Carole Cadwalladr Profile picture
Oct 3, 2021 9 tweets 5 min read Read on X
🚨First interview with @wsj’s Facebook whistleblower tonight on @60Minutes tonight🚨

A BIG deal. The total failure to hold Facebook to account after Cambridge Analytica is coming home to roost.

How many more insurrections have to happen before we do?

Facebook is out running interference ahead of interview. Nick Clegg is on manoeuvres. Because this is serious.

So many civil society groups - including & esp @FBoversight - were involved in strenuous attempts to get FB to take action ahead of US election

nytimes.com/2021/10/02/tec…
The point is that so many academics, experts, civil rights groups were warning of exactly this.

The insurrection wasn’t some sort of black swan event impossible to predict. Facebook’s failure to take essential measures to protect against violence was pointed out *repeatedly*
It was why @FBoversight was launched. To warn the public that Facebook’s failure to act was to use @tribelaw’s words to watch ‘a coup d’etat in progress’
My phone threw up this memory yesterday. The last time a whistleblower spoke so directly, Facebook melted down.

It precipitated their biggest corporate crisis to date.

And yet. Not a single executive was held to account.
In fact, that house of cards may be about to fall. The whitewashing job that enabled Facebook to emerge from the Cambridge Analytica wreckage may yet be exposed.

And this new whistleblower brings Facebook again into the spotlight…

theguardian.com/technology/202…
Pay attention to how @nickclegg is trying to deflect & divert.

I especially love how he emphasises Facebook removed ‘the original #StopTheSteal group’ conveniently glossing over all the other #StopTheStealgroups Facebook did nothing about. Including the one Steve Bannon was in
And here it is: the Nick Clegg defence in full. This is why they pay him the big bucks.

Social media doesn’t kill people. People kill people.

It’s a direct lift from the NRA school of media management. And if that all Facebook has left, it should be very very worried indeed
Starts in half an hour. Meanwhile…

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More from @carolecadwalla

Feb 28
Congrats to all the news orgs that signed syndication deals with this company. You’ve licensed your journalism to be a core component of Trump’s illegal war machine. Great job everyone 👏
A special shoutout to the editor-in-chief & CEO of the Guardian, Kath Viner & Anna Bateson. The deal with OpenAI was an unforced error which legitimised OpenAI’s illegal scraping of Guardian data & IP. In exchange for a quick buck. The NYTimes, in contrast, chose to sue.
Anthropic stood up to Trump. But OpenAI has capitulated. And now all its ‘partners’ are complicit in the consequences.

That includes Guardian. It will financially benefit from its journalists’ work - inc mine - being used to support Trump’s illegal wars & ICE’s reign of terror.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 19
PREDICTION: If Andrew is charged (no assumption of guilt etc), we are going to have a crisis of both the press & judiciary.

In Britain, it is an offence to publish ANY info on defendant beyond bare facts.

But! US outlets can print whatever they like…
1/
Contempt of court is foundational principle of British justice: press must not prejudice a jury trial.

Editors risk a prison sentence if found in breach.

Even in digital age, the law held…but how could it possibly withstand deluge of US coverage in a case like this??
3/
Short answer: it won’t. Far right agitator Tommy Robinson weaponised UK laws on contempt as a ‘cover up’ over grooming scandal. And the New Yorker ignored & published on Lucy Letby.

If Andrew is charged, it’ll trigger a crisis for both the press & judiciary
4/
Read 4 tweets
Jan 28
NEW: Our investigation for @thenerve_news reveals not only that Peter Thiel’s Palantir is completely enmeshed in our critical national infrastructure.

It’s also the ‘cloud support’ for our nuclear weapons system
1/ Image
Palantir’s stated mission is to defend America. Peter Thiel is a radical libertarian who does not believe ‘freedom & democracy are compatible’.

Yet, the UK is overwhelmingly dependent on Palantir’s services. As a national security threat, this is off the charts.
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Please read the piece with comments from tech & national security experts.

We have no national security while we rely on highly political US Silicon Valley firms that are enmeshed in Trump’s increasing fascistic administration.
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Read 4 tweets
Jan 20
Compare & contrast. This is Trump’s demand for Greenland. And this is Hitler’s for the Sudetenland.

There is no difference. The language. The unstoppable need to dominate. The megalomania. It’s the same.

And Keir Starmer’s response is appeasement. We are in that moment.
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I’m back to mocking up my own headlines for my newsletter because the press - esp here in the UK - is failing to meet the moment.

We’re now trapped between Russia in the east. And the US in the west. Two hostile states openly seeking to crush us.

2/
open.substack.com/pub/broligarch…Image
Ignore the political pundits. They’ve failed us. The media is failing us. Listen to the historians. This is Conservative historian Robert Kagan on what is happening in Minneapolis & what it means.
3/ Image
Read 4 tweets
Nov 21, 2025
The sentencing hearing of Nathan Gill has begun.

Follow @thenerve_news for updates throughout the day.
1/ Image
The barrister for the Crown has laid out the background and context for the case, including Ukraine's efforts to join the European Union.
2/
The barrister confirms that Gill was en route to Moscow when he was stopped at Manchester airport in 2021 (as first reported in @thenerve_news.
3/
thenerve.news/p/nathan-gill-…
Read 35 tweets
Nov 12, 2025
NEW: The entire BBC news cycle is an abject lesson in the disaster economics of information.

This isn’t just a news story. It’s a teachable example of real-time information collapse. We can’t fix that but we can & must save the BBC.
1/
I wrote this back in Jan. What is happening to BBC is part of a systemic issue: total information collapse.

This is what happens when justified grievance, bad faith actors & Silicon Valley companies converge: erosion of trust in all institutions.
2/

broligarchy.substack.com/p/total-inform…Image
There are sound reasons to criticise BBC. We’re all pissed off with it over something! But our valid critiques are being weaponised by the enemies of democracy.

The BBC is a crucial firewall in a moment of unprecedented danger. Why do you think Russia is joining in?!
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Read 6 tweets

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