Fred Vogelstein

Health Officials Say 'No Thanks' to Contact-Tracing Tech

When Apple and Google announced three weeks ago that they'd developed software to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, it was a big deal. The tech giants are fierce competitors. They rarely cooperate. And together, their software controls about 3…

A Creator of the Ebola Vaccine Has Hope for Slowing Covid-19

Today, Kobinger is among hundreds of scientists worldwide working on potential Covid-19 vaccines; he is working with Inovio and Medicago, another drug company. WIRED talked with Kobinger by phone last week. The conversation has been condensed and…

Zuckerberg's View of Speech on Facebook Is Stuck in 2004

Three days after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Mark Zuckerberg was asked the question on many people’s minds: Did the explosion of fake news and caustic political rhetoric on Facebook help Trump win? Zuckerberg dismissed…

Facebook Puts Its Stamp—and Name—on Instagram and WhatsApp

Facebook has long allowed Instagram and WhatsApp to operate independently. Now, it's "Instagram from Facebook." Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. But even today, many users of those apps don’t realize they are part of Mark…

The FTC Wants More Privacy, Less Zuckerberg, at Facebook

MARK ZUCKERBERG’S NAME doesn’t appear anywhere in the 50-page complaint brought against Facebook by the US government Wednesday as it settled charges the company deceived millions of Americans over how it used and shared their personal information.…

The New Antitrust Scrutiny Should Worry Silicon Valley

Many Americans think Big Tech and Silicon Valley have too much power and need to be reigned in. Six weeks ago, it was hard to believe Washington had the political will to do much about that. Facebook had just said it would take a charge of up to $5…

Facebook Will Finally Pay—Billions—for Its Privacy Missteps

When Mark Zuckerberg turned on Facebook’s News Feed in 2006, his users—exclusively college students at the time—freaked out at the notion that Facebook was automatically sharing their posts with friends. Even digital natives were scared to share much…

15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook

The streets of Davos, Switzerland, were iced over on the night of January 25, 2018, which added a slight element of danger to the prospect of trekking to the Hotel Seehof for George Soros’ annual banquet. The aged financier has a tradition of hosting…

Facebook’s Head of Product, Chris Cox, Says Goodbye

Last spring, Chris Cox, the chief product officer of Facebook, was promoted to also oversee WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. It seemed, at the time, almost like succession planning. If Mark Zuckerberg were to ever leave the company, Cox, his…

Facebook's Sloppy Data-Sharing Deals Might Be Criminal

In the past nine days, Facebook has said it is rethinking its business, and a presidential candidate said it should be broken up. In the past 24 hours, its services including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus froze for most of a…

Why Should Anyone Believe Facebook Anymore?

If there is one message Facebook has been trying to send to the world in 2018, it's that it understands that it needs to rethink the way it operates as a company. It says it understands that it must better police the content that appears on its…

Facebook Sketches a Future With a Diminished News Feed

For most of the past year, Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to convince the world that Facebook was fast becoming a very different company—one that accepted its enormous role shaping public opinion worldwide and would spend what it took to exercise…

Inside Facebook's Plan to Safeguard the 2018 Election

Deep in the bowels of Facebook's serpentine campus in Menlo Park, California is a room about 25-feet-square that may have a lot to do with how the world thinks about the company in the coming months. It looks like a Wall Street trading floor, with…

Facebook Just Learned the True Cost of Fixing Its Problems

For the last four months, most Facebook investors have had a simple thesis about the company’s business prospects: Facebook makes so much money that it would barely notice the costs associated with better policing its platform for fake news, hate …

What Problems? Facebook Stock Has Never Been More Valuable

Few companies in the history of business have been pilloried like Facebook in the last two years. The list of offenses, largely self-inflicted, reads like a rap sheet. It ignored its growing role in media and politics. It dismissed fake news as …

The FDA Approved Its First Cannabis Drug. What Next?

Five years ago I bought a safe for my son’s doctor to store drugs in. It was blue, about three-feet square, and weighed 965 lbs—like the Acme safes Coyote used to try to drop on Road Runner. My family and I had evidence the drugs might cure our …

Big Tech Trades Splashy Conference Demos for Introspection

The tech industry is booming. Its biggest companies are minting money. Their influence and reach into media, telecommunications, retail—everything really—is so great that once-dominant firms in those industries are desperately seeking merger partners …

What Did AT&T Want From Michael Cohen?

Everyone knows Washington is a swamp filled with snakes and influence peddlers. And few believed President Trump would do much to change that, despite his "drain the swamp" battle cry. In fact, one could argue he has done much since taking office to …

My Son Pioneered an Epilepsy Drug Derived From Marijuana. An FDA Panel Just Approved It

Yesterday morning a tall, lanky 16-year-old boy in a red polo shirt stood at a podium in front of a roomful of doctors, scientists, and regulators and told them about how a drug they were considering for approval had changed his life. “I had seizures …

TED Is All About Facebook–and Not in a Good Way

The official theme of this year’s TED conference is “The Age of Amazement.” But the unofficial theme may well be “Ugh, Facebook.” The first two days of TED's polished, elite gathering of technofuturists overlapped with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s …