E47: Facebook's week from hell, Ellen Pao on sexism in Elizabeth Holmes coverage, Newsom wins & more

Facebook had internal research finding Instagram worsened body-image issues for one in three teen girls, according to Wall Street Journal material discussed in the episode. Facebook had not released those studies to academics or lawmakers even while considering an Instagram product for children.

Friedberg said Silicon Valley often discourages insiders from exposing suspected fraud because accusations can threaten fundraising and trigger retaliation across portfolios. He said he knew two companies involving misrepresentation and stayed quiet after investors argued their success could attract more capital to the sector.

Chamath said he tried five or six times to build the core Theranos promise and failed despite teams containing MIT, Stanford, and Caltech PhDs. His distinction was precise: ambitious technical failure is legitimate; falsifying present capabilities, documents, or patient results crosses into fraud.

The Pentagon acknowledged that the Kabul drone strike killed 10 civilians, including seven children, after an aid worker’s routine movements were mistaken for a threat. The hosts highlighted New York Times reconstruction showing him loading water jugs and returning home before the strike, exposing the limits of remote surveillance.

Mailchimp’s $12 billion sale to Intuit capped an unusually successful bootstrapped company whose employees reportedly received no equity. Instead, employees were described as highly paid with roughly 20% cash bonuses—about $30,000 on a $150,000 salary—making cash compensation a deliberate substitute for startup options.

Chamath’s welfare experience supplied the UBI debate’s strongest personal evidence: he said assistance kept his family from starving but did not solve the deeper problem of purpose. He connected long-term dependency in his childhood to parental alcohol use, depression, and consequences for children, while still acknowledging the necessity of a safety net.

The social-media argument eventually converged on stronger protections for children, despite sharp disagreement over whether the platforms themselves are uniquely harmful. One host bans TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for his children and monitors YouTube after his four-year-old encountered frightening material on YouTube Kids.

Sacks argued that California Republicans weakened the recall by consolidating around Larry Elder, giving Newsom a polarizing opponent and allowing the campaign to move away from crime, homelessness, schools, and lockdowns. He separately credited recall pressure with accelerating business and school reopening as the petition advanced.