteen, and what might have led him to
be considered a criminal in Russia. Here in the States,
there are people who certainly take issues with some of
the things Stone has said, but I'm not sure anyone
would go so far as to call him a criminal.
(01:31):
Here in the US, Stone's forte is at least presumably
in communications. He attended George Washington University, a prestigious college
here in the US, and he studied political communication while
he was there. That school happens to be located in Washington,
d C. There are a couple of other schools in
(01:52):
that area where typically the students who are going to
those schools often end up working with the government in
some form or another. It's pretty common, like a lot
of jobs are directly or indirectly connected to the US
government or at least a government there. Because my partner
attended Georgetown, which is in DC, and worked for the
(02:13):
French embassy for a while, so again it's a place
where you make connections. Stone worked for presidential candidate John
Kerry's campaign in two thousand and three, and in late
two thousand and four he joined M and R Strategic
Services as a consultant. Now that's a company that primarily
focuses on political communications, so not affiliated with any specific
(02:38):
candidate or party, but is there to act as a
consultant for the purposes of creating political communications, so again
very much in line with what he had already been doing.
He would then become the communications director for Congress in
two thousand and seven, and you kind of see where
this is going. The nature of politics here in America
(03:00):
means that any role you hold in government, like if
you're actually connected to a governmental party, it's likely on
borrowed time election cycles change up who's in charge on
the rag. Now there are, of course, federal employees who
typically hold positions from administration to administration, and they don't
(03:20):
necessarily change each time there's a change in leadership, although
there are efforts to make that be very different. Anyway,
that's getting into a whole different realm. But from two
thousand and three to twenty fourteen, pretty much all of
Andy Stone's work focused on political communications, either as part
(03:41):
of a campaign or part of a governmental body or
part of the private sector, but still catering to politics.
Now that changed in the spring of twenty fourteen, That
is when Meta, then known as Facebook they had not
changed their name yet, offered Stone a gig as a
policy communications manager for Facebook. Now, by this time, Facebook
(04:07):
had already sailed past the incredible milestone of having a
billion active users per month. That had happened actually back
in twenty twelve, so it was definitely already a huge
company by twenty fourteen. They had also acquired Instagram. Also
back in twenty twelve, and just before Stone would join
(04:30):
the company, Facebook had announced it was acquiring Wattsapp. This
was a truly huge acquisition deal in the billions of dollars,
so a lot was going on. In fact, when Stone
joined Facebook, that very same month, the company announced its
intention to acquire Oculus VR, so a lot of the
(04:52):
components that make up you know, various foundational elements of
Meta today, those were all being acquired around the same
time that Andy Stone joined the company. Now, on top
of all that, the company was also launching some very
progressive features. For example, one month before Stone joined Facebook,
(05:12):
the company updated its platform to allow for different gender
designations in support of the LGBTQ plus community, So you
suddenly had a lot more pronouns that you could use
when you were creating your profile and thus represent yourself
more accurately. This was a pretty progressive approach, especially in
(05:33):
twenty fourteen, and Andy Stone had focused a lot of
his career on how to communicate progressive policies to the public,
because most of the time he was focusing on socially
progressive democratic campaigns and policies, So this kind of was
a type of synergy when he joined Facebook. I don't
(05:55):
have very much background about Andy Stone beyond this. I'm
sure there's stuff that's out there. Right now, the news
cycle is just flooded with this story about Russia putting
him on a wanted list. But when I started trying
to dig around and just learn a little bit more
about him, I mean, I've seen his name dozens of times.
When I tried to learn more about him, there really
(06:18):
wasn't a whole lot to find. Again, I'm sure if
I did a super deep dive, I could change that,
But it is interesting to me that someone who has
dedicated his career in public communications has also managed to
maintain a pretty low profile. Stone's name pops up a
lot since twenty fourteen. These days, according to LinkedIn anyway,
(06:41):
his title is communications director, and that means that when
you come across a story that includes something like Facebook
says it's disappointed in the EU's decision or whatever, there's
a darn good chance that Facebook was actually Andy Stone
who said this. He's been the spokesperson for the cum
in many of its trials and tribulations over the last
(07:03):
several years. Stone's job is really to serve as the
mouthpiece for the company and to craft communications on the
company's behalf, and I imagine his job has grown a
lot more challenging over recent years in the wake of
a series of scandals and difficult events, such as the
unraveling of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Now, if you don't
(07:26):
remember the Cambridge Analytica story, good for you. But it
refers to a political consulting company that leaned on an
app that was used to scrape data from Facebook without
first getting user permissions. And they were able to do
this because for a while, Facebook really didn't provide adequate
protections with its application programming interface. So essentially, before Facebook
(07:51):
actually addressed this issue, a developer could create an app
for Facebook that, when installed, could access way more information
than what was actually needed for the app to work.
For example, maybe you create a game, a very simple
game that is within Facebook or just uses Facebook credentials
(08:11):
in or for you to log into the game, but
as part of that installation process, the app gets permissions
from the user to access all kinds of data, like
maybe everything that is personal information related to the user
gets sent to the developer. Maybe it gives the developer
access to view all of that user's friends and contacts
(08:35):
on Facebook, and none of that is necessary for the
game to work. But really, until the mid twenty tens,
Facebook kind of let that go, like they just let
developers get access to all sorts of information, whether it
was necessary for the app to work or not. So
in the case of Cambridge Analytica, the company was making
(08:56):
use of a survey app, and this particular survey would
actually offer a fee to users. It would pay people
to take the survey. Folks like getting money, so that
was a huge incentive. A lot of folks said sure,
and they ended up installing this little app so they
could take the survey. Now, what they may not have
realized is that by installing the app, they were essentially
(09:17):
opening up all of their connections to scrutiny, because now
Cambridge Analytica, through this app, could view not just the
survey taker's information, but all the people who that person
was friends with. They could view those profiles as if
they were the person who took the survey. So it
suddenly opened up the opportunity to scrape data on a
(09:38):
much larger scale. In fact, millions of accounts were affected
by this, and so you didn't have to be the
person who downloaded the survey. You just had to have
a friend who did it. And if they did it,
you were affected too. So Cambridge Analytica accesses millions of
people's profiles without their permission, and Andy Stone had the
(09:59):
un inviewable task of announcing findings to the media about
that situation. So when Facebook did an investigation and estimated
that around eighty seven million accounts were affected, this number
would fluctuate quite a bit throughout the investigations, but this
was an early one. Well, Andy Stone was the person
who had to actually deliver that information to the media.
(10:24):
Not a whole lot of fun. Anyway, we're gonna come
back to talk more about Andy Stone in just a moment.
Before we can do that, let's take a quick break
to thank our sponsors. So I was talking before the
(10:46):
break about Andy Stone having to deliver rough news about
the Cambridge Analytica to the media as this scandal was unfolding.
But This was around the same time where Stone began
to build a reputation for being let's call it assertive
on platforms like Twitter and using that platform to refute
(11:07):
or criticize Facebook's own critics, kind of like striking back
at the critics. One of the journalists who covered the
Cambridge Analytica story was Carol Cadwaller, So on top of
being a journalist, Cadwaller became a member of the independent
Oversight Board for Facebook. You might remember this board reviews
(11:27):
Facebook's decisions to determine if the company is actually aligning
with its own policies. You may also remember that the
board can make recommendations to Facebook, but the company is
under no obligation to actually adopt those recommendations, which obviously
brings up the question how effective the board can actually be.
(11:48):
But anyway, Cadwaller says that Stone attempted to discredit her
by sharing quote deliberate deceptions regarding Cambridge Analytica and deliberately
trolled me. It was just in no way appropriate for
the corporate pr of a trillion dollar company to behave
like that toward a journalist end quote. So this would
(12:12):
not be the last time the journalists as well as
others would complain of Andy Stone's approach, particularly on Twitter.
Another high profile case was when former Facebook employee Francis
Hogan came forward in late twenty twenty one with a
whistleblower report on the company. She shared thousands of internal
(12:34):
documents that didn't exactly put Facebook in a good light.
In fact, we're still learning about stuff that was in
those documents, and a lot of the stuff in there
suggests that the people in Facebook now known as Meta
were more aware of negative aspects that the company and
its platforms had on certain users than had been previously disclosed. Anyway,
(12:58):
Andy Stone frequently had to go to bat for the
company and defend it, as report after report filed in
about issues like the company's influence on young users in particular.
And I'm not sure that Stone's efforts were always effective
when it came to deflecting her testimony in front of Congress,
because again he took to Twitter to try and discredit
(13:18):
her or to hang some doubt upon her and her point.
One message he posted to Twitter, of course, now known
as x read quote just pointing out the fact that
Francis Hogan did not work on child safety or Instagram
or research these issues, and has no direct knowledge of
the topic from her work at Facebook. End quote, which,
(13:40):
if you were to ask me, that seems like a
pretty darn weak defense. Because if someone dumped tens of
thousands of actual corporate documents in my lap and then
told me that this stuff comes from inside company so
and so, and it says the company has knowingly engaged
in some questionable stuff and continues to do so, even
(14:04):
knowing the potential consequences for that, I wouldn't really be
concerned about that person's expertise in whatever the field was. Right,
assuming that I could determine that the documents are legitimate,
that they in fact came from within the company that
was claimed, then it doesn't matter the level of expertise
(14:25):
of the person who brought them to me. I would
be more concerned about the actual content of the documents,
and the people who produce those documents presumably were experts
in their field. It doesn't matter if the messenger is
an expert. In fact, Andy Stone should know that quite
well because he has been the messenger many times. He
(14:47):
is not the person who creates the different message or
the different policies. I should say, he creates the messages
around them, So you should know that a person's expertise
isn't really the matter of concern when you're talking about
documents that have some pretty damning content in them. Now,
(15:08):
Stone's posts on Twitter prompted some pretty interesting responses around
the journalist field and beyond. So for example, Bob Pickard,
who is the CEO of Signal Leadership Communication, This is
a consulting group that helps executives create communications to the
public so that they can do so in a way
(15:30):
that is responsible and accountable, that's going to have the
best impact, that's not going to run a foul of
the law of that kind of stuff like this is
high level communications we're talking about here. Well, Pickman said,
quote Facebook's crisis comms on this issue are embarrassingly bad.
(15:51):
Everyone is talking about Facebook's poor PR, which is often
a proxy for other issues, but I think the comms
themselves are in d crap end quote. Now, that wasn't
just referring to Andy Stone, but certainly Stone was being
lumped in with this criticism. Several PR professionals question why
(16:12):
Stone was even posting on Twitter at all about this stuff,
why he was taking this particular tactic. They said it
was antithetical to the way you would typically try to
build up a communications department within a company. They said that,
you know, usually you want to build relationships with the
press so that you can get more favorable coverage, and
(16:36):
using Twitter to snipe at journalists who have posted stories
that critique the company isn't really conducive toward doing that.
They compared it more to his work in politics, and
that in politics, often communications leads to a quote unquote
zero sum game where there has to be a winner
and a loser, and in those sort of of avenues,
(17:02):
it was more common to see this kind of banter
going back and forth between a PR person and the press.
Less so when it comes to corporate communications now. Earlier
this year, Stone served as the messenger for another sticky
situation see Meta slash. Facebook has a strict policy against
(17:23):
data scraping. The most valuable asset that Meta has is
access to our information. We are the product. You've often
probably heard that that if you go someplace and the
thing is free, then it turns out you are the
product that's for sale. That's definitely the case when it
(17:43):
comes to Meta's platforms. All of our interactions, everything we
post to the platform, everything we look at and engage
with on those platforms. All of that is valuable, right,
That's all data that's incredibly valuable because Meta can pack
it this up and then sell it to advertisers. So
the more you use Meta's products, the more valuable you become,
(18:08):
and the more information you share about other people in
your life, the more valuable you become. We are a
gold mine for Meta, and Meta guards that gold mine jealously.
The fact that people don't flip out. More over, how
their personal information is exploited for the benefit of a
truly massive corporation amazes me. I guess, I guess not
(18:32):
everyone fully understands it, and the people who do understand
it ultimately think, ah, it's not that big a deal.
I mean, it's just some personal information. But it's really not.
I mean, it's really a big deal. It's really not
something you should just dismiss. It's important, and the point
where it can become important for you specifically as opposed
(18:53):
to just in the general, then it's too late. But
this is a potentially fragile arrangement. Meta records that Meta
recognizes that if people wake up to the fact that
they really need to protect their personal information in a
more aggressive way. And if you start to see governments
around the world pass laws to help actually achieve this goal,
(19:17):
Meta's revenue is in danger. So Meta is very very
careful to not really bring too much attention to this
part of its business, at least not in a way
that is obvious to users. But it also means Meta
is very jealous of this information. If some other company
swoops in and starts to crawl Meta's platforms in order
(19:40):
to build out databases, that can threaten Meta's own business model,
because if we notice that this other company is doing it,
and we're worried about this other company, we might start
asking questions about Meta itself. So take Clearview AI for example.
This company created a huge facial recognition database. But in
(20:00):
order to do that, you first have to grab a
whole bunch of pictures of people. Now that's obvious, right,
Like you have to get the pictures in order to
actually have a database of facial recognition photos. But where
do you get the pictures from? Right? You know, you're
not just going door to door and snapping photos of people. No,
what clearview AI did and the CEO admitted as much.
(20:24):
The company scraped various social network platforms, including Facebook to
build out its database of thirty billion photographs, and clearview
AI's customers included authoritarian organizations you know we're talking about
like law enforcement agencies, that kind of thing that would
use clearview AI's databases to try and do things like
(20:45):
like identify suspects that sort of stuff. So it kind
of ties into issues like a surveillance state. So obviously
this kind of story can have a negative impact on
companies like Meta, and Meta has made it clear that
it is against its terms of service for other companies
to scrape Meta's platforms, you know, like Facebook or Instagram
(21:05):
or to get data. But what if journalists discover that
Meta is also engaged in data scraping from other websites.
And this brings us to the curious case of Meta
and a data collection company called Bright Data. So Meta
recently sued Bright Data in January of this year, twenty
twenty three, and accused the company of scraping data from
(21:28):
Meta platforms. However, it has also come to light that
Bright Data and Meta have been engaged in a subcontractor
relationship that Bright Data has worked for Meta and has
pulled data from other websites so that Meta could do
stuff like build out brand profiles and reportedly do things
(21:50):
like identify potential bad actors out there. So, in other words,
Bright Data was pulling data or scraping data off of
other sites in order to supply that information to Meta.
So Stone was pulled into action to comment on this,
and he said, quote, the collection of data from websites
can serve legitimate integrity and commercial purposes if done lawfully
(22:14):
and in accordance with those websites terms end quote. This
was a really awkward situation because he had to defend
Meta's work with a data collection company, while Meta is
famous for going after companies that were data scraping its
own platforms. So, in other words, Meta saying, it's not
cool for you to do that to us, but it's
(22:35):
totally cool if we do that to other websites. You
know that's fine. So do as we say, now as
we do. Okay, we're gonna take another quick break. When
we come back, we'll talk more about the actual lead
into Andy Stone being named a wanted individual by Russia's government.
(22:55):
The first a word from our sponsors. Okay, why was
Andy Stone, a communications director for Meta, put on a
wanted list. In fact, some outlets call it a most
(23:17):
wanted list for Russia. Well, it relates to Russia's invasion
of Ukraine and potentially to some temporary changes to Meta's
policies regarding violent content on Facebook or calls for violence
to be more specific on Facebook, and so in that regard.
(23:38):
If that's all true, this very much becomes a shoot
the Messenger kind of story. I should point out apparently
Stone's name has actually been on this wanted list since
February twenty twenty two. We only learned about it this
week when a media outlet that keeps an eye on
such things posted a story about it and it went
in viral from there. But to be clear, the actual
(24:01):
charges against Stone remain undisclosed. The media reports simply that
Stone is quote wanted under an article of the Criminal
Code of the Russian Federation end quote. That's not helpful.
It's not descriptive at all. We don't know what code,
what article he's wanted under, right, we don't know what
law he supposedly broke under the Russian Federation law. But
(24:26):
let's look back at the early days of Russia's invasion
of Ukraine to kind of at least get a working
hypothesis here. There had been aggressive actions between Russia and
Ukraine dating back since at least twenty fourteen, but the
actual invasion began on February twenty fourth, twenty twenty two.
On March tenth, Meta made a really big change. And traditionally,
(24:53):
posts on Meta's platforms that include calls for violence against
people are a huge violation of Meta's rules that Meta
would take such things down immediately or at least investigate them,
assuming that someone had flagged the post. That's at least
according to the policy. Whether or not that's actually how
it plays out depends on the situation, but often it
(25:17):
means that that Meta ends up sending the flag to
someone like a subcontractor to review the incident and determine
whether or not it was actually against Meta's policies and
then figure out where to go from There. Doesn't mean
removing the post or banning the person for a given
amount of time. It all just depends on the situation.
(25:39):
But on March tenth, Meta announced it would allow users,
at least in certain countries to post calls for violence
against Russians and specifically Russian soldiers, and this was all
within the context of the Ukraine invasion. Reuters reported that
internal messages within Meta even indicated that posts that would
(26:00):
call for the deaths of Russia's president Vladimir Putin or
the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashinko were fair game. Again,
this is something that typically is very much against Meta's policies,
and Reuters reported that, well, they didn't name the Meta spokesperson,
but later it was revealed to be Andy Stone. They
(26:21):
revealed a spokesperson release the statement quote as a result
of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have temporarily made
allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate
our rules, like violent speech such as death to the
Russian invaders. We still won't allow credible calls for violence
against Russian civilians end quote. A couple of weeks later,
(26:45):
a Russian court declared that Meta qualifies as an extremist organization. Effectively,
this banned Meta's platforms inside Russia, with the exclusion of
Watsapp because that's not a public platform. Facebook and Instagram
both banned, and Watsapp still was allowed to operate within
(27:06):
the country. Interestingly, Again, by that time, Andy Stone had
already been on the wanted list according to this independent
website it's called media Zona. By the way, media Zona
monitors the Russian prison system, among other things. And again
they had said that he had been on the list
since February twenty twenty two, even before Metta had made
(27:29):
the announced change to the policies, and right around the
time when Russia was actually invading Ukraine. So while that
was the precipitating factor that would see Russia slap at
terrorist label on the company, according to media Zona, Stone
had already been in Russia's crosshairs. It's just that no
one in Russia actually announced this, so it never made
the news. So, in other words, they had put his
(27:51):
name on the list, but they didn't announce the fact
that he was on the list. Also, interestingly, Mark Zuckerberg
himself wouldn't be singled out by Russia till April twenty
twenty two, that's when Russia formally banned with Zuckerberg from
entering the country. So what the heck got Stone on
that list so early? Well, first, there's a chance that
(28:12):
the report is wrong and that Stone's name maybe joined
this list after the announced changes in Meta's policy. That's
my best guess that Russian officials, in an effort to
push back against the company, named Andy Stone as a
wanted individual, not keeping in mind that he's really just
a mouthpiece for Meta, because again, Andy Stone doesn't create
(28:37):
the policies, he communicates them. He's not the one responsible
for determining that Meta's going to allow this to happen.
He just has to tell the world that that's what's happening. Now.
He sometimes does communicate in a way that's combative and insulting,
so perhaps this has contributed to the issue. But Stone,
(28:58):
again is not responsible for whether or not Meta allows
for calls of violence against Russian invaders. It really is
a shoot the messenger kind of situation here, if in
fact that's why he was put on the list. But
maybe there's some other reason for Russia to name Stone
as a wanted individual. That's possible, but based off what
we know, it seems to me that this is mostly
(29:21):
a symbolic gesture made by a country that's in a
position that's very difficult to defend in a global court
of public opinion. Russia's government has long struggled to control
media in an effort to push propaganda and Putin's narrative.
In particular, platforms like Facebook and Instagram threatened that strategy
(29:41):
because Russia has no direct control over those platforms, so
they are legitimate threats to authoritarian control. It almost became
necessary for Russia to label Meta as an extremist organization
just to prevent a place where opposing opinions could potentially
take hold in Russia. Anyway, my best guess is that
(30:02):
this will have little to no real impact on Andy
Stone's life. I mean, assuming he wasn't planning on vacationing
in Saint Petersburg or something. If he had plans to
travel to Russia, I imagine those are no longer on
his calendar. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure this is just going
to be a little intrigue into his professional career, a
little interesting bit of trivia. I also expect he will
(30:26):
continue to speak for Meta at least as long as
he is employed there after that, who knows. It'd be
really interesting to talk with him post his career at
Meta to find out, like, did he really believe in
the cause that he was championing, And maybe he does,
(30:47):
I don't know. I don't know Andy Stone. I feel
like he's employing a skill set for an employer, whether
he believes in that employer's actual choices. I do know.
I couldn't say. Maybe he does it, just it seems
odd to me considering his previous employers. But who knows.
(31:08):
I mean, and I don't know everything that's going on
inside Meta either. I'm just basing this off things like
the whistleblower report and that sort of thing. Anyway, that
is the interesting and currently unfolding story of Andy Stone
being wanted by Russia's Interior Ministry. We're gonna keep an
(31:29):
eye on this. If I see updates, I will definitely
follow up with it. I don't expect there to be
many updates. I think this is just a really kind
of intriguing story that breaks on a Monday after a holiday.
I don't necessarily think it's going to lead to anything
else that's particularly newsworthy, but we'll see you never know.
I hope you are all well. I hope those of
(31:51):
you who celebrated Thanksgiving in the US had a wonderful time.
I hope everybody had a great week last week. As
a remind this week we're back to normal, although tomorrow
we'll have a Smart Talks with IBM episode published, and
then next week I'm on vacation, so you're likely to
hear some reruns next week. I'll see if I can
(32:14):
record some new stuff for next week in advance, but
it's a pretty packed week for me right now, so
we'll see. I'll do my best anyway. I wish you
all well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
(32:34):
Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Tech are you? If you've been listening to tech Stuff
for a while, or if you keep up with tech
(00:25):
news in general, the name Andy Stone might ring a
bell now. Unlike a lot of the other folks that
I talk about on the show, you know, like geniuses
like Ada Lovelace or Nikola Tesla, or you know, company
founders like Gordon Moore or Steve Wozniak, or even controversial
(00:46):
corporate leaders like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, Andy Stone
isn't that deeply rooted in the world of tech. In fact,
until twenty fourteen, he spent his professional career working in
government and campaign positions and stuff related to that. And now,
according to reports, Russia's Interior Ministry has added Andy Stone's
(01:10):
name to its wanted list. So I thought we could
do a short episode about Stone, the job he's held
since twenty fourteen, and what might have led him to
be considered a criminal in Russia. Here in the States,
there are people who certainly take issues with some of
the things Stone has said, but I'm not sure anyone
would go so far as to call him a criminal.
(01:31):
Here in the US, Stone's forte is at least presumably
in communications. He attended George Washington University, a prestigious college
here in the US, and he studied political communication while
he was there. That school happens to be located in Washington,
d C. There are a couple of other schools in
(01:52):
that area where typically the students who are going to
those schools often end up working with the government in
some form or another. It's pretty common, like a lot
of jobs are directly or indirectly connected to the US
government or at least a government there. Because my partner
attended Georgetown, which is in DC, and worked for the
(02:13):
French embassy for a while, so again it's a place
where you make connections. Stone worked for presidential candidate John
Kerry's campaign in two thousand and three, and in late
two thousand and four he joined M and R Strategic
Services as a consultant. Now that's a company that primarily
focuses on political communications, so not affiliated with any specific
(02:38):
candidate or party, but is there to act as a
consultant for the purposes of creating political communications, so again
very much in line with what he had already been doing.
He would then become the communications director for Congress in
two thousand and seven, and you kind of see where
this is going. The nature of politics here in America
(03:00):
means that any role you hold in government, like if
you're actually connected to a governmental party, it's likely on
borrowed time election cycles change up who's in charge on
the rag. Now there are, of course, federal employees who
typically hold positions from administration to administration, and they don't
(03:20):
necessarily change each time there's a change in leadership, although
there are efforts to make that be very different. Anyway,
that's getting into a whole different realm. But from two
thousand and three to twenty fourteen, pretty much all of
Andy Stone's work focused on political communications, either as part
(03:41):
of a campaign or part of a governmental body or
part of the private sector, but still catering to politics.
Now that changed in the spring of twenty fourteen, That
is when Meta, then known as Facebook they had not
changed their name yet, offered Stone a gig as a
policy communications manager for Facebook. Now, by this time, Facebook
(04:07):
had already sailed past the incredible milestone of having a
billion active users per month. That had happened actually back
in twenty twelve, so it was definitely already a huge
company by twenty fourteen. They had also acquired Instagram. Also
back in twenty twelve, and just before Stone would join
(04:30):
the company, Facebook had announced it was acquiring Wattsapp. This
was a truly huge acquisition deal in the billions of dollars,
so a lot was going on. In fact, when Stone
joined Facebook, that very same month, the company announced its
intention to acquire Oculus VR, so a lot of the
(04:52):
components that make up you know, various foundational elements of
Meta today, those were all being acquired around the same
time that Andy Stone joined the company. Now, on top
of all that, the company was also launching some very
progressive features. For example, one month before Stone joined Facebook,
(05:12):
the company updated its platform to allow for different gender
designations in support of the LGBTQ plus community, So you
suddenly had a lot more pronouns that you could use
when you were creating your profile and thus represent yourself
more accurately. This was a pretty progressive approach, especially in
(05:33):
twenty fourteen, and Andy Stone had focused a lot of
his career on how to communicate progressive policies to the public,
because most of the time he was focusing on socially
progressive democratic campaigns and policies, So this kind of was
a type of synergy when he joined Facebook. I don't
(05:55):
have very much background about Andy Stone beyond this. I'm
sure there's stuff that's out there. Right now, the news
cycle is just flooded with this story about Russia putting
him on a wanted list. But when I started trying
to dig around and just learn a little bit more
about him, I mean, I've seen his name dozens of times.
When I tried to learn more about him, there really
(06:18):
wasn't a whole lot to find. Again, I'm sure if
I did a super deep dive, I could change that,
But it is interesting to me that someone who has
dedicated his career in public communications has also managed to
maintain a pretty low profile. Stone's name pops up a
lot since twenty fourteen. These days, according to LinkedIn anyway,
(06:41):
his title is communications director, and that means that when
you come across a story that includes something like Facebook
says it's disappointed in the EU's decision or whatever, there's
a darn good chance that Facebook was actually Andy Stone
who said this. He's been the spokesperson for the cum
in many of its trials and tribulations over the last
(07:03):
several years. Stone's job is really to serve as the
mouthpiece for the company and to craft communications on the
company's behalf, and I imagine his job has grown a
lot more challenging over recent years in the wake of
a series of scandals and difficult events, such as the
unraveling of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Now, if you don't
(07:26):
remember the Cambridge Analytica story, good for you. But it
refers to a political consulting company that leaned on an
app that was used to scrape data from Facebook without
first getting user permissions. And they were able to do
this because for a while, Facebook really didn't provide adequate
protections with its application programming interface. So essentially, before Facebook
(07:51):
actually addressed this issue, a developer could create an app
for Facebook that, when installed, could access way more information
than what was actually needed for the app to work.
For example, maybe you create a game, a very simple
game that is within Facebook or just uses Facebook credentials
(08:11):
in or for you to log into the game, but
as part of that installation process, the app gets permissions
from the user to access all kinds of data, like
maybe everything that is personal information related to the user
gets sent to the developer. Maybe it gives the developer
access to view all of that user's friends and contacts
(08:35):
on Facebook, and none of that is necessary for the
game to work. But really, until the mid twenty tens,
Facebook kind of let that go, like they just let
developers get access to all sorts of information, whether it
was necessary for the app to work or not. So
in the case of Cambridge Analytica, the company was making
(08:56):
use of a survey app, and this particular survey would
actually offer a fee to users. It would pay people
to take the survey. Folks like getting money, so that
was a huge incentive. A lot of folks said sure,
and they ended up installing this little app so they
could take the survey. Now, what they may not have
realized is that by installing the app, they were essentially
(09:17):
opening up all of their connections to scrutiny, because now
Cambridge Analytica, through this app, could view not just the
survey taker's information, but all the people who that person
was friends with. They could view those profiles as if
they were the person who took the survey. So it
suddenly opened up the opportunity to scrape data on a
(09:38):
much larger scale. In fact, millions of accounts were affected
by this, and so you didn't have to be the
person who downloaded the survey. You just had to have
a friend who did it. And if they did it,
you were affected too. So Cambridge Analytica accesses millions of
people's profiles without their permission, and Andy Stone had the
(09:59):
un inviewable task of announcing findings to the media about
that situation. So when Facebook did an investigation and estimated
that around eighty seven million accounts were affected, this number
would fluctuate quite a bit throughout the investigations, but this
was an early one. Well, Andy Stone was the person
who had to actually deliver that information to the media.
(10:24):
Not a whole lot of fun. Anyway, we're gonna come
back to talk more about Andy Stone in just a moment.
Before we can do that, let's take a quick break
to thank our sponsors. So I was talking before the
(10:46):
break about Andy Stone having to deliver rough news about
the Cambridge Analytica to the media as this scandal was unfolding.
But This was around the same time where Stone began
to build a reputation for being let's call it assertive
on platforms like Twitter and using that platform to refute
(11:07):
or criticize Facebook's own critics, kind of like striking back
at the critics. One of the journalists who covered the
Cambridge Analytica story was Carol Cadwaller, So on top of
being a journalist, Cadwaller became a member of the independent
Oversight Board for Facebook. You might remember this board reviews
(11:27):
Facebook's decisions to determine if the company is actually aligning
with its own policies. You may also remember that the
board can make recommendations to Facebook, but the company is
under no obligation to actually adopt those recommendations, which obviously
brings up the question how effective the board can actually be.
(11:48):
But anyway, Cadwaller says that Stone attempted to discredit her
by sharing quote deliberate deceptions regarding Cambridge Analytica and deliberately
trolled me. It was just in no way appropriate for
the corporate pr of a trillion dollar company to behave
like that toward a journalist end quote. So this would
(12:12):
not be the last time the journalists as well as
others would complain of Andy Stone's approach, particularly on Twitter.
Another high profile case was when former Facebook employee Francis
Hogan came forward in late twenty twenty one with a
whistleblower report on the company. She shared thousands of internal
(12:34):
documents that didn't exactly put Facebook in a good light.
In fact, we're still learning about stuff that was in
those documents, and a lot of the stuff in there
suggests that the people in Facebook now known as Meta
were more aware of negative aspects that the company and
its platforms had on certain users than had been previously disclosed. Anyway,
(12:58):
Andy Stone frequently had to go to bat for the
company and defend it, as report after report filed in
about issues like the company's influence on young users in particular.
And I'm not sure that Stone's efforts were always effective
when it came to deflecting her testimony in front of Congress,
because again he took to Twitter to try and discredit
(13:18):
her or to hang some doubt upon her and her point.
One message he posted to Twitter, of course, now known
as x read quote just pointing out the fact that
Francis Hogan did not work on child safety or Instagram
or research these issues, and has no direct knowledge of
the topic from her work at Facebook. End quote, which,
(13:40):
if you were to ask me, that seems like a
pretty darn weak defense. Because if someone dumped tens of
thousands of actual corporate documents in my lap and then
told me that this stuff comes from inside company so
and so, and it says the company has knowingly engaged
in some questionable stuff and continues to do so, even
(14:04):
knowing the potential consequences for that, I wouldn't really be
concerned about that person's expertise in whatever the field was. Right,
assuming that I could determine that the documents are legitimate,
that they in fact came from within the company that
was claimed, then it doesn't matter the level of expertise
(14:25):
of the person who brought them to me. I would
be more concerned about the actual content of the documents,
and the people who produce those documents presumably were experts
in their field. It doesn't matter if the messenger is
an expert. In fact, Andy Stone should know that quite
well because he has been the messenger many times. He
(14:47):
is not the person who creates the different message or
the different policies. I should say, he creates the messages
around them, So you should know that a person's expertise
isn't really the matter of concern when you're talking about
documents that have some pretty damning content in them. Now,
(15:08):
Stone's posts on Twitter prompted some pretty interesting responses around
the journalist field and beyond. So for example, Bob Pickard,
who is the CEO of Signal Leadership Communication, This is
a consulting group that helps executives create communications to the
public so that they can do so in a way
(15:30):
that is responsible and accountable, that's going to have the
best impact, that's not going to run a foul of
the law of that kind of stuff like this is
high level communications we're talking about here. Well, Pickman said,
quote Facebook's crisis comms on this issue are embarrassingly bad.
(15:51):
Everyone is talking about Facebook's poor PR, which is often
a proxy for other issues, but I think the comms
themselves are in d crap end quote. Now, that wasn't
just referring to Andy Stone, but certainly Stone was being
lumped in with this criticism. Several PR professionals question why
(16:12):
Stone was even posting on Twitter at all about this stuff,
why he was taking this particular tactic. They said it
was antithetical to the way you would typically try to
build up a communications department within a company. They said that,
you know, usually you want to build relationships with the
press so that you can get more favorable coverage, and
(16:36):
using Twitter to snipe at journalists who have posted stories
that critique the company isn't really conducive toward doing that.
They compared it more to his work in politics, and
that in politics, often communications leads to a quote unquote
zero sum game where there has to be a winner
and a loser, and in those sort of of avenues,
(17:02):
it was more common to see this kind of banter
going back and forth between a PR person and the press.
Less so when it comes to corporate communications now. Earlier
this year, Stone served as the messenger for another sticky
situation see Meta slash. Facebook has a strict policy against
(17:23):
data scraping. The most valuable asset that Meta has is
access to our information. We are the product. You've often
probably heard that that if you go someplace and the
thing is free, then it turns out you are the
product that's for sale. That's definitely the case when it
(17:43):
comes to Meta's platforms. All of our interactions, everything we
post to the platform, everything we look at and engage
with on those platforms. All of that is valuable, right,
That's all data that's incredibly valuable because Meta can pack
it this up and then sell it to advertisers. So
the more you use Meta's products, the more valuable you become,
(18:08):
and the more information you share about other people in
your life, the more valuable you become. We are a
gold mine for Meta, and Meta guards that gold mine jealously.
The fact that people don't flip out. More over, how
their personal information is exploited for the benefit of a
truly massive corporation amazes me. I guess, I guess not
(18:32):
everyone fully understands it, and the people who do understand
it ultimately think, ah, it's not that big a deal.
I mean, it's just some personal information. But it's really not.
I mean, it's really a big deal. It's really not
something you should just dismiss. It's important, and the point
where it can become important for you specifically as opposed
(18:53):
to just in the general, then it's too late. But
this is a potentially fragile arrangement. Meta records that Meta
recognizes that if people wake up to the fact that
they really need to protect their personal information in a
more aggressive way. And if you start to see governments
around the world pass laws to help actually achieve this goal,
(19:17):
Meta's revenue is in danger. So Meta is very very
careful to not really bring too much attention to this
part of its business, at least not in a way
that is obvious to users. But it also means Meta
is very jealous of this information. If some other company
swoops in and starts to crawl Meta's platforms in order
(19:40):
to build out databases, that can threaten Meta's own business model,
because if we notice that this other company is doing it,
and we're worried about this other company, we might start
asking questions about Meta itself. So take Clearview AI for example.
This company created a huge facial recognition database. But in
(20:00):
order to do that, you first have to grab a
whole bunch of pictures of people. Now that's obvious, right,
Like you have to get the pictures in order to
actually have a database of facial recognition photos. But where
do you get the pictures from? Right? You know, you're
not just going door to door and snapping photos of people. No,
what clearview AI did and the CEO admitted as much.
(20:24):
The company scraped various social network platforms, including Facebook to
build out its database of thirty billion photographs, and clearview
AI's customers included authoritarian organizations you know we're talking about
like law enforcement agencies, that kind of thing that would
use clearview AI's databases to try and do things like
(20:45):
like identify suspects that sort of stuff. So it kind
of ties into issues like a surveillance state. So obviously
this kind of story can have a negative impact on
companies like Meta, and Meta has made it clear that
it is against its terms of service for other companies
to scrape Meta's platforms, you know, like Facebook or Instagram
(21:05):
or to get data. But what if journalists discover that
Meta is also engaged in data scraping from other websites.
And this brings us to the curious case of Meta
and a data collection company called Bright Data. So Meta
recently sued Bright Data in January of this year, twenty
twenty three, and accused the company of scraping data from
(21:28):
Meta platforms. However, it has also come to light that
Bright Data and Meta have been engaged in a subcontractor
relationship that Bright Data has worked for Meta and has
pulled data from other websites so that Meta could do
stuff like build out brand profiles and reportedly do things
(21:50):
like identify potential bad actors out there. So, in other words,
Bright Data was pulling data or scraping data off of
other sites in order to supply that information to Meta.
So Stone was pulled into action to comment on this,
and he said, quote, the collection of data from websites
can serve legitimate integrity and commercial purposes if done lawfully
(22:14):
and in accordance with those websites terms end quote. This
was a really awkward situation because he had to defend
Meta's work with a data collection company, while Meta is
famous for going after companies that were data scraping its
own platforms. So, in other words, Meta saying, it's not
cool for you to do that to us, but it's
(22:35):
totally cool if we do that to other websites. You
know that's fine. So do as we say, now as
we do. Okay, we're gonna take another quick break. When
we come back, we'll talk more about the actual lead
into Andy Stone being named a wanted individual by Russia's government.
(22:55):
The first a word from our sponsors. Okay, why was
Andy Stone, a communications director for Meta, put on a
wanted list. In fact, some outlets call it a most
(23:17):
wanted list for Russia. Well, it relates to Russia's invasion
of Ukraine and potentially to some temporary changes to Meta's
policies regarding violent content on Facebook or calls for violence
to be more specific on Facebook, and so in that regard.
(23:38):
If that's all true, this very much becomes a shoot
the Messenger kind of story. I should point out apparently
Stone's name has actually been on this wanted list since
February twenty twenty two. We only learned about it this
week when a media outlet that keeps an eye on
such things posted a story about it and it went
in viral from there. But to be clear, the actual
(24:01):
charges against Stone remain undisclosed. The media reports simply that
Stone is quote wanted under an article of the Criminal
Code of the Russian Federation end quote. That's not helpful.
It's not descriptive at all. We don't know what code,
what article he's wanted under, right, we don't know what
law he supposedly broke under the Russian Federation law. But
(24:26):
let's look back at the early days of Russia's invasion
of Ukraine to kind of at least get a working
hypothesis here. There had been aggressive actions between Russia and
Ukraine dating back since at least twenty fourteen, but the
actual invasion began on February twenty fourth, twenty twenty two.
On March tenth, Meta made a really big change. And traditionally,
(24:53):
posts on Meta's platforms that include calls for violence against
people are a huge violation of Meta's rules that Meta
would take such things down immediately or at least investigate them,
assuming that someone had flagged the post. That's at least
according to the policy. Whether or not that's actually how
it plays out depends on the situation, but often it
(25:17):
means that that Meta ends up sending the flag to
someone like a subcontractor to review the incident and determine
whether or not it was actually against Meta's policies and
then figure out where to go from There. Doesn't mean
removing the post or banning the person for a given
amount of time. It all just depends on the situation.
(25:39):
But on March tenth, Meta announced it would allow users,
at least in certain countries to post calls for violence
against Russians and specifically Russian soldiers, and this was all
within the context of the Ukraine invasion. Reuters reported that
internal messages within Meta even indicated that posts that would
(26:00):
call for the deaths of Russia's president Vladimir Putin or
the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashinko were fair game. Again,
this is something that typically is very much against Meta's policies,
and Reuters reported that, well, they didn't name the Meta spokesperson,
but later it was revealed to be Andy Stone. They
(26:21):
revealed a spokesperson release the statement quote as a result
of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have temporarily made
allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate
our rules, like violent speech such as death to the
Russian invaders. We still won't allow credible calls for violence
against Russian civilians end quote. A couple of weeks later,
(26:45):
a Russian court declared that Meta qualifies as an extremist organization. Effectively,
this banned Meta's platforms inside Russia, with the exclusion of
Watsapp because that's not a public platform. Facebook and Instagram
both banned, and Watsapp still was allowed to operate within
(27:06):
the country. Interestingly, Again, by that time, Andy Stone had
already been on the wanted list according to this independent
website it's called media Zona. By the way, media Zona
monitors the Russian prison system, among other things. And again
they had said that he had been on the list
since February twenty twenty two, even before Metta had made
(27:29):
the announced change to the policies, and right around the
time when Russia was actually invading Ukraine. So while that
was the precipitating factor that would see Russia slap at
terrorist label on the company, according to media Zona, Stone
had already been in Russia's crosshairs. It's just that no
one in Russia actually announced this, so it never made
the news. So, in other words, they had put his
(27:51):
name on the list, but they didn't announce the fact
that he was on the list. Also, interestingly, Mark Zuckerberg
himself wouldn't be singled out by Russia till April twenty
twenty two, that's when Russia formally banned with Zuckerberg from
entering the country. So what the heck got Stone on
that list so early? Well, first, there's a chance that
(28:12):
the report is wrong and that Stone's name maybe joined
this list after the announced changes in Meta's policy. That's
my best guess that Russian officials, in an effort to
push back against the company, named Andy Stone as a
wanted individual, not keeping in mind that he's really just
a mouthpiece for Meta, because again, Andy Stone doesn't create
(28:37):
the policies, he communicates them. He's not the one responsible
for determining that Meta's going to allow this to happen.
He just has to tell the world that that's what's happening. Now.
He sometimes does communicate in a way that's combative and insulting,
so perhaps this has contributed to the issue. But Stone,
(28:58):
again is not responsible for whether or not Meta allows
for calls of violence against Russian invaders. It really is
a shoot the messenger kind of situation here, if in
fact that's why he was put on the list. But
maybe there's some other reason for Russia to name Stone
as a wanted individual. That's possible, but based off what
we know, it seems to me that this is mostly
(29:21):
a symbolic gesture made by a country that's in a
position that's very difficult to defend in a global court
of public opinion. Russia's government has long struggled to control
media in an effort to push propaganda and Putin's narrative.
In particular, platforms like Facebook and Instagram threatened that strategy
(29:41):
because Russia has no direct control over those platforms, so
they are legitimate threats to authoritarian control. It almost became
necessary for Russia to label Meta as an extremist organization
just to prevent a place where opposing opinions could potentially
take hold in Russia. Anyway, my best guess is that
(30:02):
this will have little to no real impact on Andy
Stone's life. I mean, assuming he wasn't planning on vacationing
in Saint Petersburg or something. If he had plans to
travel to Russia, I imagine those are no longer on
his calendar. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure this is just going
to be a little intrigue into his professional career, a
little interesting bit of trivia. I also expect he will
(30:26):
continue to speak for Meta at least as long as
he is employed there after that, who knows. It'd be
really interesting to talk with him post his career at
Meta to find out, like, did he really believe in
the cause that he was championing, And maybe he does,
(30:47):
I don't know. I don't know Andy Stone. I feel
like he's employing a skill set for an employer, whether
he believes in that employer's actual choices. I do know.
I couldn't say. Maybe he does it, just it seems
odd to me considering his previous employers. But who knows.
(31:08):
I mean, and I don't know everything that's going on
inside Meta either. I'm just basing this off things like
the whistleblower report and that sort of thing. Anyway, that
is the interesting and currently unfolding story of Andy Stone
being wanted by Russia's Interior Ministry. We're gonna keep an
(31:29):
eye on this. If I see updates, I will definitely
follow up with it. I don't expect there to be
many updates. I think this is just a really kind
of intriguing story that breaks on a Monday after a holiday.
I don't necessarily think it's going to lead to anything
else that's particularly newsworthy, but we'll see you never know.
I hope you are all well. I hope those of
(31:51):
you who celebrated Thanksgiving in the US had a wonderful time.
I hope everybody had a great week last week. As
a remind this week we're back to normal, although tomorrow
we'll have a Smart Talks with IBM episode published, and
then next week I'm on vacation, so you're likely to
hear some reruns next week. I'll see if I can
(32:14):
record some new stuff for next week in advance, but
it's a pretty packed week for me right now, so
we'll see. I'll do my best anyway. I wish you
all well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
(32:34):
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