Sharing my learnings from the book, An Ugly Truth by Sheera Frenkel & Cecilia Kang
An Ugly Truth by Sheera Frenkel & Cecilia Kang
Drawing on their unrivaled sources, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang take readers inside the complex court politics, alliances and rivalries within the company to shine a light on the fatal cracks in the architecture of the tech behemoth. Their explosive, exclusive reporting led them to a shocking conclusion: The missteps of the last five years were not an anomaly but an inevitability—this is how Facebook was built to perform. In a period of great upheaval, growth has remained the one constant under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Both have been held up as archetypes of uniquely 21st century executives—he the tech “boy genius” turned billionaire, she the ultimate woman in business, an inspiration to millions through her books and speeches. But sealed off in tight circles of advisers and hobbled by their own ambition and hubris, each has stood by as their technology is coopted by hate-mongers, criminals and corrupt political regimes across the globe, with devastating consequences. In An Ugly Truth, they are at last held accountable.
- Facebook’s meteoric rise was a wonder to behold. In a mere decade, this dorm-room project expanded from a small campus curiosity to a worldwide social media empire.
- in the last few years, the company’s profile has taken a darker turn. The platform is now noted for privacy issues, misinformation, and unsettling political alliances.
- From the very start, Zuckerberg valued engagement over ethics. December 8, 2015. Donald Trump, then just one of many presidential hopefuls, is delivering a fiery speech. He rails against terrorists, against immigrants, and then he calls for a total and complete ban of Muslims entering the United States. For many employees at Facebook, Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is hate speech, a clear violation of the site’s terms and conditions. They want it removed from the site. Mark Zuckerberg disagrees. After meeting with Joel Kaplan, the VP of public policy, Zuckerberg deems the speech too “newsworthy” to delete.
- Zuckerberg’s first platform, FaceMash, was a short-lived blog designed to rank the attractiveness of his female classmates.The site received so much criticism from student groups that Zuckerberg decided to develop a new, less shocking project – Thefacebook.
- Launched in 2004, this simple, early iteration of what we now call Facebook only had a few features. It let students set up personal pages, connect with other users, and leave each other messages. Still, it was a massive hit on campuses. By 2005, the platform had more than one million members and most were logging in more than four times a day. The site’s success prompted Zuckerberg to leave Harvard, move to Palo Alto, and run Facebook as a full-time endeavor.
- The hype was so strong that in 2006 Yahoo tried to buy the company for a billion dollars. Zuckerberg turned down the offer. Rather than focusing on profits, he aimed for growth. He continually pushed his small number of staff to make the site more engrossing and entertaining.
- In September 2006, Facebook launched the News Feed. This new feature gave users a centralized hub displaying activity from all their friends.
- Sandberg already had a sterling reputation as a shrewd businesswoman. Her impressive résumé boasted degrees from Harvard and a stint at the World Bank. At the time, she was working as a VP at Google, perhaps Silicon Valley’s premiere start-up. By March 2008, Facebook proudly named Sandberg its new chief operating officer.
- As Sandberg saw it, Facebook was uniquely suited for the world of online advertising. While Google sold ads based on users’ search terms, Facebook had access to a much wider variety of user data. With this information, the company could serve up targeted ads based on user activity. To leverage these advantages, Facebook took steps to efficiently monetize its users’ data.
- In 2009, it introduced the “like” button. This feature let users easily react to anything posted on the site. Facebook then used “likes” to deliver targeted content and, more importantly, collect user preferences to sell to advertisers.
- Privacy advocates like the Center for Digital Democracy took note of Facebook’s growing exploitation of user data. In December 2009, it filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC. The filing resulted in Facebook agreeing to regular privacy audits, but, in the coming years, the government did very little to actually monitor or regulate the company’s actions.
- Facebook tried and failed to remain politically neutral
- Officially, Sonya Ahuja was an engineer. But, unofficially, she was “the ratcatcher.” Her role at Facebook was simple – whenever an embarrassing story about the company appeared in the press, she had to identify and fire whoever leaked the info.
- By 2016, millions of people in the US and beyond were using Facebook as their primary source of news and information.
- Facebook’s News Feed algorithm favored posts with high engagement – and, unfortunately, those posts were usually inflammatory and sensationalistic. Users often saw content that confirmed their own biases, no matter how false.
- the company introduced “Trending Topics.” This feature let Facebook’s content team partially curate what appeared in users’ feeds.
- Facebook’s threat intelligence team noticed a troubling new trend. It seemed that Russian hackers were using the site to post misinformation about Democratic candidates. While this wasn’t technically against the site’s rules, some hackers were also distributing emails and other information stolen from the Democratic National Committee. The team shut down some of these rogue accounts, but the damage was done – many of the posts became national news.
- Facebook avoided taking responsibility for widespread election meddling.
- Located in St. Petersburg, the IRA is an organization dedicated to pushing Russian political interests. During the 2016 campaign, it spent more than $100,000 on Facebook ads pushing extreme positions both left and right. The ads were widely liked and shared, eventually reaching 126 million Americans. It’s likely this operation, and others like it, had some sway shaping the election’s news cycle and outcome.
- in March 2018, a scandal arrived. The New York Times reported that Cambridge Analytica, a UK consulting firm, had used a security hole to surreptitiously acquire data on up to 87 million Facebook users. The firm then sold the data to the Trump campaign to use in designing targeted political advertising. Yet, during the hearing, many congresspeople appeared technologically illiterate and Zuckerberg deftly avoided any incriminating statements. By the end of the day, Facebook’s stock price had recovered and it seemed the company would avoid any real accountability.
- Facebook’s lax content moderation contributed to real-life violence. All across Myanmar, people are posting and sharing negative messages about the Rohingya, the country’s Muslim minority. Soon, the hate spills over into violence. In the following months, more than 24,000 Rohingya are killed and hundreds of thousands more flee to Bangladesh as refugees. Later, a United Nations fact-finding team studies the conflict. They deem that Facebook played a “determining role” in escalating the region’s racial tensions into a full-blown genocide.
- In 2013, Zuckerberg launched the “Next One Billion,” a project to expand internet access, and Facebook, to developing countries.
- As early as 2014, human rights activists alerted Facebook about the dangerous hate speech on its platform. Matt Schissler, an activist in Myanmar, even traveled to the company’s headquarters to warn staff about the escalating calls for violence. But his pleas fell on deaf ears. Despite his efforts, Facebook did little to curb the rhetoric and the Rohingya people suffered the consequences. This avoidable tragedy, along with the Cambridge Analytica scandal and other high-profile missteps, were beginning to erode Facebook’s popularity.
- Facebook made many enemies with its anticompetitive practices.
- Facebook’s explosive growth was partially fueled by a steadfast policy of buying up smaller competitors. By the time of Hughes’s op-ed, the company had acquired almost 70 other operations. Most of these purchases cost below $100 million, yet there were big mergers, too. In 2012, Facebook bought the photo app Instagram for $1 billion. In 2014, it paid $19 billion to acquire the messenger app WhatsApp.
- Such purchases gave Facebook an unprecedented 2.5 billion users worldwide. It also gave the company access to an unfathomable amount of user data.
- By blending each service together, Facebook could claim any government-mandated breakup would be too complicated.
- Facebook tried and failed to rebrand as a bastion of free speech.
- Multiple crises push Facebook to reevaluate its free speech absolutism.
- Facebook announced a more stringent policy against dangerous posts and suspended Trump’s account for several weeks.
- The company even instituted The Facebook Oversight Board, a new, independent panel to rule on content issues. Ostensibly, the board will provide more oversight, though critics allege it’s merely a move to displace responsibility from the company’s executives.
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