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

Jan 26
NEW: Why not calling a Nazi salute a Nazi salute puts us in a whole new place of danger. We have to call spades spades or what else is there?
1/
open.substack.com/pub/broligarch…Image
I've been a Sunday journalist for 20 years and what I'm trying to do in my newsletter is the slower take. Including what's missing from the news. And this week, that's Peter Thiel. *Where was he*??

He literally made JD Vance so was he missing from the tech bro line-up?
2/ Image
And then there's these guys. If you want bad 2016 vibes, please come & read my dive into the straight-up weirdness of Nigel Farage & Arron Banks's inauguration party.

This is Bad Boys of Brexit #2. Only this time, the special geopolitical friends are Chinese.
3/ Image
Read 6 tweets
Dec 31, 2024
NEW: Meet Sergei Cristo, a Russian-born Conservative party activist turned whistleblower.

Ep 1 out today: A meeting at the Carlton Club. And the start of efforts to uncover the biggest Russian intelligence operation since the Cambridge Spy Ring.
1/
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/epi…
Above on Apple or here on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes will be weekly from now on so please subscribe.

It's an incredible story, John Le Carre but true. But it's also vital to get UK govt to act to protect our elections
2/
open.spotify.com/episode/3VnVjm…
More on it here. Sign up for latest news inc a special event we're hosting in Feb. And if you can afford to chuck a couple of quid into the crowdfunder, we'd be grateful. This is an independent production funded by the public for the public 🙏

the-citizens.com/2024/12/sergei…
Read 4 tweets
Dec 23, 2024
Hahaha. I just got a call to ask if 'I'm going to the Indie'. To be clear, this is Lord Lebedev trolling me. But the serious point is that we just lost a liberal independent newspaper. With everything that entails for both journalists & readers.
1/
This week the Scott Trust sold the Observer brand to Tortoise Media. But they're using this to slash 70 core Guardian jobs in a sleight of hand. Observer journalists are *Guardian* journalists on *Guardian* contracts.
2/
But TUPE legislation legally allows the Guardian to transfer any part of its company out. So, 70 journalists on Guardian contracts have a choice to make this Christmas: go to a financially struggling start-up which may or may fail in a couple of years. Or take voluntary redundancy.
3/
Read 9 tweets
Dec 22, 2024
Well this is very exciting. My investigation into the Guardian’s new partner & the Observer’s new owner has just got the thumbs up from the Baron of Siberia.

I’m not entirely sure he’s familiar with my journalistic oeuvre, mind… Image
The Guardian is cancelling my contract after 19 years continuous employment with no pay-off so totes happy to go to the Indie to continue my investigation into Evgeny’s dad, the ex-KGB spy.

The UK media: so many fine choices.

theguardian.com/media/2019/nov…
To be clear, I’m not being singled out: fully one third of Guardian & Observer staff are on either zero hours or sham ‘freelance’ contracts. The Guardian issued notice on all these this week. If you’re an employment lawyer, feel free to slide into my DMs!
Read 4 tweets
Dec 20, 2024
This week the Guardian's owner, the Scott Trust, gifted the 233-year-old Observer to Tortoise Media.

This isn't just a dark day for journalism, it's a sign.

Meet the team.

This is Putin giving Tortoise's energy advisory board member an 'Order of Friendship' medal in 2017.
1/ Image
Independent news is under pressure across the world. The US is already crumbling: ABC settled with Trump. WaPo pre-obeyed.

This week Guardian lost 100 journalists & one of its arms. To understand what's lost, let's start with Putin's friend: Ivan Glasenberg, ex Glencore CEO.
2/
Glasenberg didn't just get a medal from Putin, he sat on the board of a Russian oil company, Rosneft, chaired by one of Putin's closest allies

And here he is: on Tortoise's energy advisory board, assembled by Tortoise, founder, owner & editor, James Harding.
3/ Image
Read 17 tweets
Dec 15, 2024
This is what the Observer team & I were doing between strikes. Please read it because it couldn’t be more relevant. I interview Asif Kapadia about his alarming new film, 2073, with its stark warning of where Trump, Musk & Farage are taking us..

theguardian.com/film/2024/dec/…
Kapadia won an Oscar for Amy, his heartbreaking film about Amy Winehouse. This is emotional too, a sci fi thriller with Samantha Morton set in the future made of fragments of the present. I tell the story of how I accidentally ended up in the film. But it’s so much more than that
It’s a chilling warning of what’s to come. The first film I’ve seen that attempts to unravel the technological crisis that underpins our democratic one. And I’m so pleased to be able to write about in Observer New Review, where I work with the best editors & designers in Britain including @JaneFerg who commissioned this & made it look beautiful. It’s where we’ve relentlessly covered the technoauthoritarian takeover that’s at the heart of Asif’s film…as part of the Guardian’s core journalistic output. While Asif’s film has journalists & journalism at its heart. I’m proud & flattered to be part of it but it also brings home what we stand to lose 😢Image
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Read 4 tweets

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