The Mill Valley Library presents a conversation with award-winning Wall Street Journal technology reporter Jeff Horwitz to discuss his newest book Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets. Broken Code takes a behind-the-scenes look at the manipulative tactics Facebook used to grow its business, how it distorted the way we connect online, and the company insiders who found the courage to speak out.

Once the unrivaled titan of social media, Facebook held a singular place in culture and politics. But in the wake of the 2016 election, even some of the company’s own senior executives came to consider those claims pollyannaish and simplistic. As a succession of scandals rocked Facebook, they—and the world—had to ask whether the company could control, or even understood, its own platforms.

Broken Code tells the story of the Facebook employees who successfully identified the root causes of Facebook’s viral harms and drew up concrete plans to address them, but were stifled by company leadership. Expanding on “The Facebook Files,” his blockbuster, award-winning series for The Wall Street Journal, reporter Jeff Horwitz lays out in sobering detail not just the architecture of Facebook’s failures, but what the company knew (and often disregarded) about its societal impact.

The bookseller for this program is The Depot Bookstore.