Facebook starts year with a to-do list

One year ago Friday, Mark Zuckerberg set his sights on “fixing” Facebook, Inc. That remains very much a work in progress.

At the top of the 2019 to-do list: Find a balance between the social-media giant’s deeply held drive for growth and its heightened commitment to improving safety and security across its many platforms.

Those tensions were evident – and unresolved – inside Facebook throughout much of last year, say current and former employees. In one instance, an effort to decrease political polarization on the platform raised concerns from Mr. Zuckerberg and other executives about whether it would work and if it could reduce user engagement, which was starting to flag on Facebook’s namesake service, people familiar with the discussions say. The specific project was shelved in early September, although Facebook says its anti-polarization efforts continue.

A separate effort to minimize misinformation in the Facebook news feed by promoting more “quality” news also stalled after several executives, including global policy chief Joel Kaplan, raised concerns about whether a change would disproportionately hurt conservative and right-wing sites, the people say.

Those sorts of issues, which were once peripheral as Facebook’s growth powered ahead, are now central to the company’s business prospects.

User growth has been flagging in Facebook’s key markets. As with many of its tech rivals, Facebook shares have fallen sharply in recent months, down 40% from a record high in July. For the Menlo Park, Calif., company, that has contributed to a sharp drop in employee morale. In a December note lowering their rating on Facebook shares from buy to hold, analysts at Stifel cited a Wall Street Journal article on the morale concerns as a critical issue facing the company. “In our opinion, there are plenty of places for unhappy Facebook employees to go in Silicon Valley to do interesting work while feeling better about the impact of its employer and maintaining compensation levels,” they wrote.

Government scrutiny of Facebook is also only expected to increase in 2019.

Mr. Zuckerberg has said he is open to some form of increased oversight, and has privately asked Mr. Kaplan and other executives to come up with regulation plans that Facebook could stomach, people familiar with the matter say.

Facebook remains hugely profitable – it earned more than $5 billion in the third quarter – but its once-torrid revenue growth is slowing and Mr. Zuckerberg has said the company is in a transition that will lead to slower growth and higher costs. Among other investments, Facebook now has more than 30,000 employees focused on policing content that could violate the site’s rules.

“I’m proud of the progress we’ve made,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook page Friday. “We’ve fundamentally altered our DNA to focus more on preventing harm in all our services, and we’ve systematically shifted a large portion of our company to work on preventing harm.” (WSJ)