Franklin Foer: 'Big tech has been rattled. The conversation has changed'

When the author Franklin Foer first raised concerns about Silicon Valley's power players, 'people looked at me funny'. Now his work appears prophetic

• Extract: why governments should protect our privacy from big tech

The admission by Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg was alarming.

"Things happened on our platform in this election that should not have happened," she said in an onstage interview last week with Mike Allen, the journalist and Washington diary-keeper. "Especially, and very troubling, foreign interference in a democratic election."