!!! As I mentioned last week, ND Cal court ordered unsealing of motion to compel Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg for discovery in their cover-up of Cambridge Analytica which broke wide open March 2018. Yellow was just unsealed - compare to Zuckerberg's testimony to @AOC. /1
This matters as it's long been expected much of Zuckerberg's messages on the matter happened directly with Sandberg or offline. It's an entirely rational practice to keep the CEO off the messy emails. Hence the need for discovery and depositions of Zuckerberg and Sandberg. /2
Meanwhile, Facebook:
- paid $5B to FTC to avoid depositions of leadership;
- negotiated questions off-limits the one time Sandberg testified;
- denied and deflected Parliaments attempts to get answers;
- so far, has avoided discovery and depositions of leadership by AG of DC. /3
Speaking of Sandberg, there is one bit that was unsealed next to a number of redactions left in place. The filing indicates that her files demonstrate that Cambridge Analytica was "merely the tip of the iceberg" which has always been the point of the case and cover-up. /4
This section was left sealed as Facebook claimed it was "confidential communication with consultants." Must be nice having that sort of latitude to avoid embarrassment who helped you with your cover-up. /5
More here in yellow, this just further confirms Sheryl Sandberg's role and importance of these lawsuits continuing to proceed forward in depositions and discovery. A reminder we also just learned there is a sealed transcript of a deposition of Mark Zuckerberg by the SEC. /6
If you want to review the full thread on the cover-up, I put it together last March as a reference to the inconsistencies and deflections in what should have been simple questions and answers at a time when Facebook promised it would come clean. /7
There were three other motions unsealed in the process (and a number of items left redacted per a last minute request by Facebook). This includes a motion regarding Facebook's APIs, their "business partners" and a still delayed look at their promised audit post-Cambridge. /8
There are a few companies left redacted. You can kind of figure out why later on in this breakdown. It looks like the car companies remain sealed as Facebook argued it could hurt their business relationships if the public knew they had much of our data. /10
Side note, there are a bunch of sentences unsealed that just confirm the obvious that Facebook has/had data partners and they're called "data brokers" and allegedly they both sent and received data from Facebook which is embarrassing for them as they don't "sell" your data. /11
Any engineer or business exec in the data or cloud industry would probably find the unsealed motion regarding APIs to be interesting. It includes some costs, massive data sizes, times, tables to restore from cold to warm, et al. And random things like this in yellow. Yikes. /12
Circling back to this first tweet. The answer to the email could have been: Mark, they laundered tens of millions of our records and used it to help elect Donald Trump including to microtarget suppression ads in key districts and we helped them do it. /13
woah. a deeply concerning internal Google doc just unsealed in US DOJ vs Google (adtech antitrust trial seven weeks from now).
Smells like bid rigging.
Translation (by me):
Red = bad for Google
Green = good for G
'Levels playing field' = helps G
'fairer competition' = helps G /1
at the very least, demonstrates the conflict of interest with having significant market power on both sides. here is a Google doc roadmapping these changes to their auctions from the buy-side and the sell-side ahead of analyzing the impact and mitigating outcry. /2
for example, here is what looks to be Google analyzing what would happen to their biz when they removed "Last Look" which gave Google a significant advantage after an ad auction had been run. Don't miss the Green at bottom. /3
more news yesterday in flurry of activity in lawsuit vs Facebook for (over)paying FTC $5B to protect Zuckerberg. Big names involved. Board records inspection shows who's who in 'approval' - everyone now gone except Zuckerberg, Andresseen and Alford. Gets interesting quickly... /1
Yes, Andreessen joined Thiel in politics with full-throated endorsement of Trump with close allies. Alford was CFO of Chan Zuckerberg right before approval. WSJ reported Chenault and Zients (important: now Biden's chief of staff) stepped down over disagreements with Mark Z. /2
So what's happening. Well, first in April 2024 all of these prior and current board members were served in the lawsuit. Again, this is based on a prior records inspection of non-privileged board documents and the Court at that point deciding to allow the case to move forward. /3
Friday night KA-boom. In adtech antitrust lawsuit against Google, court has ordered the state AGs may depose Google co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai. Huge. /1
So the two cited reasons Pichai will be deposed (although not all of them) are incredibly sensitive. 1), “Jedi Blue,” the alleged collusion with Facebook that everyone wrongly wrote off back earlier in this lawsuit. Google CEO Pichai met directly with Facebook CEO Zuckerberg. /2
A reminder the Google and Facebook deal (aka the “NBA” or “Jedi Blue”) is also in a private antitrust suit against Facebook. The deal was signed by the lieutenants of the CEOs (Sheryl Sandberg for Facebook). /3
US v Google flooded docket (103 filings!) over weekend as Court said Friday...hey now, let's skip summary judgment, this baby is going to trial. Much is companies trying to keep their secrets sealed but we get a sense for the witnesses. And a small taste of evidence to come. /1
On the companies filing to keep their secrets sealed which they mostly provided under subpoena, it's a mix of adtech, agencies, platforms, you name it. /2
We also learn some glossary items which likely come up:
'RASTA' - Google's tool to evaluate new 'launches' (aka changes) in ad serving system, runs on live traffic
'Ariane' - identifies and summarized launches
'Launch' - creative name (lol), it replaced Ariane in 2020/2021 /3
SCOTUS just posted order list. It granted cert to Facebook on its Cambridge Analytica matter. Only first question but that’s a huge one. Basically should Facebook have disclosed to shareholders what it started to cover up in 2015 rather than presenting risk as hypothetical? /1
Here is the actual first question as written. One immediate item, it’s outrageous if Justice Kavanaugh didn’t/doesn’t recuse seeing his reported best friend, Joel Kaplan, was directly involved in the matter and its cover up. He threw his SCOTUS confirmation party IIRC. /2
Here is a link into background. I strongly urge press not to overlook this or assume you know fact history. Over the years much has played out in coverup and much of the reporting has been bent towards Facebook’s spin. I am more than happy to point you to the court records. /3
“X has lost dozens of major advertisers under Musk’s ownership, with 74 out of the top 100 U.S. advertisers from that month no longer spending on the platform as of May.” 1/4
Smart NBC report focusing on amplification, velocity and reach, “X isn’t living up to its own policies when it allows violent extremists to use the platform’s amplification features.” 2/4
“It’s not clear to what extent people at X were aware that the company was monetizing the extremist hashtags prior to NBC News’ reporting.” 3/4