Yaël Eisenstat: Why we need more friction on social media

VPM | By Rachel Faulkner White, Manoush Zomorodi and Katie Simon

Published October 7, 2022 at 1:44 PM EDT

Updated April 28, 2023

Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Friction.

Facebook profits from being frictionless, says Yaël Eisenstat. But without friction, misinformation can spread like wildfire. The solution, Yaël says, is to build more friction into social media.

About Yaël Eisenstat

Yaël Eistenstat is a democracy activist focusing on transparency and accountability in tech. In October 2022, she became vice president of the Center for Technology & Society at the Anti-Defamation League.

In 2018, Eisenstat worked for Facebook for six months before leaving the company and speaking out about their fact-checking policies regarding U.S. elections. Prior to that, she worked as a CIA intelligence officer, a foreign diplomat in the State Department, and a White House advisor.

Eisenstat earned her master’s in international affairs from Johns Hopkins University.

Disclaimer: Facebook parent Meta pays NPR to license NPR content. NPR reached out to Meta for comment on Yaël Eistenstat’s allegations but, as of this recording, received no response.

This segment of the TED Radio Hour was produced by Rachel Faulkner and edited by Katie Simon. You can follow us on Facebook @TEDRadioHour and email us at [email protected].

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Rachel Faulkner White

Rachel Faulkner White is a producer and editor for TED Radio Hour.

During her time at NPR, Faulkner White has helped create more than a hundred TED Radio Hour episodes, including a long-form interview on navigating grief and hardship, a look at how family income affects childhood brain development, a conversation on loneliness and human connection and an exploration of outer space and gravitational waves. She was also a producer for How I Built This for five years, where she directed live tapings of the podcast as well as produced fan favorite episodes like The McBride Sisters, Rent The Runway, Bumble and filmmaker Ava DuVernay.

Faulkner White is part of the TED Radio Hour team that received a 2018 Webby Award for their Manipulation episode. She also worked as a research assistant for Professor Steven V. Roberts, author of the memoir Cokie: A Life Well-Lived, about his wife (and one of NPR's Founding Mothers) Cokie Roberts.

Faulkner White joined NPR in 2016 as an intern. She started producing while finishing college, coming into the office between classes, and joined NPR full-time after finishing her bachelor's degree in journalism and mass communications from George Washington University.

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