The “most controversial issue by far,” Darmé told me, was how powerful the board should be. “People outside the company wanted the board to have as much authority as possible, to tie Facebook’s hands,” she said. Some wanted it to write all of the company’s policies. (“We actually tested that in simulation,” Darmé said. “People never actually wrote a policy.”) On the other hand, many employees wondered whether the board would make a decision that killed Facebook.

Disillusioned after Biden was sworn in, conspiracy theorists could now be swayed back to reality by conservatives and family members—or toward darker fringes.

A covert online push to sway telecommunications policy in favor of the Chinese company may presage a new twist in social manipulation. Fake Twitter profiles supported Huawei, a Chinese company that faced government restrictions in the West.

Google workers across the world are coming together to form a global union alliance. The newly formed coalition, called Alpha Global, is comprised of 13 different unions representing workers in 10 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, and Switzerland.