Inside Facebook's Data Wars
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
In general, people leak to reporters when they feel like they have no ability to control the direction of their organization, and that it is making a mistake and they can't stop it any other way. Feeling ignored, feeling like your concerns aren't being addressed, that's what leads to leaks. The fact that at least one person on this email chain between their Vice President of Global Communications, Vice President of Global Affairs, Vice President of Choice and Competition, the head of the App, Chief Marketing Officer, and the head of CrowdTangle leaked it to a prominent reporter suggests that even very senior people feel like they aren't having their arguments listened to. That's a very dangerous sign for the internal culture of the company.
Also people leak to reporters when they feel like they are entitled to control the direction of their organization even if they sell all the stocks immediately after the vesting.
Unpopular opinion: employees should express their concerns, and they are usually heard. And if the company decided to go against wishes of salaried employees, that's simply because the company exists to maximize profits of shareholders, not to make employees happy, and managers report to shareholders, not to employees.
If one disagrees with management decision, there are two options: trust management judgement (perhaps they are better qualified to make certain decisions), or work elsewhere, in a company whose management they trust. But leaking e-mails is not just illegal, it is immoral.
This does not apply of course to problems like, for example, intentional significant violation of the laws by the company.
They do listen. But people who "do" things don't necessarily see the big picture. And their interested might be misaligned with company mission, let alone shareholder interests.
I recall when I changed my mind on that topic. My employer at the time decided to change the logo. They hired a designer, designer did somewhat radical change, the new logo was accepted. Most employees were furious, new logo is stupid, too playful, it is betrayal of traditions, yada yada. Still management decided to proceed with new logo.
And in a year, old logo looked like we are still in the 80s. Virtually nobody wanted that old logo back.
At least I had a courage to admit I should not demand changes in the areas I don't really understand.
And realistically, if I understood these things, it would be me who does the hiring, not the opposite.
> only listen to the people whose only interest is extracting as much money out of the operation as possible
People who extract money hire people who know who should be listened and who shouldn't. Many people who "do" things really shouldn't be listened on any topic outside of their area of responsibility (a cook may have an opinion how to move goods more efficiently, but it's likely he or she is wrong). I mean, everyone should listened, but their speech should not necessary be followed.
> Of course, companies also essentially make the laws, so "illegal" is a very shallow line.
Well, man, I believe the world is much more complicated than this. There are too many players in the field, and not all of them are companies, and moreover, different companies want different conflicting laws (imagine Apple laws vs Google laws — Apple wants more privacy, Google wants more freedom to deal with data).
So, I believe your world view is too deeply flawed, so there's probably no point to discuss further. Cheers!
Employee interests are irreconcilably and diametrically opposed to employer and shareholder interests. This is a basic tenet of Marxist thinking. Each faction is trying to get as much from the other as possible.
> But people who "do" things don't necessarily see the big picture.
This is in part because they have no need to because they are not listened to.
> People who extract money hire people who know who should be listened and who shouldn't.
They hire people that advance their interests versus others.
> different companies want different conflicting laws
This is true. There are fights among the ruling class. None of them actually care about anything other than maximum wealth extraction. Human rights as a sales pitch to a consumer base to be discarded at the slightest turbulence.
> So, I believe your world view is too deeply flawed, so there's probably no point to discuss further. Cheers!
Likewise.
I totally understand the logo anecdote and that makes sense, but it's different when the employees opinion differs for moral reasons, I'd say employees ARE more qualified to make those calls than those who are beholden to investors and motivated to maximize profits above all else - IF, that is, your goal is to be moral and not to maximize profits, which is where I'm feeling a disconnect with your posts.
This is correct. This is win-win for shareholders and employees.
And if an employee thinks the company should not maximize profits, they can work in non-profit organization.
But why come to for-profit company and demand that company to stop making profits? It does not make sense to me.
> it's different when the employees opinion differs for moral reasons
Moral reasons is a slippery slope. What is moral to one group or people is immoral to other group of people.
I imagine employees may say, we must fight climate change, so we must replace our trucks with electric trucks. This is definitely moral, but this might be not sustainable, and this might be a way to make a company bankrupt. So you express your opinion about trucks, but leave it to the management to decide, whether it can afford it. They often can (because for example good publicity).
I agree this is foolish, but at the same time don't blame people for trying. I'm glad these companies have at least a few people applying pressure, potentially making it less profitable for companies to do the 'wrong' thing.
> I imagine employees may say, we must fight climate change, so we must replace our trucks with electric trucks. This is definitely moral, but this might be not sustainable, and this might be a way to make a company bankrupt
At the point we are right now, I'd prefer the company go bankrupt if they can't afford to not destroy the environment. I know it sounds extreme and if this happened at all such companies could cause a considerable economic/societal collapse, but I'd prefer societal collapse over societal collapse and destroyed planet.
> Moral reasons is a slippery slope. What is moral to one group or people is immoral to other group of people.
Overall I think I understand your point more now. I'm curious if you'd agree with the sentiment of the 2 points I just made in this post though. I do feel that just about any moral claim is debatable, but certain things like climate change I'm confident enough in my own beliefs to justify acting on them. The way I see it, we don't know anything 100% for sure, moral or not, so as humans we have to draw the line somewhere and act on the things we have the most conviction for. Other people might have opposing morals and I won't intentionally infringe on their rights but I'll still oppose them on whatever issues we disagree on. I don't claim to be the arbiter of truth but I'm also not going to disregard morality because other people have different views and I might be wrong anyway.
How can you tell?
Moreover, CEO is legally obliged to work in the interests of shareholders. That is the law, and that is one of many reasons why corporation flourish in the US: you can buy stocks and be protected from management deciding to waste money listening to each immature employee.
It still seems pretty evident that the power structure at larger companies necessitates that people do act in the interest of investors - as doing so is in their own best interest. I'm no expect and I'm sure more educated people could argue both sides of that though. In the end, I think the behavior of companies that exist is at the very least enough to suggest that the organization of companies in capitalism motivates profit above all else - to the point where horrible acts are committed frequently and are expected from larger corporations
For example, they could provide bonuses for making environmental improvements such as reducing pollution, or they could withhold them if the company gets in trouble for exploitation or criminal activity.
Yeah, that's why investors invest, but you (like many people) are forgetting that society allows companies to exist in the first place: to provide social value and increase the general welfare. That's not measured in how much money a company makes for its investors.
If an employee finds themselves working for a company that's hurting society, their primary duty is to stop that harm, not to be circumspect of the investor's profits.
Why does everyone act like all employees are golden. A lot of employees want to maximize their own profits too, some without even hard work.
You do make an excellent point there, and I've often wondered at many jobs I've worked in the past why some employees aren't simply fired on the spot for actively avoiding doing any work while at work. It's incredibly demoralizing to those of us who were raised on a "do your job to the absolute best of your ability or go home" mentality. Taking pride in a job well done is a rare thing these days.
Equally demoralizing is the fact that doing your best work these days is a free ticket for most boss-types to abuse your hard work by piling more work on for no extra pay, unlike when I was younger and hard work gained you respect and pay raises.
However, if company doesn't do that 100% of time, employees do not have moral or lawful rights to sabotage company.
There's an option to work as freelancer.
Intermediate option is to work in a smaller company where the distance between the entry level employee and the CEO is much smaller, so the changes of being heard are much higher.
There is an option to work in non-commercial organization, which does not have a goal to make profits, so there are more reasons to listen to the employees.
But you can't have your cake and eat it. I. e. pick a company which pays the best because it works efficiently and uses the employees to their best abilities and at the same time works inefficiently because it listens to incompetent employees.
Smaller companies can easily be more dictatorial than big ones, small business tyrants are common.
Non-commercial organisations aren’t necessarily any better. They also often don’t pay enough for survival.
I’m asking something fairly simple: why is it moral that the people that do all the work have no control over their working lives?
Basic principles of civilized society like respect of private property (which is the company which is owned by shareholders) and respect of contracts, and these principles are more important than employee wishes to play CEO.
> Creating a company requires capital.
So this is the problem. Some people worked hard to obtain that capital. They studied hard, got top notch education, deprived themselves of private life, had very high risk of failure (majority of entrepreneurs fail). And their work resulted in them being shareholders and top management.
While others were smoking marijuana, downshifting, working 9-5 at best, taking long vacations.
And the second ones demand the same rights to control the company. I don't see how that is fair. It is having a cake and eating.
And I have another answer to that. Want to make decisions in the company? Then get hired as CEO. They don't want to hire you as CEO? Then perhaps you are not qualified to do company-wide decision. And if you are not qualified to do company-wide decisions, then probably you should not make these decisions working entry-level jobs.
The very notion of private property exists to maintain that inherited capital, with state violence.
Is that moral? Why?
This is a common myth. (I should say, marxist myth.)
> Of those folks, 67.7% were self-made, while 23.7% had a combination of inherited and self-created wealth. Only 8.5% of global high-net-worth individuals were categorized as having completely inherited their wealth.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-riche...
Globally, the vast majority of capital is owned by people who grew up rich.
This alone isn't enough to argue that it's not immoral because the company is their private property. What if Amazon bought up all the farmable land in the country/world and started charging prices that were unaffordable to 90% of people and causing starvation. This is comparable to what's happening, but instead of one company it's multiple companies and instead of food price it's employee conditions
edit: to be clear, I know my point isn't enough to prove it IS immoral either, just that the private property point isn't enough to prove that it isn't. I don't think I'm capable of arguing this argument all the way through, But my opinion probably falls closer to Marx than most people. The only thing I do know for sure is that what we have now isn't working, and if capitalists don't want socialism/communism to take over they better fix things soon.
That would cause anti-monopoly intervention by the government.
> This is comparable to what's happening, but instead of one company it's multiple companies and instead of food price it's employee conditions
What employee condition? Facebook employees who leak these emails are quite rich, perhaps top 1% in the US let alone in the world. Their are unhappy because they want more than money, they also want to "do greater good" as they erroneously view it.
> The only thing I do know for sure is that what we have now isn't working
It does not work perfectly, but it works relatively well. The US is one of the richest countries in the world. Poorest 10-percentile US citizen is way more rich than average person living in a third-world country.
> if capitalists don't want socialism/communism to take over they better fix things soon
I think capitalism is doing fine. The largest problem in the US (I'm not in the US) is partly corrupt election system. E. g. representatives being too dependent on the party because of certain restrictions like limits of how much money a candidate can raise for a campaign. Or lack of ranked choice voting.
This is substantive reason for unions. Though people keep harping about a few dollars wages and health care. Companies love when the union debate is kept to wages and benefits.
Employees run the company and should control it.
Democratic control over the workplace would make lots of things possible, including lowering profits to increase wages far more than any union dues would cost.
Yes.
> increase wages
No.
Union exists to improve working conditions.
I never heard of unions protecting working disagreeing with top management policy making, that would be silly.
> Employees run the company
No they don't. They do what they are hired to do. They do not steer it.
> and should control it.
They can just create another company and control it just fine. But then guess what? They will sell their shares on the first opportunity. Because workers don't really need that.
Sometimes the only "capital" freelancing requires is your knowledge and expertise/wisdom in a particular skillset. I'll agree with "without necessarily" offering more control, but at least in my own personal experiences with freelancing (in IT/computer related work), it offered me a great deal of control, in that if I didn't feel like taking a contract, I simply didn't. It wasn't as if I didn't have other contracts available to fill that void. :)
You and I can freelance if we choose to. We could only choose to become petty bourgeois because we’re already part of the labour aristocracy, though.
Yeah, they do. However you're confused about the organization in question: it's the Human Society or the United States of America (or some other nation), not Facebook, Inc.
Anyone who has worked with data knows that you can torture the data show anything you want. Disappointing given all the talk from Zuck and team about taking disinformation seriously.
If the data is out there someone can dispute the journalists characterization. If Facebook controls all the data and presents the story, there is no way to verify their characterization.
From Facebook's 2020 Annual Report (https://investor.fb.com/financials/sec-filings-details/defau... page 4):
> In the fourth quarter of 2020, we estimated that duplicate accounts may have represented approximately 11% of our worldwide MAUs. We believe the percentage of duplicate accounts is meaningfully higher in developing markets such as the Philippines and Vietnam, as compared to more developed markets. In the fourth quarter of 2020, we estimated that false accounts may have represented approximately 5% of our worldwide MAUs. Our estimation of false accounts can vary as a result of episodic spikes in the creation of such accounts, which we have seen originate more frequently in specific countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam. From time to time, we disable certain user accounts, make product changes, or take other actions to reduce the number of duplicate or false accounts among our users, which may also reduce our DAU and MAU estimates in a particular period. We intend to disclose our estimates of the number of duplicate andfalse accounts among our MAUs on an annual basis.
1. Get a job on a social media site.
2. Join the bot detection team.
3. Create algorithms that measure if a user is a bot.
4. Create daily reports on the number of bots detected.
Does it actually happen though? The media controls most of the narrative, including what goes into legislative discussions. The "paper of record" becomes history while everything else goes into a vast firehose of tweets which get washed away by the dominant narrative.
Real recent example. NYTimes June 21, 2021:
"How Big Tech Allows the Racial Wealth Gap to Persist"
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/us/politics/big-tech-raci...
So according to the NYTimes, "big tech" allows a racial wealth gap. Consider that this is the only industry where Asians, Indians, and others are actually allowed to consistently and widely climb ranks into senior management.
The ultimate irony is -- this is coming from the NYTimes -- a small group of mostly white, rich, people in Brooklyn and the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- with almost zero diversity at the executive ranks -- is saying this.
Further, there is no discussion about the FAANG exams, hiring committees, etc -- or the fact that the authors hire on no objective measures themselves -- they are mostly hired based on which elite private school they attended.
So what happens? We end up with congressional investigations on big tech monopolies (worth looking into) but ignore obvious monopolies like my mobile phone provider, my healthcare providers, etc -- places that charge a pound of flesh and have no competitors.
Here's the report that the NYTimes is reporting on.
https://www.conference-board.org/press/mind-the-gap-June2021
>The ultimate irony is -- this is coming from the NYTimes -
>with almost zero diversity at the executive ranks
>the authors hire on no objective measures themselve
> attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument
but the parent has addressed the argument:
> Consider that this is the only industry where Asians, Indians, and others are actually allowed to consistently and widely climb ranks into senior management.
>I didn't read what they were actually reporting on, but I assume that's checkmate.
You can't be serious.
I can list a litany of topics--the dangers of sugar, smoking, carbon emissions--where corporations, through their vast war chests, lobbying connections, and pliant journalists, have more than successfully controlled the narrative.
Facebook isn't the victim here. Not by a long shot.
I emphasize the reduction in common ground, over any real change at the NYT.
Apparently the "narrative construction" wasn't up to code :P
Eery how this reminds me of Big Tobacco sponsored studies and "selectively" giving out data [0] . Makes me wonder if there's FB et al are net negative to human society :-(
[0]https://health.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/20071114_cardio-...
Also, I was quite surprised at the apparent popularity of Steve Harvey who apparently, by reach, has the third most popular Facebook page behind "The Dodo" and "Rick Lax" neither of whom I've ever heard of.
1 - https://about.fb.com/news/2020/11/what-do-people-actually-se...
1. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/facebook-axes-team-far-ri...
I don't see people complaining about Twitter, mostly because they agree with the propaganda that's being spread there.
FB and Youtube are kind of the last bastions of the right currently.
Is this an acceptable level of damage?
Here's an entire book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0190923636/
pp 352:
> The right-wing media ecosystem in particular circulates an overwhelming amount of domestic disinformation and propaganda, and its practices create the greatest vulnerabilities to both foreign propaganda and nihilistic commercial exploitation by clickbait factories.
pp 354:
> The right wing of the American media ecosystem has been a breeding ground for conspiracy theory and disinformation, aand a significant point of vulnerability in our capacity, as a country and a democracy, to resist disinformation and propaganda.
These are a couple of random quotes I bookmarked long ago, but the authors show and back up with data that disinformation and propaganda online is overwhelmingly right-wing.
A solid political movement, whether left or right, cleanses populism from their own. But in the US, they won't, as there's only one side, and every body counts.
The way we measure political alignment is so weird. Maybe instead of "left vs. right," the scale should be "reactionary vs. contrarian" – how do you consume and perceive information? A second axis could be "lurker vs. contributor" – do you mostly consume information, or also produce it?
These seem like meaningful differentiators in the context of online discourse, and how it ultimately shapes real-world opinion.
--Upton Sinclair
> CrowdTangle’s data showed that in the US the links posted on Facebook to other websites which got the most engagement was to content by right-wing commentators such as Ben Shapiro and the Fox News host Sean Hannity, and to right-wing sites including Breitbart and Newsmax.
Any news site that uses "far-right" loses all credibility to me. I mean Shapiro far-right? Common.