19 ms·

With Facebook at ‘War,’ Zuckerberg Adopts More Aggressive Style

120 points by dcgudeman 8y ago

InclinedPlane 8y ago
Exactly the wrong tack. Firstly, Facebook is 100% in the wrong here, they did bad things (including helping to facilitate genocide) and there needs to be consequences for those. They need to accept that they have done wrong they need to accept that they need to accept responsibility and they need to accept that they need to make big changes. Instead they've been avoiding taking full responsibility and issuing wishy-washy press releases. It's going to catch up with them sooner than later and the public is going to stop giving them a pass for their awful behavior.
toje22 8y ago
Facebook needs a credible trustworthy leader at this point in time. I don't know who Zuck thinks trusts him. His rep is more a liability than anything else at this stage.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  ...and something of a change in policy. They seem to keep making choices and decisions that are asking for criticism.
- trophycase 8y ago
  I think its great. What better than a scumbag like Zuck to actually wake people up?
elliekelly 8y ago
This article and others I’ve read depict Zuckerberg as angry. An angry CEO makes decisions based on emotion and ego and that is a recipe for disaster.
n3d1m 8y ago
Paywall
- Klover 8y ago
  https://www.outline.com/86w5yw https://www.outline.com/86w5yw
- blatherard 8y ago
  Use this handy bookmarklet (which, ironically, uses facebook to circumvent the wsj paywall): javascript:window.location.href='https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);
kt13 8y ago
Mark Zuckerberg gathered roughly 50 of his top lieutenants earlier this year and told them that Facebook Inc. was at war and he planned to lead the company accordingly. During times of peace, executives can move more slowly and ensure that everybody is on board with key decisions, he said during the June meeting, according to people familiar with the remarks. But with Facebook under siege from lawmakers, investors and angry users, he needed to act more decisively, the people said. Mr. Zuckerberg’s new approach is causing unprecedented turmoil atop Facebook, driving several key executives from the company, according to people familiar with the matter. At times, it has created tensions with his longtime chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. The June meeting and strains with Ms. Sandberg haven’t been previously reported. The 34-year-old CEO believes Facebook didn’t move quickly enough at key moments this year and increasingly is pressing senior executives to “make progress faster” on resolving problems such as slowing user growth and securing the platform, said people familiar with the matter. Mr. Zuckerberg also at times has expressed frustration at how the company managed the waves of criticism it faced this year. On Friday, that tension was on display when, during a question-and-answer session with employees at Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., he blasted a fresh round of critical news coverage as “bullshit,” according the people familiar with the remarks. One employee at the session asked if Facebook could deter leaks by publishing an internal report about how frequently offenders are found and fired. Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook does fire leakers, but the root cause was “bad morale” perpetuated by attacks in the media. Mr. Zuckerberg, who previously set annual goals such as to learn Mandarin and read 25 books, said this year he would focus on fixing Facebook. He believes this tougher management style is necessary to tackle challenges being raised both internally and externally, according to a person familiar with his thinking. Mr. Zuckerberg’s new posture could trouble those who feel his “move fast, break things” mantra from Facebook’s early days contributed to many of the company’s current problems. It also has led to confrontations with some of his top reports, including Ms. Sandberg, his longtime number two who has long had considerable autonomy over the Facebook teams that control communications and policy. This spring, Mr. Zuckerberg told Ms. Sandberg, 49, that he blamed her and her teams for the public fallout over Cambridge Analytica, the research firm that inappropriately accessed private data on Facebook users and used it for political research, according to people familiar with the exchange. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, told friends she wondered whether her job might be at risk from the fallout to the Cambridge Analytical scandal. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News Ms. Sandberg later confided in friends that the exchange rattled her, and she wondered if she should be worried about her job. Mr. Zuckerberg also has told Ms. Sandberg she should have been more aggressive in allocating resources to review troublesome content on the site, according to one person familiar with the matter, a problem that the company still struggles to fix. Mr. Zuckerberg is pleased with the improvement in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter, and last week told reporters that Ms. Sandberg is a “very important partner to me, and continues to be, and will continue to be.” Mr. Zuckerberg had privately told his executives that some of the reaction to the Cambridge Analytica controversy amounted to “hysteria” and complained Facebook wasn’t effectively managing the response. Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t remember using the word “hysteria” regarding Cambridge Analytica, according to a person familiar with his thinking, adding that he takes these issues seriously and that Facebook has spent billions on safety and security to address these problems. The heads of some other key Facebook units didn’t survive conflicts with Mr. Zuckerberg. Mr. Zuckerberg clashed with the co-founders of Instagram, the fast-growing photo-sharing app, over his desire to share location data on Instagram users with the main Facebook platform, which would help better target ads, said people familiar with the matter. The founders, who strongly opposed sharing the data, abruptly resigned in September, and Instagram started testing the change shortly after they left, the people said. A Facebook spokeswoman said Instagram hasn’t “introduced updates to our location history settings” and the company would keep users informed. The co-founders of WhatsApp likewise left after disagreements with Mr. Zuckerberg over how to generate more revenue from the messaging-service, people familiar with the matter said. More recently, Mr. Zuckerberg forced out Brendan Iribe, co-founder of Oculus VR, in part because of a disagreement about the future of the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset, the people said. Facebook and Mr. Iribe said his decision to leave in October was “mutual.” Facebook remains hugely profitable, with net income of more than $5 billion in the third quarter, but its margins are under pressure in part because of its increased spending on security. Mr. Zuckerberg has said Facebook is in the midst of a three-year turnaround ending in 2019 to strengthen its defenses against the risks posed by having an open platform. A Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement: “We were absolutely too slow to identify a range of issues over the past two years, but once we did we took strong action to address them and prevent future abuse. We’ve made massive investments in safety and security. While we know we have more work to do, we believe we’ve made progress.” All told, roughly a dozen senior or highly visible executives disclosed their resignations or left Facebook in 2018. In May, Facebook announced a major reshuffling of top product executives in a way that helped free up Mr. Zuckerberg to oversee a broader portfolio within the company. This turmoil at the top of Facebook has made it difficult for the company to execute on some product decisions and shore up employee morale, which has been sinking over the last year along with the stock price, which has fallen 36% since its peak. Many employees are frustrated by the bad press and constant reorganizations, including of the security team, which can disrupt their work, according to current and former employees. Scrutiny of Facebook has only escalated in the past week after the New York Times reported its use of opposition-research firms tasked with exposing critical information about Facebook’s detractors, including one called Definers Public Affairs. Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg both said the decision to employ the firm was made by Facebook’s communications officials. Ms. Sandberg’s comments in particular have angered many people on those teams, according to people familiar with the matter, given how closely she tracked and managed Facebook’s media strategy, sometimes getting involved in wording changes. In the internal Q&A Friday, Ms. Sandberg said she took full responsibility for the actions of the communications team. As both chairman and CEO and with a lock on the majority of Facebook’s supervoting shares, Mr. Zuckerberg has few checks on his power. Still, Facebook’s board has taken a more active role of late. In September 2017, Erskine Bowles, the head of the audit committee and a former Clinton White House official, told Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg that he felt they needed to take the issue of Russian interference on the platform much more seriously. “This is going to be much bigger than you think,” Mr. Bowles said, according to a person familiar with the exchange. Mr. Bowles also said the board should have been notified sooner as the company realized the extent of the interference. The board then requested more regular updates on the matter, at times seeking daily briefings—a much higher level of engagement than is typical for the board, people familiar with the matter say. Later, after the Cambridge Analytica disclosure, the board urged Mr. Zuckerberg to name an executive who would be in charge of corralling Facebook’s response to that matter and resolving other issues before they metastasized, said a person familiar with the matter. After that, he put Ms. Sandberg in charge of that effort. Mr. Zuckerberg also sought advice from a mentor, former Microsoft Corp. Chairman and CEO Bill Gates. He recommended Microsoft’s model, which relies on Brad Smith to oversee its corporate, external, and legal affairs. Mr. Smith wears the title “president” and reports directly to the CEO. As Mr. Zuckerberg looked for someone to fill that role, Facebook’s general counsel Colin Stretch announced his resignation in June, according to people familiar with the matter, partly because the new structure would have effectively demoted him. Facebook ultimately decided against combining the jobs after failing to find a suitable candidate. Mr. Stretch now plans to stay through at least next summer, people familiar with the situation said. Facebook is no longer searching for his replacement. In October, Facebook hired former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as head of global policy and communications, the company’s most high-profile external hire since Ms. Sandberg joined from Google in 2008. But his predecessor, Elliot Schrage, still remains at the company and reports to Ms. Sandberg. Friday, Mr. Schrage told employees at the company Q&A to expect more negative coverage of Facebook in coming months. —Robert McMillan and Kirsten Grind contributed to this article.
clubm8 8y ago
Some might think becoming belligerent in the face of criticism would be a poor strategy, but it worked for Brett Kavanaugh...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- phillipcarter 8y ago
  It's the primary play in the modern conservative playbook.
- sjg007 8y ago
  Right but the deck was stacked in Kavanaugh's favor. House and Senate investigations into Facebook in 2019-2020 would be disastrous for them as they have to appease two political parties who may decide to go full bipartisan on them. I expect strong lobbying to drive the narrative.. the problem is though that there are a lot of extrinsic issues that pop up. The seemed to survive the midterms though relatively unscathed so really it will be data privacy and maybe global events that impact them. Most of Trump's focus is local though so that may help Facebook avoid the news cycle (say with social media induced violence in Asia)..
sys_64738 8y ago
> In October, Facebook hired former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as head of global policy and communications, the company’s most high-profile external hire since Ms. Sandberg joined from Google in 2008. When Mr Clegg became deputy PM to the tory leadership he forever condemned the Lib-Dems to be classed as a poodle for the tory party. The Lib-Dems voters of 2010 deserted the party for this act of treachery which cost Clegg his constituency in 2017. So if Facebook hope this failed politician can save them then it's going to be a tough way ahead for Zuck.
- jackbrookes 8y ago
  Just because he's politically unpopular doesn't mean he won't be valuable to them.
  - mcny 8y ago
    I don't think the point made was that he is unpopular. I think the point is he is incapable of making good decisions. With some things like the failed alternate vote referendum I have read people blame Labour more than the Lib Dems. However, he clearly lacks charisma and skills in hindsight. I don't think anyone at Facebook will force Nick Clegg to do or say anything but I'll be shocked if he has any serious decision-making power within Facebook. I'm trying to avoid saying he is a rubber stamp but it is difficult to say he is much more when even ex CSO Alex Stamos clearly had restrictions (if you read between the lines).
    - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
      You're assuming that Clegg has expressed his true aims in public. Given his record of spectacular outright lies - such as the famous u-turn on tuition fees, or the way that he denied being a Young Conservative at Cambridge, in spite of the evidence - it's possible his affable victim-of-circumstance brand is just a cover for someone who is essentially manipulative and dishonest. Given the successful spoiler/enabler role of the LibDems in UK politics, there's a good chance he doesn't think of his record as one of failure on any level. Interesting, he has already deleted all of his tweets, including the anti-Brexit ones - not quite the action of the absolutely committed anti-Brexit campaigner he claimed to be. (To say "FB wouldn't let him keep them" misses the point. Someone who was genuinely committed to stopping Brexit would never accept a job which might conflict with keeping them.)
plainOldText 8y ago
So many articles written about a company that adds so little value to human life (at least in its current form). If you spend just 1h/day on Facebook, over the course of 10 years, that's approx. 150 days or roughly half a year. I'm sure plenty of people spend more than 1h/day scrolling through their pointless feeds. So my question to you is this: What could you achieve if you could spend half a year of your life, fully immersing yourself in something meaningful and of value?
- christophilus 8y ago
  There’s a big difference between what you can accomplish with an hour here and an hour there vs contiguous, high quality focused time. I suspect that the average user’s Facebook time is of the former, low quality kind.
  - SeanBoocock 8y ago
    This is a great point and too seldom raised when comparisons like this are made. I only have so much capacity for highly focused engagement in a given day, and even within those periods there is variability to my focus. That Facebook, or any other activity, occupies time that I am less engaged is not an indictment of those activities or the choice to spend that time in a less deliberate way; its just how most people work. A better criticism in my mind would be to weigh Facebook and its value against actual competitors for people’s attention in those time periods.
  - gaius 8y ago
    what you can accomplish with an hour here and an hour there vs contiguous, high quality focused time Yes and no. Swap your FB time for MOOC time and I bet you can do a lot of worthwhile study in bite-size chunks. Or reading books or... anything really.
- alexis_fr 8y ago
  > What could you accomplish with the hours spent on Facebook? Nothing. Society doesn’t want white males. And Christian. Seriously on Facebook I have fun discussing with a disgruntled males group, but companies are focussed on hiring « diversity ». So I’ve built my own company and I was a millionaire at 31 (you know, IQ138, you never really fail anything). Twice now at 33, in my estimate. And plenty of free time. Which I spend among the rejects of the Diversity movements. Diversity always excludes us.
tabs_masterrace 8y ago
Is there a Facebook smear campaign going on or people just love to pile on Zuckerberg? Facebook is an advertisement company and collects data, but so does everybody else. Gmail launched in 2004. Snowden leaks in 2013 were greeted with general apathy. But know it's the time to crucify Zuckerberg for what exatly? Make use of targeted advertisement? Or letting Facebook have user-generated content, that may or may not have influenced votes in the past? Either way, the ongoing collection of all kinds of data has been obvious for many years now. And it's not going to stop, so some advice: Instead blaming this one actor, better get used to it. Platforms also can't fully and completely be responsible for political views expressed by user-generated content.
- jseliger 8y ago
  This is a very good comment and I hope it rises to the top of the heap. I wrote this post on an HN comment, but I wonder, "Is there an actual Facebook crisis, or media narrative about Facebook crisis?" https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebook-crisis-or-media-narrative-about-facebook-crisis https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo... It seems to me that Zuckerberg doesn't know that he's in a media scapegoating situation. When you've become the scapegoat, there is nothing you can do to stop it. You can observe the scapegoating mechanism, but even that will likely do very little to halt it in action. The media cannot accept (or comprehensively address) its own culpability for the 2016 election. So let's put the blame on those guys, over there, instead of looking at ourselves.
  - GreeniFi 8y ago
    You’ve been reading Rene Girard it would seem. And he’s a good guide to what’s going on: they were all at it, but Zuck is soaking up the blame not just for the ills of the social media biz model but the ills of late capitalism.
    - Zelphyr 8y ago
      He may be soaking up undeserved blame but a lot of it is deserved. He has demonstrated time and again that he has little care for user privacy when that got in the way of selling an ad. People are (hopefully) starting to wake up to how dangerous that is.
softwaredoug 8y ago
Large companies often get stuck in analysis paralysis, so a decisive leader can be a good thing. I think the more important question is whether the decisiveness originates from core values the company projects our, or if it’s just about defending turf. If it’s the latter, Facebook is in its long slow decline phase as a company
amasad 8y ago
The company is most comfortable being at war. That's the first thing I noticed when I started working there. People glorified the days when they were fighting head-to-head with Google or before that with the other social networks. They reminse with pride about the "lockdown" periods when everyone would not leave the office for days to fend off a competitor. It's kind of an intoxicating feeling when everyone around you is driven to win, and I liked it. However, I don't think it's the best environment to be creative, that's why I think FB has to rely on acquisitions to keep the growth going (except that on the infrastructure side of Facebook it is very creative and has the time and space for innovation, hence all their awesome open source stuff).
- plazmatic 8y ago
  Spoken like a true former employee.
- adamnemecek 8y ago
  > everyone would not leave the office for days to fend off a competitor. It's kind of an intoxicating feeling when everyone around you is driven to win, and I liked it. This is such a Stockholm syndrome. How productive are you if you haven’t slept for three days? I really don’t care about what Facebook does but these are just such blatant examples of mismanagement and I don’t want them to spread.
  - spiderfarmer 8y ago
    The people downvoting you probably are people who are "hustling" right now and maybe actually enjoying it. For every sadist there is a sadomasochist so I'm not suprised there are people that enjoy working their ass off for above average wages while neglecting other parts of an "average" life. There's more to life than work and money people. Once you realise that you'll look back and agree with the poster above.
  - rock_hard 8y ago
    Not leaving office != not sleeping
qbaqbaqba 8y ago
It's getting boring.
toddh 8y ago
The advantage of deploying a war metaphor is it resists leadership change. An at risk leader can always say "You don't change want to change horses in the middle of a river, do you?"

120 points by dcgudeman 8y ago

Exactly the wrong tack. Firstly, Facebook is 100% in the wrong here, they did bad things (including helping to facilitate genocide) and there needs to be consequences for those. They need to accept that they have done wrong they need to accept that they need to accept responsibility and they need to accept that they need to make big changes. Instead they've been avoiding taking full responsibility and issuing wishy-washy press releases. It's going to catch up with them sooner than later and the public is going to stop giving them a pass for their awful behavior.

toje22 8y ago

Facebook needs a credible trustworthy leader at this point in time. I don't know who Zuck thinks trusts him. His rep is more a liability than anything else at this stage.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
...and something of a change in policy. They seem to keep making choices and decisions that are asking for criticism.
trophycase 8y ago
I think its great. What better than a scumbag like Zuck to actually wake people up?

elliekelly 8y ago

This article and others I’ve read depict Zuckerberg as angry. An angry CEO makes decisions based on emotion and ego and that is a recipe for disaster.

n3d1m 8y ago

Paywall

Klover 8y ago
https://www.outline.com/86w5yw https://www.outline.com/86w5yw
blatherard 8y ago
Use this handy bookmarklet (which, ironically, uses facebook to circumvent the wsj paywall): javascript:window.location.href='https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

kt13 8y ago

Mark Zuckerberg gathered roughly 50 of his top lieutenants earlier this year and told them that Facebook Inc. was at war and he planned to lead the company accordingly. During times of peace, executives can move more slowly and ensure that everybody is on board with key decisions, he said during the June meeting, according to people familiar with the remarks. But with Facebook under siege from lawmakers, investors and angry users, he needed to act more decisively, the people said. Mr. Zuckerberg’s new approach is causing unprecedented turmoil atop Facebook, driving several key executives from the company, according to people familiar with the matter. At times, it has created tensions with his longtime chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. The June meeting and strains with Ms. Sandberg haven’t been previously reported. The 34-year-old CEO believes Facebook didn’t move quickly enough at key moments this year and increasingly is pressing senior executives to “make progress faster” on resolving problems such as slowing user growth and securing the platform, said people familiar with the matter. Mr. Zuckerberg also at times has expressed frustration at how the company managed the waves of criticism it faced this year. On Friday, that tension was on display when, during a question-and-answer session with employees at Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., he blasted a fresh round of critical news coverage as “bullshit,” according the people familiar with the remarks. One employee at the session asked if Facebook could deter leaks by publishing an internal report about how frequently offenders are found and fired. Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook does fire leakers, but the root cause was “bad morale” perpetuated by attacks in the media. Mr. Zuckerberg, who previously set annual goals such as to learn Mandarin and read 25 books, said this year he would focus on fixing Facebook. He believes this tougher management style is necessary to tackle challenges being raised both internally and externally, according to a person familiar with his thinking. Mr. Zuckerberg’s new posture could trouble those who feel his “move fast, break things” mantra from Facebook’s early days contributed to many of the company’s current problems. It also has led to confrontations with some of his top reports, including Ms. Sandberg, his longtime number two who has long had considerable autonomy over the Facebook teams that control communications and policy. This spring, Mr. Zuckerberg told Ms. Sandberg, 49, that he blamed her and her teams for the public fallout over Cambridge Analytica, the research firm that inappropriately accessed private data on Facebook users and used it for political research, according to people familiar with the exchange. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, told friends she wondered whether her job might be at risk from the fallout to the Cambridge Analytical scandal. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News Ms. Sandberg later confided in friends that the exchange rattled her, and she wondered if she should be worried about her job. Mr. Zuckerberg also has told Ms. Sandberg she should have been more aggressive in allocating resources to review troublesome content on the site, according to one person familiar with the matter, a problem that the company still struggles to fix. Mr. Zuckerberg is pleased with the improvement in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter, and last week told reporters that Ms. Sandberg is a “very important partner to me, and continues to be, and will continue to be.” Mr. Zuckerberg had privately told his executives that some of the reaction to the Cambridge Analytica controversy amounted to “hysteria” and complained Facebook wasn’t effectively managing the response. Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t remember using the word “hysteria” regarding Cambridge Analytica, according to a person familiar with his thinking, adding that he takes these issues seriously and that Facebook has spent billions on safety and security to address these problems. The heads of some other key Facebook units didn’t survive conflicts with Mr. Zuckerberg. Mr. Zuckerberg clashed with the co-founders of Instagram, the fast-growing photo-sharing app, over his desire to share location data on Instagram users with the main Facebook platform, which would help better target ads, said people familiar with the matter. The founders, who strongly opposed sharing the data, abruptly resigned in September, and Instagram started testing the change shortly after they left, the people said. A Facebook spokeswoman said Instagram hasn’t “introduced updates to our location history settings” and the company would keep users informed. The co-founders of WhatsApp likewise left after disagreements with Mr. Zuckerberg over how to generate more revenue from the messaging-service, people familiar with the matter said. More recently, Mr. Zuckerberg forced out Brendan Iribe, co-founder of Oculus VR, in part because of a disagreement about the future of the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset, the people said. Facebook and Mr. Iribe said his decision to leave in October was “mutual.” Facebook remains hugely profitable, with net income of more than $5 billion in the third quarter, but its margins are under pressure in part because of its increased spending on security. Mr. Zuckerberg has said Facebook is in the midst of a three-year turnaround ending in 2019 to strengthen its defenses against the risks posed by having an open platform. A Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement: “We were absolutely too slow to identify a range of issues over the past two years, but once we did we took strong action to address them and prevent future abuse. We’ve made massive investments in safety and security. While we know we have more work to do, we believe we’ve made progress.” All told, roughly a dozen senior or highly visible executives disclosed their resignations or left Facebook in 2018. In May, Facebook announced a major reshuffling of top product executives in a way that helped free up Mr. Zuckerberg to oversee a broader portfolio within the company. This turmoil at the top of Facebook has made it difficult for the company to execute on some product decisions and shore up employee morale, which has been sinking over the last year along with the stock price, which has fallen 36% since its peak. Many employees are frustrated by the bad press and constant reorganizations, including of the security team, which can disrupt their work, according to current and former employees. Scrutiny of Facebook has only escalated in the past week after the New York Times reported its use of opposition-research firms tasked with exposing critical information about Facebook’s detractors, including one called Definers Public Affairs. Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg both said the decision to employ the firm was made by Facebook’s communications officials. Ms. Sandberg’s comments in particular have angered many people on those teams, according to people familiar with the matter, given how closely she tracked and managed Facebook’s media strategy, sometimes getting involved in wording changes. In the internal Q&A Friday, Ms. Sandberg said she took full responsibility for the actions of the communications team. As both chairman and CEO and with a lock on the majority of Facebook’s supervoting shares, Mr. Zuckerberg has few checks on his power. Still, Facebook’s board has taken a more active role of late. In September 2017, Erskine Bowles, the head of the audit committee and a former Clinton White House official, told Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg that he felt they needed to take the issue of Russian interference on the platform much more seriously. “This is going to be much bigger than you think,” Mr. Bowles said, according to a person familiar with the exchange. Mr. Bowles also said the board should have been notified sooner as the company realized the extent of the interference. The board then requested more regular updates on the matter, at times seeking daily briefings—a much higher level of engagement than is typical for the board, people familiar with the matter say. Later, after the Cambridge Analytica disclosure, the board urged Mr. Zuckerberg to name an executive who would be in charge of corralling Facebook’s response to that matter and resolving other issues before they metastasized, said a person familiar with the matter. After that, he put Ms. Sandberg in charge of that effort. Mr. Zuckerberg also sought advice from a mentor, former Microsoft Corp. Chairman and CEO Bill Gates. He recommended Microsoft’s model, which relies on Brad Smith to oversee its corporate, external, and legal affairs. Mr. Smith wears the title “president” and reports directly to the CEO. As Mr. Zuckerberg looked for someone to fill that role, Facebook’s general counsel Colin Stretch announced his resignation in June, according to people familiar with the matter, partly because the new structure would have effectively demoted him. Facebook ultimately decided against combining the jobs after failing to find a suitable candidate. Mr. Stretch now plans to stay through at least next summer, people familiar with the situation said. Facebook is no longer searching for his replacement. In October, Facebook hired former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as head of global policy and communications, the company’s most high-profile external hire since Ms. Sandberg joined from Google in 2008. But his predecessor, Elliot Schrage, still remains at the company and reports to Ms. Sandberg. Friday, Mr. Schrage told employees at the company Q&A to expect more negative coverage of Facebook in coming months. —Robert McMillan and Kirsten Grind contributed to this article.

clubm8 8y ago

Some might think becoming belligerent in the face of criticism would be a poor strategy, but it worked for Brett Kavanaugh...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
phillipcarter 8y ago
It's the primary play in the modern conservative playbook.
sjg007 8y ago
Right but the deck was stacked in Kavanaugh's favor. House and Senate investigations into Facebook in 2019-2020 would be disastrous for them as they have to appease two political parties who may decide to go full bipartisan on them. I expect strong lobbying to drive the narrative.. the problem is though that there are a lot of extrinsic issues that pop up. The seemed to survive the midterms though relatively unscathed so really it will be data privacy and maybe global events that impact them. Most of Trump's focus is local though so that may help Facebook avoid the news cycle (say with social media induced violence in Asia)..

sys_64738 8y ago

> In October, Facebook hired former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as head of global policy and communications, the company’s most high-profile external hire since Ms. Sandberg joined from Google in 2008. When Mr Clegg became deputy PM to the tory leadership he forever condemned the Lib-Dems to be classed as a poodle for the tory party. The Lib-Dems voters of 2010 deserted the party for this act of treachery which cost Clegg his constituency in 2017. So if Facebook hope this failed politician can save them then it's going to be a tough way ahead for Zuck.

jackbrookes 8y ago
Just because he's politically unpopular doesn't mean he won't be valuable to them.
- mcny 8y ago
  I don't think the point made was that he is unpopular. I think the point is he is incapable of making good decisions. With some things like the failed alternate vote referendum I have read people blame Labour more than the Lib Dems. However, he clearly lacks charisma and skills in hindsight. I don't think anyone at Facebook will force Nick Clegg to do or say anything but I'll be shocked if he has any serious decision-making power within Facebook. I'm trying to avoid saying he is a rubber stamp but it is difficult to say he is much more when even ex CSO Alex Stamos clearly had restrictions (if you read between the lines).
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    You're assuming that Clegg has expressed his true aims in public. Given his record of spectacular outright lies - such as the famous u-turn on tuition fees, or the way that he denied being a Young Conservative at Cambridge, in spite of the evidence - it's possible his affable victim-of-circumstance brand is just a cover for someone who is essentially manipulative and dishonest. Given the successful spoiler/enabler role of the LibDems in UK politics, there's a good chance he doesn't think of his record as one of failure on any level. Interesting, he has already deleted all of his tweets, including the anti-Brexit ones - not quite the action of the absolutely committed anti-Brexit campaigner he claimed to be. (To say "FB wouldn't let him keep them" misses the point. Someone who was genuinely committed to stopping Brexit would never accept a job which might conflict with keeping them.)

plainOldText 8y ago

So many articles written about a company that adds so little value to human life (at least in its current form). If you spend just 1h/day on Facebook, over the course of 10 years, that's approx. 150 days or roughly half a year. I'm sure plenty of people spend more than 1h/day scrolling through their pointless feeds. So my question to you is this: What could you achieve if you could spend half a year of your life, fully immersing yourself in something meaningful and of value?

christophilus 8y ago
There’s a big difference between what you can accomplish with an hour here and an hour there vs contiguous, high quality focused time. I suspect that the average user’s Facebook time is of the former, low quality kind.
- SeanBoocock 8y ago
  This is a great point and too seldom raised when comparisons like this are made. I only have so much capacity for highly focused engagement in a given day, and even within those periods there is variability to my focus. That Facebook, or any other activity, occupies time that I am less engaged is not an indictment of those activities or the choice to spend that time in a less deliberate way; its just how most people work. A better criticism in my mind would be to weigh Facebook and its value against actual competitors for people’s attention in those time periods.
- gaius 8y ago
  what you can accomplish with an hour here and an hour there vs contiguous, high quality focused time Yes and no. Swap your FB time for MOOC time and I bet you can do a lot of worthwhile study in bite-size chunks. Or reading books or... anything really.
alexis_fr 8y ago
> What could you accomplish with the hours spent on Facebook? Nothing. Society doesn’t want white males. And Christian. Seriously on Facebook I have fun discussing with a disgruntled males group, but companies are focussed on hiring « diversity ». So I’ve built my own company and I was a millionaire at 31 (you know, IQ138, you never really fail anything). Twice now at 33, in my estimate. And plenty of free time. Which I spend among the rejects of the Diversity movements. Diversity always excludes us.

tabs_masterrace 8y ago

Is there a Facebook smear campaign going on or people just love to pile on Zuckerberg? Facebook is an advertisement company and collects data, but so does everybody else. Gmail launched in 2004. Snowden leaks in 2013 were greeted with general apathy. But know it's the time to crucify Zuckerberg for what exatly? Make use of targeted advertisement? Or letting Facebook have user-generated content, that may or may not have influenced votes in the past? Either way, the ongoing collection of all kinds of data has been obvious for many years now. And it's not going to stop, so some advice: Instead blaming this one actor, better get used to it. Platforms also can't fully and completely be responsible for political views expressed by user-generated content.

jseliger 8y ago
This is a very good comment and I hope it rises to the top of the heap. I wrote this post on an HN comment, but I wonder, "Is there an actual Facebook crisis, or media narrative about Facebook crisis?" https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebook-crisis-or-media-narrative-about-facebook-crisis https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo... It seems to me that Zuckerberg doesn't know that he's in a media scapegoating situation. When you've become the scapegoat, there is nothing you can do to stop it. You can observe the scapegoating mechanism, but even that will likely do very little to halt it in action. The media cannot accept (or comprehensively address) its own culpability for the 2016 election. So let's put the blame on those guys, over there, instead of looking at ourselves.
- GreeniFi 8y ago
  You’ve been reading Rene Girard it would seem. And he’s a good guide to what’s going on: they were all at it, but Zuck is soaking up the blame not just for the ills of the social media biz model but the ills of late capitalism.
  - Zelphyr 8y ago
    He may be soaking up undeserved blame but a lot of it is deserved. He has demonstrated time and again that he has little care for user privacy when that got in the way of selling an ad. People are (hopefully) starting to wake up to how dangerous that is.

softwaredoug 8y ago

Large companies often get stuck in analysis paralysis, so a decisive leader can be a good thing. I think the more important question is whether the decisiveness originates from core values the company projects our, or if it’s just about defending turf. If it’s the latter, Facebook is in its long slow decline phase as a company

amasad 8y ago

The company is most comfortable being at war. That's the first thing I noticed when I started working there. People glorified the days when they were fighting head-to-head with Google or before that with the other social networks. They reminse with pride about the "lockdown" periods when everyone would not leave the office for days to fend off a competitor. It's kind of an intoxicating feeling when everyone around you is driven to win, and I liked it. However, I don't think it's the best environment to be creative, that's why I think FB has to rely on acquisitions to keep the growth going (except that on the infrastructure side of Facebook it is very creative and has the time and space for innovation, hence all their awesome open source stuff).

plazmatic 8y ago
Spoken like a true former employee.
adamnemecek 8y ago
> everyone would not leave the office for days to fend off a competitor. It's kind of an intoxicating feeling when everyone around you is driven to win, and I liked it. This is such a Stockholm syndrome. How productive are you if you haven’t slept for three days? I really don’t care about what Facebook does but these are just such blatant examples of mismanagement and I don’t want them to spread.
- spiderfarmer 8y ago
  The people downvoting you probably are people who are "hustling" right now and maybe actually enjoying it. For every sadist there is a sadomasochist so I'm not suprised there are people that enjoy working their ass off for above average wages while neglecting other parts of an "average" life. There's more to life than work and money people. Once you realise that you'll look back and agree with the poster above.
- rock_hard 8y ago
  Not leaving office != not sleeping

qbaqbaqba 8y ago

It's getting boring.

toddh 8y ago

The advantage of deploying a war metaphor is it resists leadership change. An at risk leader can always say "You don't change want to change horses in the middle of a river, do you?"