Yael Eisenstad was head of Global Elections Integrity Ops at Facebook. She left six months later with a view that companies cannot regulate themselves. Tristan Harris: How can policy and government protections force the realignment of big technologies' interest with our values? The day we're releasing this episode, June 25, Tristan is testifying in the US Senate on optimizing for engagement by internet platforms.
Aza sits down with Yael Eisenstat, a former CIA officer and a former advisor at the White House. When Yael noticed that Americans were having a harder and harder time finding common ground, she shifted her work from counter-extremism abroad to advising technology companies in the U.S. She believed as danger at home increased, her public sector experience could help fill a gap in Silicon Valley’s talent pool and chip away at the ways tech was contributing to polarization and election hacking. But when she joined Facebook in June 2018, things didn’t go as planned. Yael shares the lessons she learned and her perspective on government’s role in regulating tech, and Aza and Tristan raise questions about our relationships with these companies and the balance of power.