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> "The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base." If I had to pick one sentence of the a

> "The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base." If I had to pick one sentence of the article which sums up the entire issue it would be this one.

m0ck 6y ago
I would go even further in this argument - it's the small, altough very loud minority of FB (or other IT company) employees, living in their Twitter feeds and causing outrage totally disproportional to their group size. The "missing snacks" example in the article illustrates it beautifully. I would argue that it actually concerns more employees than content policy issues.
- sjg007 6y ago
  The irony is just delicious. It's just like the problem that very small minority of folks on FB have been given a megaphone to spread lies and hate. All FB has to do is tone down the engagement algorithms. Put up a bunch of invisible walls.
  - tqi 6y ago
    10 years ago the concern was filter bubbles. Now we want invisible walls?
    - sjg007 6y ago
      Yep, increase friction. Instagram is a good example.. You have to post a photo and you can't retweet.
      - tqi 6y ago
        I think we would just be trading one set of problems for another, people are already physically self sorting so it's not clear to me that enhancing digital echo chambers would make things better.
        sjg007 6y ago
        What do you mean by physically self sorting? I’m taking about turning down the dials to decrease virality, discovery and engagement. If you want to change people’s behavior you need to increase friction.
        tqi 6y ago
        That we are increasingly self sorting into politically isolated bubbles (based on where we choose to live / work) so we are less likely to encounter diverse opinions in real life [1]. Definitely agree that virality/discovery/engagement need to be carefully balanced, but I don't think that they are inherently good or bad. Virality/discovery/engagement can absolutely lead to the spread of misinformation, but it also is clearly a big driver for awareness of social causes like police brutality / BLM. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Big-Sort-Clustering-Like-Minded-America/dp/0547237723 https://www.amazon.com/Big-Sort-Clustering-Like-Minded-Ameri...
        sjg007 6y ago
        The twitter link in the comment at the top of this post reports that the top 10 daily FB posts are almost all right wing. I am pretty sure this is being driven by a minority of users (and a lot of bots). In fact we know the whole system can be gamed. In that sense the whole network is polluted and suffering the tragedy of the commons.
roenxi 6y ago
Although a follow up would be the comforting level of maturity in Facebook's leadership, acknowledging that it isn't their role to bring politics into the workplace. It is distressingly refreshing to see a company in the news for taking a stance like "In my work with Joel, I’ve found him to be ... very rigorous and principled in his thinking [and therefore I'm happy to work with him despite being a Republican]". It really is remarkable that Zuckerberg is in a position to have to defend that. From company employees of all people.
- agloeregrets 6y ago
  Yes and no. There are lines that can be crossed and defending a line-crosser is political. This isn’t really a new line of thinking for Zuck, he has had to defend boards stacked with far more right members than typical in the valley for a long time. Peter Theil comes to mind along with their news chief from Bribart.
- coldcode 6y ago
  Nothing remarkable in a company that makes lawnmowers. Facebook is a company that uses its power to change what people think because so many view it as a source of truth. Doing it for money, or doing it for power, is essentially the same thing. If you are in position to manipulate the truth for benefits to you or your friends in high places you will, and he is. If I worked at Facebook and felt the CEO was twisting truth for money, I'd leave, but the bribe to work there is so high. If Zuckerberg truly was not a dictator wannabe, he'd give up voting control of the company, but of course he won't.
  - notacoward 6y ago
    > Facebook is a company that uses its power to change what people think I don't think that's a helpful way to look at it. Facebook is a platform that other people use to change what people think, and that's dangerous enough. Without any ill intent whatsoever from Facebook itself, that still creates serious issues with unintentional bias (e.g. via algorithms trained with poor data sets) and manipulation. Those are the problems we most need to address, because the number and power of people trying to manipulate Facebook from outside totally dwarfs the ability of anyone inside - including Mark - to do so even if they all wanted to. Framing it as "Facebook and all of its employees are evil" doesn't solve anything, and wouldn't even if it was true.
SiempreViernes 6y ago
Who are these people they "serve"? Surely you don't imply that Facebook is a user driven website? One look at how they handle UI changes tells you that any claims to "serve" the users is extremely hollow.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  UX / look and feel is one of those things where a company cannot win; ANY change, especially redesigns, will cause friction with their customers. Ask people what they want with the UI and you get either small pet peeves (but none of them statistically significant), but generally a "leave it as is" answer. Even though the current version may not tick all the boxes from the company's point of view - things like engagement, advertising opportunities, etc.
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    > Even though the current version may not tick all the boxes from the company's point of view Sure, clearly the company is not primarily serving the users. So the question is, who are these people that Mark is invoking?
PedroBatista 6y ago
The observation by itself is dead right. When employees complain about far-right "conservatives" using FB to do X or Y they are right too and when I say: compared to most FB (vocal) employees' World views, +90% of the World's population are capitalist Hitler supporters, I think I'm right too.
josefresco 6y ago
"a bit more" lol See this link if you're wondering what "a bit more" looks like: https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10 https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10
- bzb5 6y ago
  That’s interesting, thank you.
- notional 6y ago
  Last 24hrs top-performing pages in the US, for anyone who can't click the link. 1. Dan Bongino 2. Dan Bongino 3. Breitbart 4. Fox News 5. Robert Reich 6. NPR 7. Ben Shapiro 8. Dan Bongino 9. Mark Levin 10. Bernie Sanders This is curated by https://twitter.com/kevinroose https://twitter.com/kevinroose I had to look up most of those names but if you're wondering, looking back a couple weeks it's usually 9/10 or 10/10 right-wing talk hosts/sources. It appears FB is essentially a right-wing mouth piece, idk if that is a controversial opinion, but the data appears that way, I think.
  - krapp 6y ago
    >It appears FB is essentially a right-wing mouth piece, idk if that is a controversial opinion, but the data appears that way, I think. Given that the common narrative around Facebook is that it, along with all other social media, is engaged in a leftist conspiracy to purge all conservative and right-wing speech from the internet, I'd say it would be.
    - buhhh 6y ago
      Projection is a great tactic, isn't it?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
pavanky 6y ago
That is a cop out from Facebook and any social media company if there was any. The algorithmic feed that drives more engagement drives their user base to be more extreme. It is also hypocritical of Facebook employees who were quiet when worse atrocities were happening in other parts of the world where their platform is "the only source of truth" (read Myanmar / Philippines).
- lightgreen 6y ago
  > The algorithmic feed that drives more engagement drives their user base to be more extreme. Just to clarify: more extreme is not necessary more right or conservative.
  - pavanky 6y ago
    Yes. And a platform whose userbase is already conservative will become more extreme in that direction.

m0ck 6y ago

I would go even further in this argument - it's the small, altough very loud minority of FB (or other IT company) employees, living in their Twitter feeds and causing outrage totally disproportional to their group size. The "missing snacks" example in the article illustrates it beautifully. I would argue that it actually concerns more employees than content policy issues.

sjg007 6y ago
The irony is just delicious. It's just like the problem that very small minority of folks on FB have been given a megaphone to spread lies and hate. All FB has to do is tone down the engagement algorithms. Put up a bunch of invisible walls.
- tqi 6y ago
  10 years ago the concern was filter bubbles. Now we want invisible walls?
  - sjg007 6y ago
    Yep, increase friction. Instagram is a good example.. You have to post a photo and you can't retweet.
    - tqi 6y ago
      I think we would just be trading one set of problems for another, people are already physically self sorting so it's not clear to me that enhancing digital echo chambers would make things better.
      - sjg007 6y ago
        What do you mean by physically self sorting? I’m taking about turning down the dials to decrease virality, discovery and engagement. If you want to change people’s behavior you need to increase friction.
        tqi 6y ago
        That we are increasingly self sorting into politically isolated bubbles (based on where we choose to live / work) so we are less likely to encounter diverse opinions in real life [1]. Definitely agree that virality/discovery/engagement need to be carefully balanced, but I don't think that they are inherently good or bad. Virality/discovery/engagement can absolutely lead to the spread of misinformation, but it also is clearly a big driver for awareness of social causes like police brutality / BLM. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Big-Sort-Clustering-Like-Minded-America/dp/0547237723 https://www.amazon.com/Big-Sort-Clustering-Like-Minded-Ameri...
        sjg007 6y ago
        The twitter link in the comment at the top of this post reports that the top 10 daily FB posts are almost all right wing. I am pretty sure this is being driven by a minority of users (and a lot of bots). In fact we know the whole system can be gamed. In that sense the whole network is polluted and suffering the tragedy of the commons.

roenxi 6y ago

Although a follow up would be the comforting level of maturity in Facebook's leadership, acknowledging that it isn't their role to bring politics into the workplace. It is distressingly refreshing to see a company in the news for taking a stance like "In my work with Joel, I’ve found him to be ... very rigorous and principled in his thinking [and therefore I'm happy to work with him despite being a Republican]". It really is remarkable that Zuckerberg is in a position to have to defend that. From company employees of all people.

agloeregrets 6y ago
Yes and no. There are lines that can be crossed and defending a line-crosser is political. This isn’t really a new line of thinking for Zuck, he has had to defend boards stacked with far more right members than typical in the valley for a long time. Peter Theil comes to mind along with their news chief from Bribart.
coldcode 6y ago
Nothing remarkable in a company that makes lawnmowers. Facebook is a company that uses its power to change what people think because so many view it as a source of truth. Doing it for money, or doing it for power, is essentially the same thing. If you are in position to manipulate the truth for benefits to you or your friends in high places you will, and he is. If I worked at Facebook and felt the CEO was twisting truth for money, I'd leave, but the bribe to work there is so high. If Zuckerberg truly was not a dictator wannabe, he'd give up voting control of the company, but of course he won't.
- notacoward 6y ago
  > Facebook is a company that uses its power to change what people think I don't think that's a helpful way to look at it. Facebook is a platform that other people use to change what people think, and that's dangerous enough. Without any ill intent whatsoever from Facebook itself, that still creates serious issues with unintentional bias (e.g. via algorithms trained with poor data sets) and manipulation. Those are the problems we most need to address, because the number and power of people trying to manipulate Facebook from outside totally dwarfs the ability of anyone inside - including Mark - to do so even if they all wanted to. Framing it as "Facebook and all of its employees are evil" doesn't solve anything, and wouldn't even if it was true.

SiempreViernes 6y ago

Who are these people they "serve"? Surely you don't imply that Facebook is a user driven website? One look at how they handle UI changes tells you that any claims to "serve" the users is extremely hollow.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
UX / look and feel is one of those things where a company cannot win; ANY change, especially redesigns, will cause friction with their customers. Ask people what they want with the UI and you get either small pet peeves (but none of them statistically significant), but generally a "leave it as is" answer. Even though the current version may not tick all the boxes from the company's point of view - things like engagement, advertising opportunities, etc.
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  > Even though the current version may not tick all the boxes from the company's point of view Sure, clearly the company is not primarily serving the users. So the question is, who are these people that Mark is invoking?

PedroBatista 6y ago

The observation by itself is dead right. When employees complain about far-right "conservatives" using FB to do X or Y they are right too and when I say: compared to most FB (vocal) employees' World views, +90% of the World's population are capitalist Hitler supporters, I think I'm right too.

josefresco 6y ago

"a bit more" lol See this link if you're wondering what "a bit more" looks like: https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10 https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10

bzb5 6y ago
That’s interesting, thank you.
notional 6y ago
Last 24hrs top-performing pages in the US, for anyone who can't click the link. 1. Dan Bongino 2. Dan Bongino 3. Breitbart 4. Fox News 5. Robert Reich 6. NPR 7. Ben Shapiro 8. Dan Bongino 9. Mark Levin 10. Bernie Sanders This is curated by https://twitter.com/kevinroose https://twitter.com/kevinroose I had to look up most of those names but if you're wondering, looking back a couple weeks it's usually 9/10 or 10/10 right-wing talk hosts/sources. It appears FB is essentially a right-wing mouth piece, idk if that is a controversial opinion, but the data appears that way, I think.
- krapp 6y ago
  >It appears FB is essentially a right-wing mouth piece, idk if that is a controversial opinion, but the data appears that way, I think. Given that the common narrative around Facebook is that it, along with all other social media, is engaged in a leftist conspiracy to purge all conservative and right-wing speech from the internet, I'd say it would be.
  - buhhh 6y ago
    Projection is a great tactic, isn't it?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

pavanky 6y ago

That is a cop out from Facebook and any social media company if there was any. The algorithmic feed that drives more engagement drives their user base to be more extreme. It is also hypocritical of Facebook employees who were quiet when worse atrocities were happening in other parts of the world where their platform is "the only source of truth" (read Myanmar / Philippines).

lightgreen 6y ago
> The algorithmic feed that drives more engagement drives their user base to be more extreme. Just to clarify: more extreme is not necessary more right or conservative.
- pavanky 6y ago
  Yes. And a platform whose userbase is already conservative will become more extreme in that direction.