Facebook: A Sleazy Company
Facebook is not exactly a place that inspires trust these days. With the social network/advertising monolith facing a string of privacy scandals, not to mention the unchecked power and influence it wields as a platform to broadcast and amplify viral propaganda and misinformation, incite genocides and lynchings, and disrupt electoral processes on a mega scale, the company’s growth-at-all-costs mindset, putting its massive profits ahead of the interests of their customers, has rightly come under severe criticism more than ever before. In short, it’s been a tough few years, much of it being of its own making.
But what’s extremely disconcerting is the underhanded manner Facebook chose to deal with the escalating crises. From aggressive lobbying to unleashing propaganda campaigns to downplaying Russia’s interference in 2016 U.S. elections to hiring PR firms to write negative articles about rivals Apple and Google to pushing the idea that billionaire George Soros was behind a growing anti-Facebook movement, it appears to have orchestrated everything it can in its capacity to deflect criticism away from itself. Additionally, Facebook is said to have roped in a Jewish civil rights group in an attempt to paint the company’s censure as anti-semitic (CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg are both Jewish). (Mr. Zuckerberg apparently was so “infuriated” by Apple CEO Tim Cook’s critical comments in the wake of Cambridge Analytica data fiasco that he ordered his management team to switch to Android phones.)
Which is why this sleazy act of denying and diverting blame by pointing fingers at its competitors to help shore up its image is another sobering reminder why all the scrutiny that has come Facebook’s way is completely warranted, and most importantly why users should never ever trust Zuckerberg & Co. with their personal information. He is after all the very guy who called all those who joined Facebook and shared their emails, pictures and addresses back when he was a 19-year-old student at Harvard as “dumb fucks”.
But as the previous data breaches have shown, the revelations wouldn’t so much as barely make any dent to their bottom lines as bring out a lip-service of an apology promising to clean up its act (again) that will doubtless be rinsed and repeated every time it finds itself caught like a deer in the headlights. So, Facebook will chug along just fine. When even the worst privacy blunders can’t drive users away because it has become so dominant (another reason why Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram need to be split), so embedded in modern life, what else can we expect? Like I said back in March, “what instead we deserve is a platform that takes privacy seriously and encodes it into their design in a manner that instills transparency and trust.”
Update #1: Merely a day after The New York Times bombshell exposé, Facebook has announced in a new blogpost that it has severed its relationship with Definers, the PR firm with links to Republican presidential campaigns, that sent a research report to journalists that claimed George Soros was quietly funding anti-Facebook groups, and urged them to dig further into the ties between Soros and the groups. No matter the evasive words of denial, the fact remains that Facebook mounted a serious effort to promote key allies in Congress, undermine its corporate enemies, push conspiracy theories and engage in opposition research to discredit its critics, accusations the platform itself has fielded over the last couple of years. And none of this is also going to stop the plummeting employee morale at the company (paywall), with only 52 percent saying they are optimistic about Facebook’s future, down from 84 percent a year ago.
Update #2: CEO Mark Zuckerberg told journalists at a press call that he wasn’t aware until yesterday his company had hired an opposition research firm to discredit its detractors. “Someone on our communications team must have hired them,” he said, while conveniently throwing Definers under the bus for all that went wrong. The New York Times story is the latest public relations flap for the social networking giant that has been ensnared in a quagmire of privacy mishaps and at the receiving end for its outsized role in the dissemination of propaganda and fake news.
Update #3: COO Sheryl Sandberg responded to The New York Times report late Thursday night, acknowledging their slow response to Russian interference on the site. “Mark and I have said many times we were too slow,” she said in a Facebook post, adding “But to suggest that we weren’t interested in knowing the truth, or we wanted to hide what we knew, or that we tried to prevent investigations, is simply untrue. The allegations saying I personally stood in the way are also just plain wrong. This was an investigation of a foreign actor trying to interfere in our election. Nothing could be more important to me or to Facebook.” Sandberg also professed to not knowing about Definers until the story broke, saying “I did not know we hired them or about the work they were doing, but I should have.”
The thing though is if the company’s top executives weren’t aware of their communications team hiring Definers, and by firing the PR firm right after the story came out they seem to acknowledging everything that was reported in the story, why isn’t anyone taking responsibility? Is distancing and feigning ignorance the best strategy they could come up with? Or for that matter, has anyone been fired outright for the multitude of mistakes it has made the last two years? (Alex Stamos, the chief security officer, left the company back in August, and that too on his own, to join Stanford University as an Adjunct Professor at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies, teaching students a class on misuse of technology, cybercrime and cyberwarfare.)
As Helaine Olen correctly mentions in her Washington Post article, “It shouldn’t come as a massive surprise that the people responsible for running a website that entices people to reveal their personal innards so that the website can, in turn, monetize their heartfelt ruminations and day-to-day minutiae are so ethically challenged. All of this sort of stuff just flies right by them until they are called on it. Who else, really, would go into such a business? The odds of Facebook changing much, short of substantive legislation out of Washington, is less than zero. It hasn’t happened yet, so why would anyone think this time will be different?”
Update #4: On Nov. 20, Facebook’s outgoing chief of PR Elliot Schrage took the blame for hiring Definers PR for purposes of opposition research and engaging in smear campaigns against George Soros, Apple and Google, according an internal memo obtained by TechCrunch. Sheryl Sandberg admits that she had received a “small number of emails where Definers was referenced” and some of the firm’s work was “incorporated into materials presented to me,” merely days after denying any knowledge their involvement.
Update #5: Sheryl Sandberg herself asked the communications team to research about George Soros and check if he stood to gain financially by criticising tech companies like Facebook and Google, according to a new report by The New York Times, further complicating her role in hiring Definers PR to engage in opposition research. (Soros had previously remarked that the companies were a “menace to the society” and that they need to be regulated.) By continuously denying, deflecting and obfuscating facts, Facebook has so far only managed to dig itself into a hole it meant for rivals to fall into.
The story has been updated on Nov. 30 to reflect the latest developments.
