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“He's in charge of Facebook's global growth. His growth team is the capitalist engine of the whole enterprise. Facebook's business model depends on it conquering new territories. Expanding exponentially. The growth team is in charge of forging those new frontiers, and like more frontiersmen, Javi and his team play fast and loose. They're aggressive and quick to stake their claim, always looking for opportunities in the gray area created by the lack of regulation.”

“Like many things at Facebook, it didn't matter what the policy team debated or decided; it mattered what Sheryl thought. In this case she had run into one of her Harvard friends, a surgical director of liver transplantation, at a Harvard reunion and offered to help him source donors.”

“Mark's expecting his first child, and he tells us he might not be present for the birth. As the only person who's birthed a baby, I'm stunned. And genuinely curious. "What would you be doing instead?" I asked him. Like, what in the world could possibly be more meaningful to him than the birth of his first child? He had no idea. Just "something more important might come up.”

“Irrespective, he blames other people for all of those things, including forgetting his passport. I guess that's what it's like to live in a bubble, like Mark does. But a bubble implies flimsy transparency, a diaphanous space where you can see a normal life just beyond your grasp. And what Mark inhabits is more like a thick opaque dome, a murky fortress that separates him from the rest of the world. When you have so many other people doing things for you professionally and personally, you stop taking responsibility for any of it. Max Weber said that dealing with unintended consequences of your actions is what political responsibility is. This guy can't even take responsibility for leaving his passport at home, let alone influencing the US election.”

“Five years earlier when I arrived at Facebook, Mark didn't have a theory of how he and the company should be in the world; he didn't really have developed opinions about policy or politics, beyond "sign up more users." The rest of Facebook's leadership wasn't very different. Mark really couldn't be bothered to care. Now he's developed priorities, and they're mostly pretty horrible and ignorant of the human costs.”

“When yous say 'adversary,' who do you mean?" I raise my hand and ask tentatively, a little concerned about what will happen to anyone on one of these lists. "Anyone who opposes us is an adversary," Mark responds firmly. Not acknowledging that when it comes to Free Basics, that's basically everyone. All I can think is how horrified politicians would be if they knew Facebook was harnessing the platform and its power to put the screws to their thumbs.”

“Vaughan operates in a different way from me and most of the policy team. He decides to crack the China market with his golf clubs, sending updates about whom he has golfed with and how this might lead to opportunities to meet with key government officials. The actual work, preparing briefings, tracking regulations, or analysing political developments, he delegates to interns, or the women who work for him.”