Facebook should stop pretending that it is what it obviously is not
Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen has unveiled a heap of documents revealing the downside of social media. She told the US Senate two weeks ago that internal records show Facebook’s leaders “have put their astronomical profits before people”.
This is no surprise. Facebook is a public company aspiring to maximise profits for shareholders. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson says social media is “attention alcohol” ,a fun product that is addictive, and “unwholesome in large doses”.
The US beer, liquor and wine manufacturers and distributors also put profit before people, but for the most part, they don’t pretend otherwise.
There are all sorts of businesses, whether they make potato chips or reality TV, that thrive by taking advantage of human foibles and weakness.
One thing that makes Facebook exceptional and helps explain the disgruntlement of many employees is the refusal of Facebook’s leadership to acknowledge this obvious fact.
Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg angrily denied Haugen’s complaints as “just not true”. Speaking on behalf of Facebook employees, he said: “At the most basic level, I think most of us just don’t recognise the false picture of the company that is being painted.”
I know people who formerly worked on various worthysounding Facebook initiatives; they confirm Haugen’s charge and also Zuckerberg’s response.
Facebook is not interested in making any changes that would result in users spending less time on Facebook, regardless of what other positive effects those changes might have.
Meanwhile, rank-and-file staff with in-demand technical skills who make the company run actually do believe that they are engaged in something more high-minded than making potato chips.
This idea is embedded deeply in Silicon Valley culture. In 1983, when Steve Jobs was recruiting then-Pepsi executive John Sculley to Apple, he famously asked him: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
Technology companies have changed the world in ways that soft-drink companies have not. But today’s tech giants are no longer exciting start-ups.
Some still tackle big, tough technical problems (think of Google and self-driving cars). Others find niches of genuinely idealistic behaviour (think of Apple’s drive to deliver worldbest accessibility features for the blind). But no company is idealistic enough to compromise profit for humanitarian considerations; ask Apple about human rights in China, for example.
And what about Facebook? Its core business may well be closer to selling sugar water (or potato chips) than it cares to admit. It’s pretty clear now that the invention of mass-produced sweeteners was a mixed blessing for humanity, contributing to health problems such as obesity and diabetes, but also delivering genuine pleasure to billions of people.
If you tried to ban sugar, there would be an uprising. Whether to regulate sugar is another question, but there is no such hesitation when it comes to regulating social media. Nobel laureate Paul Romer’s idea of a progressive tax on digital ad revenue to discourage gigantism makes sense, but it is neither desirable nor possible for a federal agency to micromanage content moderation decisions by private firms as so many seem to want.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s best strategy might be to admit the banal nature of its business. Like everyone else, it has products with pros and cons. All it really cares about is getting more people to spend more time using them.
If Facebook admitted that it essentially sells a digital version of sugar water, potato chips or any other unhealthy alternative, it might attract less negative attention. But more of its employees might jump ship. They could form or join exciting start-ups that align with their values better. Or they could just take their much-needed technical skills to nontech firms.
It may be that, while all giant companies in some sense put profit before people, Facebook is especially open to this critique. Its core product is not tangible, like Apple’s or Amazon’s, and not obviously useful, like Google’s. A smaller, less influential Facebook might be a net benefit for the world.
Zuckerberg probably wouldn’t agree or be willing to undergo any exercises in brutal corporate self-reflection. Not so long ago, after all, he himself was a smart, hardworking, idealistic young Ivy Leaguer. He understood Facebook’s potential when few did and no doubt sincerely believed that creating peer-topeer interconnections at scale would have a more unambiguously positive social impact than turns out to have been the case. Still, it’s a heck of a great business.
Over time, many corporate titans conclude that the relentless pursuit of shareholder value simply isn’t that satisfying once you’re already unimaginably rich.
Bill Gates long ago stepped down from Microsoft to focus on charitable pursuits, following a trail blazed by Andrew Carnegie and other robber barons of the distant past.
Zuckerberg has the ChanZuckerberg Initiative, a foundation he started with his wife Priscilla Chan in 2015, but for now he is very much involved in the day-to-day operation of his company and the endless series of controversies it generates.
Debates of such controversies tend to careen between absurd self-puffery and uninformed criticism. If the company and its employees, starting with its first one, were more honest about what they do, then maybe everyone could have a less fraught, more sensible conversation about the nature of Facebook and social media.