Recode Decode: "Zucked" author Roger McNamee

Elevation Partners founding partner Roger McNamee talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his new book, Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. In this episode: Transitioning from tech optimist to critic; the 1990 crash and rebound; starting Silver Lake Partners; McNamee’s health crisis and struggles with office politics; “then Bono calls up”; meeting and mentoring the 22-year-old CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg; recruiting Sheryl Sandberg to be COO; the Beacon disaster and clashing with Sandberg; the suspicious early warning signs in 2016; speaking out against Facebook and the cost of becoming an activist; why McNamee wrote Zucked; trying to get around Google’s privacy invasions; the fundamental problems with Google and Facebook’s business model; tech companies that never think about consequences; how the limits on what data can be collected keep changing; and how can regular people help fix these problems? Click here to vote for Kara Swisher in the Shorty Awards! You can vote once per day between now and Thursday, February 21. Thanks to Microsoft Azure for sponsoring this episode. Get started with a free account and 12 months of popular free services at Azure.com/trial today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices