Meta is trying to stop a former employee from promoting her book about Facebook
www.engadget.com
Meta has notched an early victory in its attempt to halt a surprise tell-all memoir from a former policy executive turned whistleblower.

I wonder what’s behind the curtain? To quote Metallica: “All that I see, Absolute Horror!”

Meta has notched an early victory in its attempt to halt a surprise tell-all memoir from a former policy executive turned whistleblower. An arbitrator has sided with the social media company, saying that the book’s author should stop selling and publicizing the book, which went on sale earlier this week.

The drama stems from Careless People, a new book by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former policy official at Facebook who Meta says was fired in 2017. Described by its publisher as an “explosive insider account,” Wynn-Williams reveals some new details about Mark Zuckerberg’s push to bring Facebook to China a decade ago. She also alleges that Meta’s current policy chief, Joel Kaplan, acted inappropriately, and reveals embarrassing details about Zuckerberg’s awkward encounters with world leaders

The book was only announced last week, and Meta has waged a forceful PR campaign against it, calling it a “new book of old news.” Numerous former employees have publicly disputed Wynn-Williams’ account of events that transpired while she worked at Facebook.

What could possibly be so bad Facebook needs the full PR blast? Well, not great… (CW: NYT article)

During her time at Facebook, Wynn-Williams worked closely with its chief executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. They’re this book’s Tom and Daisy — the “careless people” in “The Great Gatsby” who, as Wynn-Williams quotes the novel in her epigraph, “smashed up things and creatures” and “let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Wynn-Williams sees Zuckerberg change while she’s at Facebook. Desperate to be liked, he becomes increasingly hungry for attention and adulation, shifting his focus from coding and engineering to politics. On a tour of Asia, she is directed to gather a crowd of more than one million so that he can be “gently mobbed.” (In the end, she doesn’t have to; his desire is satisfied during an appearance at a Jakarta shopping mall with Indonesia’s president-elect instead.) He tells her that Andrew Jackson (who signed the Indian Removal Act into law) was the greatest president America ever had, because he “got stuff done.”

cringe

Sandberg, for her part, turns her charm on and off like a tap. When Wynn-Williams first starts at Facebook, she is in awe of Sandberg, who in 2013 publishes her best-selling corporate-feminism manifesto, “Lean In.” But Wynn-Williams soon learns to mistrust “Sheryl’s ‘Lean In’ shtick,” seeing it as a thin veneer over her “unspoken rules” about “obedience and closeness.”

Wynn-Williams is aghast to discover that Sandberg has instructed her 26-year-old assistant to buy lingerie for both of them, budget be damned. (The total cost is $13,000.) During a long drive in Europe, the assistant and Sandberg take turns sleeping in each other’s laps, stroking each other’s hair. On the 12-hour flight home on a private jet, a pajama-clad Sandberg claims the only bed on the plane and repeatedly demands that Wynn-Williams “come to bed.” Wynn-Williams demurs. Sandberg is miffed.

tails-what

Sandberg isn’t the only person in this book with apparent boundary issues. Wynn-Williams has uncomfortable encounters with Joel Kaplan, an ex-boyfriend of Sandberg’s from Harvard.

Wynn-Williams describes Kaplan grinding up against her on the dance floor at a work event, announcing that she looks “sultry” and making “weird comments” about her husband. When she delivers her second child, an amniotic fluid embolism nearly kills her; yet Kaplan keeps emailing her while she’s on maternity leave, insisting on weekly videoconferences. She tells him she needs more surgery because she’s still bleeding. “But where are you bleeding from?” he repeatedly presses her. An internal Facebook investigation into her “experience” with Kaplan cleared him of any wrongdoing.

what-the-hell

The rest of the article tells about Facebook’s involvement with Myanmar and employees embedded in DJT’s 2016 campaign. I’ll definitely have to read this book and just be internet-delenda-est the whole time.

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Chapter 20 mentioned briefly when dealing with Alexey Navalny stuff

    The first time I see it is Russia. An event page has been set up for a rally in support of the country’s opposition leader Alexei Navalny, on the day he’s going to be sentenced for trumped-up embezzlement charges: January 15, 2015. Over sixty thousand people are invited to the event and over twelve thousand respond. But Facebook staff block the event page in Russia the Friday before Christmas, after receiving a complaint from Russia’s internet regulator, the wonderfully named Roskomnadzor.

    Facebook gets a lot of criticism for this, including in the tech community and on sites like Techmeme, which Mark is particularly sensitive to. He’s really annoyed the issue wasn’t escalated to him.

    Sheryl writes to him on Sunday, December 21, 2014, at 9:17 A.M., defending her policy team:

    Mark—this is the right course of action to take to balance free expression with staying up in Russia—and it is consistent with how we deal with requests. This is certainly small compared to potential China requests and will be noted by them too.

    Ch 25 About some team member meeting with Xi and doing a handshake

    September 2015 ends with a big week for Mark on the two projects most important to him: China and Internet.org. He also gives the keynote speech at Oculus Connect, the conference we’ve organized to promote Facebook’s investments in virtual reality. Each of these disparate threads represents a different vision for Facebook’s future. If any one of them comes through, we’ll be a very different company.

    First up during that week is Chinese president Xi Jinping.

    I was confused months earlier when Vaughan and the China cheerleaders inside Facebook announced that President Xi would begin his state visit to the US at Facebook’s headquarters, to announce our entry into China. A Facebook page that Vaughan and the China team helped establish just for the visit, #XiVISITUSA, had somehow amassed over five million followers. I found that odd. More people are into this visit than the entire population of my country? Who are they? Facebook isn’t even available in China. What exactly had been done to the algorithm to boost the audience? Will we be offering this incredibly valuable service to other heads of state? Don’t we need to be honest about it?

    The team apparently put a lot of effort into protecting the page. Something other heads of state, like the Mexican president hit by the poop emoji storm, would have loved. And the team worked toward offering VIP service for other Chinese Communist Party pages.

    Then, in mid-August, we hear from Condoleezza Rice’s consulting firm—which we’ve hired to help with China—that the Chinese president will not be visiting Silicon Valley on his visit. This is news to Vaughan and the rest of Facebook. Joel responds in an email, “If accurate, seems like a strong signal they aren’t on a late September timetable” to announce our entry into China. Debbie forwards me his email with this comment: “Exactly what you said.” She’s another China skeptic.

    Xi chooses Seattle, the home of Amazon and Microsoft, to start his visit. Ouch.

    Vaughan keeps hopes alive of a meeting between Mark and Xi in Seattle, suggesting it will be the time and place where Facebook’s entry into China is announced. Then this is scaled back to a “pull-aside” at a group meeting and no announcement, and finally a “longer than normal handshake,” which Mark is prepared to fly to Seattle for. They’re desperate.

    The handshake does happen, but in a particularly galling setting: the Microsoft campus, during Xi’s tour of the facilities. I’m not with them, but watching the video, it’s hard to tell if it’s “longer than normal.” They’re together for less than a minute. In contrast, Xi holds a closed-door meeting with thirty American and Chinese CEOs, including Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook. Mark is not invited.

    Having invested so much to get this handshake, Mark posts a photo of it on his Facebook page, making it sound like he actually was allowed to attend the meeting with the other CEOs:

    Today I met President Xi Jinping of China at the 8th annual US-China Internet Industry Forum in Seattle. The Forum is an opportunity for CEOs of technology companies to meet with government officials from the US and China to discuss common issues for the future of our industry.

    He adds at the end:

    On a personal note, this was the first time I’ve ever spoken with a world leader entirely in a foreign language. I consider that a meaningful personal milestone.

    But there’s a problem with the photo he posts. It’s from an angle where you see Mark’s face, and the back of President Xi’s head. This is a breach of protocol. I’m not there because I try to avoid all things China. But the moment I see it, I know there’s going to be trouble, and sure enough, panic ensues at forty thousand feet on Mark’s private jet when the Chinese government contacts them over the spotty internet connection to let him know they’re furious about it. Instead of creating a positive first impression with the president of China, they’ve created a diplomatic crisis. We’re banned from China, barred from the meetings with the other tech CEOs, confined to a one-minute handshake, and even that, they’ve screwed up.

    Ch 35 About trying to get Zuck to meet Xi

    Part of my pitch for attending APEC was the opportunity for Mark to meet with President Xi of China. By this point, Mark had been trying to meet him formally for years, with no success, and his eagerness to make it happen was only increased by the screw-up in Seattle where Mark posted the photo of the back of Xi’s head. While I didn’t believe in Facebook’s strategy for entering China, I did see value in a meeting between the two, if only as a reality check for Mark.

    Ch39 Author chooses to work on latam instead of China which higher ups were pushing her to work on

    It feels like retaliation from Joel begins almost immediately. He informs me that he’s halving my job. I can choose between running Asia or Latin America, but no longer both. There’s no explanation given, other than that he has made a decision, although it is obvious to me.

    Of the two options, there’s no question which one has more responsibility, growth, and importance for the business. It’s Asia. But Joel insists that if I pick Asia, I have to run China as part of the job. He knows how strongly I oppose Facebook’s China policy and that I don’t want anything to do with it.

    I can’t bring myself to work on China. I shock Joel and Elliot by choosing to run Latin America and Canada. It’s less responsibility and importance.

    This surprises them. They really had expected me to take on China. They want to force me to submit. They counter that they’ll only give me the smaller job if I lead the search to find someone to run Asia. So, for the time being, I continue to run Asia.

    The real kicker, though, is China. Even in this interim period, they insist that I work on China.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Ch 40: Greeting from Beijing this and all of Ch 41 are about China

      In the past, when I expressed dissent about what Facebook was attempting in China, I was removed from the China team. Now, in a totalitarian move I suspect the Chinese leadership would admire, as a result of dissent in other areas, I am being installed to run it, against my will. A test of loyalty to the regime.

      China has always been first in the “things I don’t want to know” about Facebook. I’d rather not know the worst about this place I’ve devoted so many years of my life to. My plan is to hire someone and get out of Facebook.

      It’s January 2017. Only weeks since Mark’s trip to Peru and his decision to start his US political tour. Joel, Mark, and Vaughan all travel back and forth between the US and Beijing and have been doing so for years. Joel would send emails titled “Greetings from Beijing.” I didn’t pay much attention. Other than moments that make the news, like when Mark went for a smoggy jog through Tiananmen Square and posted about it.

      I know Facebook’s advertising business in China is growing—even while we’re blocked—because Chinese businesses are buying ads on Facebook. It’s possible, through resellers, for them to target ads to people outside China and to people who travel to China. In fact, China is Facebook’s second-largest market, accounting for an estimated $5 billion of revenue at this time and roughly 10 percent of Facebook’s total revenue, trailing only the US. That’s while the company is banned. So I know China matters a great deal to Facebook.

      But as I take over the day-to-day running of Facebook’s China policy from Joel, their strategy is so opaque, there’s no obvious place to find out what’s happened so far. After a not terribly informative coffee with Vaughan, I figure my only option is to sift through random documents to try to understand the situation.

      So I sit down to read.

      In the three years since Mark sent out his email to top managers declaring that getting into China was Facebook’s top priority, his desire to make this happen has only grown, according to the documents.

      To make it happen, Facebook’s put important people on the payroll, including a former deputy secretary of the treasury, Bob Kimmitt, who’s now the lead “independent” director on Facebook’s board. Mark gets advice from Henry Kissinger and Hank Paulson.

      I’m curious—why would China allow Facebook in? I soon find a set of documents that sets out Facebook’s pitch. The first is titled “China—Our Value Proposition.” It’s mostly the corporate feel-good “we’ll boost your economy and help you prosper” bullshit. They promise to help China increase its global influence and promote “the China dream,” support innovation and job growth, and advertise Chinese products to people around the world.

      But the “key”offer is that Facebook will help China “promote safe and secure social order.” And what does this mean? Surveillance. They point out that on Facebook, the profiles represent real people with their real names, and that “we adhere to local laws wherever we operate and develop close relationships with law enforcement and governments.”

      In the most benign reading of this, Facebook is saying: millions of your citizens will post information about themselves publicly that you can view and collect if you want. In the least benign reading—the way I read this—Facebook is dangling the possibility that it’ll give China special access to users’ data. Authoritarian states need information on everyone at every level of society, and Facebook can provide a treasure trove.

      That pitch signals Facebook’s intent to work hand-in-glove with the CCP to help enforce its will on its people:

      Facebook seeks to create an online environment that is civilized, which is why we respect local laws as well as harmonious which is why we remove offending content. We agree with Minister Lu Wei when he said: “We must stick to the bottom line and exercise governance in accordance with the law” and “Liberty means order. The two are closely linked.… Liberty cannot exist without order.”

      I can’t imagine Mark saying that to US citizens.

      And who will do this surveillance on Facebook in China? Who’ll be responsible for going through user posts and private messages looking for each and every piece of content that the Chinese government wants removed and expunging it? Does this include private messages between Americans and Chinese citizens? Who will use Facebook’s technology to search for faces at the government’s request? Who’ll turn those people in? Be accountable to the CCP? Who gets their hands dirty? The stakes of this are grim. Support for banned opinions can lead to harassment and arrest and worse.

      Facebook can take instructions from the Chinese government and do this surveillance on its own users. Or a Chinese company can do it, in some sort of joint venture with Facebook supplying the technology? I soon find a document where our China team weighs the pros and cons of Facebook doing this itself.

      On the pro side, Facebook’s leadership believe they would have more direct communication with the government, there’d be simpler coordination since they wouldn’t have to deal with a business partner, and Facebook would own more of the China operation. This is something that’s important to Mark because he doesn’t want to give away equity or ownership for his China operation if he can avoid it.

      The con side is more complicated. They list several:

      “Govt may be less forthcoming in its communication to us” [than to a Chinese partner]

      “increased human rights, media and public condemnation for censorship and user data practices”

      “Congress may demand visibility into content moderation requirements” [in other words, US lawmakers might want to know

      what’s on the blacklist of things the Chinese government won’t allow on Facebook]

      “More leverage for other Govts seeking similar treatment”

      But the thing that gets me is where Facebook’s leadership states that one of the “cons” of Facebook being the one who’s accountable for content moderation is this:

      “Facebook employees will be responsible for user data responses that could lead to death, torture and incarceration.” Which seems bad but somehow keeps getting worse. In the edit notes, I see that Joel has edited out the part about death, torture, and incarceration and replaced it in the final document, so instead it reads,

      “Facebook employees will be responsible for directly responding to requests for data from a government that does not respect international standards for human rights.”

      And yet, despite the fact that our employees would be responsible for death, torture, and incarceration (however Joel might want to word it), the consensus among Mark and the Facebook leaders was that this was what they’d prefer:

      We’d prefer more content/data control and communication with the Govt over the limited protections we’d gain from being able to say that our partner is responsible for taking down controversial content and responding to Govt requests for user data.

      Ugh.

      I knew that Facebook’s leadership could be utterly indifferent to the consequences of their decisions, but it never occurred to me that it would go this far.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Ch 41: Our Chinese Partner This chapter is about several technical things to please China. Quite interesting

        Aldrin” was the code name given to the project to get into China. They named it for Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut who landed the first manned spacecraft on the moon. After the Chinese government decided that Facebook needed a Chinese partner if it wanted to operate in China, Hony Capital, a Chinese private equity firm, was brought in and given the code name “Jupiter.”

        Hony would store all Chinese user data in China and Hony would establish a content moderation team that would be responsible for working with the Chinese government. That team would censor a blacklist of banned content and deliver user data that the Chinese government requested. Hony would monitor all the content in China, with the authority to remove that content even if it did not originate in China. Facebook would build facial recognition, photo tagging, and other moderation tools to facilitate Chinese censorship. The tools would enable Hony and the Chinese government to review all the public posts and private messages of Chinese users, including messages they get from users outside China. This seems particularly outrageous. What followed was years of exchanges and visits between Facebook and Chinese representatives hashing out the particulars of facial recognition, photo tagging, and other moderation tools. Briefings from Facebook’s experts about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality. Facebook invites Huawei—a company that’s widely accused of being a tool of Chinese government surveillance—to join Facebook’s Open Compute Project. Facebook offers to teach China about internet infrastructure, so Chinese companies can compete better with US firms like IBM and Cisco (Cisco’s the American company that built China’s internet firewall).

        Under direction from Mark, Facebook assembled a large team, including some of its most senior and respected engineers, to work up what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wanted. They start building new censorship tools for Hony to use to scour through people’s messages and posts and converting everything into simplified Chinese.

        I find detailed content moderation and censorship tools. There would be an emergency switch to block any specific region in China (like Xinjiang, where the Uighurs are) from interacting with Chinese and non-Chinese users. Also an “Extreme Emergency Content Switch” to remove viral content originating inside or outside China “during times of potential unrest, including significant anniversaries” (like the June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests and subsequent repression).

        Their censorship tools would automatically examine any content with more than ten thousand views by Chinese users. Once this “virality counter” got built, the documents say that Facebook deployed it in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where it’s been running on every post.

        And there’s a draft letter for Mark to send to the head of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). In it, he’s solicitous:

        We have already worked with the San Francisco Chinese Consulate to take down terrorist sites that are potentially dangerous for China, and we will be happy to work more closely with all of your Embassies or consulates around the world to fight against terrorism around the world.

        What horrifies me is that the sorts of things that China considers terrorist sites are human rights advocates or Uighurs or Falun Gong or people supporting Tibet. The CCP even purchases Facebook advertisements to spread propaganda designed to incite doubt about human rights violations against the Uighurs. Facebook should not be allies in China’s war against what it considers “terrorism.” I hope this letter was never sent.

        At the other end of the scale, I find an email where a team member admits that a lot of the censorship might be pretty petty:

        How much and what types of Chinese user-generated content are we preventing the world from seeing? Very likely, much of the relevant content not only does not violate our Community Standards, but is not even illegal in China, just objectionable to the authorities (e.g., names and commentary casting high party officials and their families in a bad light).

        Breaking Facebook’s fundamentals on content is one thing; data is another. As Vaughan writes to Elliot, “Filtering content is important, but having server/data in China is even more important so the Chinese government would be able to control/see it.”

        From the start, the Facebook team agrees that Facebook will store Chinese user data in China under their terms. When other countries have asked for this—Russia, Indonesia, Brazil—Facebook has refused. I personally had told presidents and officials at the highest level of government that we would never do this, reproachfully adding that we only locate our servers and data centers in countries where we believe the government would never try to access them or seize them.

        When it comes to the Chinese government getting access to all the data in Facebook’s data warehouse, a report offers drily, “Note that this will happen.” This is the kind of government access to user information that we’d aggressively fought against providing to the US government, even after receiving National Security Letters demanding it in specific cases. When Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had hacked into Facebook to spy on its users in 2013, Mark called President Obama to express his frustration over government surveillance and “the damage the government is creating for all of our future.” He and Joel went to the White House to meet with Obama about it, with Mark saying, “The government kind of blew it on this. They were just way over the line.” Not long after, he was offering a much better deal to the Chinese.

        The infrastructure that underpins the internet is on such a big scale—submarine cables, data centers—that it requires significant investment, planning, and execution. When Facebook started its major projects to get into China, it also started working with Google and a Chinese firm, Pacific Light Data Communication, to build an undersea cable that would land in China to support its Chinese operations. Facebook would be pioneering the first undersea cable to directly connect China and the US. It was clear there would be very significant risks that China would intercept this data. And not just Facebook’s data. The cable was designed to carry a large chunk of all internet traffic. It’s why no one else had ever connected the two countries in this way. Facebook knew this and didn’t care. Well, more than that, they wanted it for Mark’s number one priority: China. They invested serious money building a data pipeline to China, a project the US government blocked over concerns about the CCP’s access to data many years later.

        One of Facebook’s few supposed red lines is that China will not get any access to the data of users who are located outside China. But, unsurprisingly, the documents tell a different story.

        Facebook “will deploy Points of Presence (PoP) servers with the goal of speeding up the experience for users in China.” Facebook has PoP servers like this all over the world. Basically, they speed up service by bringing data closer to users. As I understand it anyone outside of China who’s in touch with someone in China could have their data stored on a PoP server. Under Chinese law, the government could access those servers.

        That wasn’t the only worry about non-Chinese user data being exposed to the CCP. Another document, titled “Aldrin Security Risks,” outlines the risks that the Chinese content moderators could feed data on non-Chinese users to the government either directly or by sharing their credentials. This, coupled with espionage reaching further into Facebook’s network, was a real concern. Facebook’s leadership had been briefed on recent activity attributed to Chinese espionage, including attempts to compromise the corporate networks of WhatsApp and other messaging services. And attempts to compromise Facebook account passwords, penetrate secret groups, and install malware on mobile devices and desktop computers. Facebook’s risk assessment experts say all those things are not just possible but highly likely to happen.

        The complicity with the Chinese government is so extensive that the team concludes it’s highly likely that the US government will see the data warehouse in China as a target for its own intelligence collection and compromise it. I’m stunned at this. Facebook is working so closely with China that now it’ll have its own government breaking into its systems as if it were a foreign adversary? And that’s just a given of doing business, rather than a serious red flag that you’re on the wrong path?

        As I read through page after page, I see the sort of briefings that would warm the hearts of every government I work with. We never share this type of information, and believe me they’ve asked. But here are detailed explanations of precisely how the technology functions, of algorithms and photo tagging and facial recognition. All the secrets of the trade that I thought would never be revealed to anyone outside Facebook. Facebook is providing engineers to demonstrate, offering ideas on how to adapt the settings to meet the Chinese government’s needs. It’s white-glove service for the CCP.

        The ugly fact is that these are many of the things Facebook has said are simply impossible when Congress and its own government have asked—on content, data sharing, privacy, censorship, and encryption—and yet its leadership are handing them all to China on a silver platter.

        They know none of this looks good. Facebook was so worried about a leak, they wanted a contact at the CAC for “leak co-ordination.” Because “if it leaks we won’t be able to keep doing what we’re doing.” One risk assessment document contemplates how word might get out:

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Chapter 41 Cont

          A disgruntled current or former employee leaks additional details about how we are treating data to highlight differences in what we say to the public vs what we do.

          But what did they mean when they worried about highlighting differences in what we say to the public versus what we do?

          Chapter 42: Respectfully, Senator This is about how Facebook would deal with media and congress regarding entry to China. Includes comparisons to NAZIS.

          They needed a plan to deal with the problems they’d have if the world found out about what they were doing in China. The problem was they knew they couldn’t tell the full truth. And how to solve this conundrum in difficult situations, like being questioned by Congress? That’s what makes these documents so intriguing.

          They got very close to launch. There’s a detailed rollout plan for Facebook’s entry into China. It starts with the announcement of a Facebook Representative Office in China, supported by a Nicholas Kristof column they hoped to get him to write for the New York Times with a “simple and modest argument”: internet is not going to change China, exposure to the rest of the world will, and what we’re doing will contribute to that.

          The Facebook team appears to be aware of how bad its plans for China might look. So much so that when they worked up some hypothetical headlines for what the news coverage might be, they included these gems:

          “Chinese Government uses Facebook to spy on its citizens”

          “Facebook hands over data on Chinese citizens to the Chinese Government”

          “Facebook grants backdoor access to Chinese user data”

          “China now has access to all Facebook user data”

          Worried about damaging Facebook’s brand with users, advertisers, and lawmakers, they ran focus groups on these headlines and others, with Facebook users in Atlanta, Phoenix, London, and Berlin. My favorite finding in all of the consumer research decks was this:

          “The idea that Facebook cares about people’s privacy is not believable anywhere.” Millions of dollars are siphoned into China launch efforts. There’s money to give to groups who will be supportive, groups they want to fund in order to “neutralize” organizations that might criticize Facebook like Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, and Freedom House.

          When the team asks Mark what he’d consider a successful launch in China, he’s conservative:

          If we look at one of the worst countries we’re performing in (Russia), even getting 20% of the internet population in China will equate to more users than Russia.

          Congress would want to know what technological advances Facebook is briefing the CCP on, what technological information has been transferred since they first started secretly working together in 2014. China is renowned for its development of homegrown copycat technologies. Congress needs accurate information to develop regulations and policies on national security and technology. The stakes are high. And Joel knows this. That’s why he identified “managing opportunities in China with consequences for brand, relationships with government and the Internet” as one of the biggest challenges of his role.

          To anticipate the reaction from Washington lawmakers, Joel’s team work up a United States Impact Analysis. It warns that “it’s good politics for members of Congress to be tough on China and to look like they’re protecting ‘the more than 50% of each Member’s constituents who use Facebook.’”

          We should expect intense criticism on Capitol Hill and hearings in at least the Foreign Affairs, Judiciary, Commerce, and Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees, in both the House and the Senate, as well as letters from multiple Members.

          The team points out that “members of the intelligence community who opposed us on surveillance reform will attack us for hypocrisy,” perhaps remembering Mark’s outraged call to President Obama after the Snowden leaks and his other protests about US government surveillance.

          They’ll claim we rolled back US intelligence actions that were privacy protected, and didn’t result in human rights abuses, but now we are willing to hand data to the Chinese government if we can profit off it.

          With these criticisms and others in mind, Mark’s talking points were prepared. He would argue, basically, “that our service in China operates under the same constraints as other Chinese social media platforms.” The Chinese users would know better than to post anything dangerous on Facebook or anything they didn’t want the government to see.

          Which may be true for some Chinese users. But who knows? It’s not like Mark or Joel or Vaughan has spent enough time in China to know how well people will censor themselves in their social media posts and private messages to each other. And it misses a bigger problem. Totalitarian regimes move the line on what’s admissible. Something that seems safe to post on Facebook today—support for some idea or leader or book or musician or movie—could change tomorrow or in a year and users would pay the very steep price. Whatever we and they believe today may not be the case tomorrow. There is no security for anyone to rely on in a regime like this.

          The goal for companies is, as I understand it, to answer the questions Congress has without committing perjury. Mark prepares for the mock congressional hearings, or “Murder Board sessions,” with questions he’s likely to face. The questions are tough, and the team coaches him to sidestep nearly every one. Even with this evasive approach, Vaughan is not satisfied and instructs the team, “On balance, I think we should be less emphatic about how clear our disclosures will be.”

          The team’s advice is that Mark should not directly admit that Facebook wrote the censorship software in collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party.

          Is it true that you’re writing, controlling, and applying the censorship software?

          i) No, that is not entirely accurate. Our partner, Jupiter, will make decisions on content restrictions in accordance with Chinese laws and obligations. [Jupiter is the code name for Hony Capital, Facebook’s joint venture partner.]

          ii) For the security of our users around the world and the integrity of our service, Facebook will own the technology that Jupiter will use to manage content review in China. This is the same kind of technology we use to enforce our community standards around the world.

          It’s not the same kind of technology Facebook uses around the world.

          The whole answer definitely feels like stretching the truth, given that Community Standards around the world do not require a “Chief Editor” and a staff of hundreds of people to enforce government censorship and protect the families of leadership on software created by Facebook.

          On this next question, Mark is to say that it’s not what he would prefer but Facebook’s mission comes first.

          Why are you willing to give the Chinese de facto bulk data access to China user data, but you fight U.S. requests aggressively even where the data might be needed to protect U.S. national security?

          Facebook opposes bulk data access by any government.… Although the law on this issue in China—as well as other countries—is not what we would prefer, we believe in our mission of building bridges and connecting people globally. To do that, we offer our service in countries whose policies we sometimes find objectionable.…

          There are a number of questions gamed out about what Facebook will do if China takes certain actions. For example, what if it demands code or encryption keys? One question reads, “Do you have any ‘red lines’ you won’t cross?” To all these questions, Mark is coached to say, basically, Facebook will evaluate those things if and when they happen.

          In response to the very pointed question, “How is this not providing a gateway into your network and making your non-China user data more vulnerable to hacking?” they suggest Mark stonewall. He’s to tell them that the only data that’ll be stored in Chinese data warehouses will be that of Chinese users, and that the Chinese won’t have access to the rest of Facebook’s data. Which obviously ignores the whole issue of the access to US and other citizens’ data on PoP servers. But if Congress says the specific magic words and he’s asked directly, “Will any non-China user data be in China?” he will concede and acknowledge the existence of the PoP servers:

          Like most companies who operate a large global network serving millions around the world, we use a variety of systems to make our service faster, and some of these will be deployed in China. As a result, there may be instances where some pieces of content from non-China users are located on these systems for short periods of time.

          Or will he say this? Joel tags these bullet points in a comment, saying first, “Not sure we need to say this yet”—meaning, maybe don’t admit this. Then he leaves a comment, “For further discussion.” No one suggests telling the truth, that his own security and legal experts have said that China will have access to the PoP servers and there’s nothing Facebook will do to protect US and other citizens from that.

          There seems to be no compunction about misleading Congress. Presumably because the team assumes they’ll never be caught out. Senators will need to ask exceptionally specific questions to get close to any truth.

          At one point, the team genuinely considers the possibility that the US Congress will compare Facebook’s entry into China to being complicit with the Nazis. If Mark is asked if he’s abetting crimes against humanity, he’s basically supposed to say, “That hurts my feelings.”

          How is this different from being complicit with the Nazis?

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            Ch 42 Cont

            Respectfully, Senator, that is an unfair comparison and I resent the implication that doing business in China is akin to abetting crimes against humanity. China is one of the United States’ largest trading partners and has lifted millions of its people out of poverty and grown its economy quickly.

            Mark is eventually asked about China in a Senate hearing in April 2018. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada, asks,

            The Chinese government is unwilling to allow a social media platform—foreign or domestic—to operate in China unless it agrees to abide by Chinese law. First, a social media platform must agree to censor content and conversations in line with directives from China’s information authorities. And second, businesses that collect data from Chinese individuals can only store that data in China where, presumably, it would be easier for the Chinese government to access, via legal means or otherwise. You’ve made no secret of your desire to see Facebook available once again in China. Could you please reveal to the Committee whether you are willing to agree to either of these requirements?

            Mark’s answer is mostly a lot of blahblahblah about how, because Facebook is blocked in China, “we are not in a position to know exactly how the government would seek to apply its laws and regulations” to the platform. This is not true. The Chinese Communist Party has told them exactly how it would apply its laws and regulations. And Facebook has developed technology and tools to meet their requirements and tested them together with the CCP. Then he says,

            No decisions have been made around the conditions under which any possible future service might be offered in China.

            He lies.

            After the congressional hearing Facebook’s stock price rises.

            • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              0·
              1 year ago

              Ch 43: Move Fast and Break the Law This one is another one all about breaking the law to get into China. Apparently they’ve all read Xi’s book. This chapter covers some censorship carried out in the west to try and please China enough to let them in.

              When Mark is asked by the China team how long Aldrin will be a priority for Facebook, he says, “The longer we don’t get in, the more important it becomes as a priority for the company as we knock out other hi-pri issues.”

              I need to hire someone as fast as possible and then get out.

              But who do you hire for this role? I struggle with this. Whoever steps into this job will be the person working most closely with the Chinese government contacts for anything related to Facebook. They’ll live in China. Ideally, they’ll be a Chinese national.

              One of the documents I found said that a risk with this project is that the “Chinese government arrests a Facebook employee who has access to the blacklist and is accused of sharing the list under the State Secrets Law. Facebook employee spends the rest of their life in prison or worse.”

              The person I’m supposed to hire is definitely at risk. Should I ask them if they’re prepared for that? They’re leverage. And by now, I’ve seen enough to know how little Mark weighs the interests of Facebook’s incarcerated employees.

              And I think even Vaughan gets where I’m at. I’m not even told when Vaughan’s team does their regular meetings with the CAC to discuss Facebook’s China entry, but I find the notes from these meetings later. The official they’d been meeting with before everything blew up in 2015 is gone. That man—Lu Wei—was the head of the CAC. Mark referred to him as “our guy” and thought he’d be the one to get Facebook into China. Vaughan told everyone Lu Wei had staked his career on the Facebook deal and the Asia team said, “Minister Lu Wei is hanging his hat on this endeavor just like Mark is and … this decision will shape his career for better or worse.” But Lu Wei abruptly stepped down in 2016. And was imprisoned shortly after on corruption charges. The photo of Lu Wei visiting Facebook’s headquarters and viewing President Xi’s book on Mark’s desk was included in a lot of the state media coverage of his downfall. This is the same book, The Governance of China, that Mark gave to a number of his top lieutenants.

              Apparently, Facebook wasted no time in resuming negotiations with the new director of the CAC, Zhao Zeliang. As Sheryl framed it, the focus of Facebook’s work at this time was strengthening “our government relations” with the Chinese Communist Party. Detailed briefings with CCP officials on the new tools it’s building for the Chinese Communist Party. Zhao wants to know how Facebook will cooperate with the Chinese government to “arrest bad people if Facebook can’t identify whether a person is good or bad.” In this scenario, Facebook needs to “cooperate with the CAC to block content from (not yet legally bad person) from showing up in the feed.” The team sets to work on this, knowing that this content is probably just protecting CCP officials and their families. Before long they are fulfilling Zhao’s request to show that the censorship tool can do keyword and entity blocking, part of the extensive testing the CCP is setting Facebook.

              Zhao appears to be less of a fan of Facebook than Lu Wei, lecturing the Facebook team that “since US election last year [2016], many say [the] social networks especially Facebook influence [the] outcome with fake news.” He tells the team that China is different from the United States and it does not want unverified information sources to affect its political processes.

              Something he does want is: Guo Wengui. Guo is an exiled Chinese billionaire businessman who became a political activist and frequently criticizes the Chinese government. Zhao asks whether the content on Guo’s Facebook page counts as fake news. If so, and if a complaint is made, will measures be taken? He tells the China team there are people who don’t want Facebook in China:

              So we need to take measures and do more in such situations to demonstrate we can address mutual interests.

              He explains that Facebook needs to tell them what it can do about Guo, and there are three possible responses:

              There is nothing we can do

              There is something we can do

              We can do even more than expected

              In case that is not clear enough, he states explicitly that if there’s nothing Facebook can do about Guo’s page, it’ll “impact on our cooperation,” but “if handled well, this can be a force to help our cooperation.” Zhao explains that there are people who ask him why he is pushing this deal with Facebook if Facebook can’t do anything about Guo. The meeting notes then list three possible options:

              Shut down the account

              Block his content from Chinese users

              For specific articles or video posts, if a Chinese organization reports, can we remove or do anything?

              Zhao tells the team about GitHub, a site with very active discussion boards, owned by Microsoft. He tells them that he knows GitHub’s leadership and when someone “started slandering” President Xi, the CAC filed a report with the GitHub CEO, the content was removed, and GitHub let them know it was because of their relationship with the Chinese government.

              I wondered why Zhao is even bothering to meet with Facebook. But in this particular meeting, he says the quiet part out loud. Guo is not in their control, and he is “just one example.” He explains,

              Last year a BBC article said the most influential organization today is not a newspaper or tv. Facebook is not just a technology platform. The content on Facebook guides public discourse.

              Later he elaborates,

              Facebook is the most influential platform (or let’s say media) in the world so China should have access.

              For China, that’s the upside of continuing to actively negotiate with Facebook for access to China. They get a lever they can pull on the “most influential media in the world” to shut down the things they don’t like—including the free speech of activists living abroad—and Facebook will do its bidding. And with Guo, they are using the leverage they have created, linking it directly to Facebook’s ability to enter China.

              Facebook blocks Guo’s page in April 2017. I don’t hear about it till I read it in the New York Times. Facebook doesn’t tell the Times about the pressure—or the quid pro quo—from the head of the CAC. They explain the shutdown of Guo’s account as an accidental act of God. Their story is that it’s a random bug in the software that coincidentally struck exactly the person China said would need to be suspended to help it’s “co-operation with Facebook.” That is until the Times started asking questions:

              A Facebook spokeswoman said that the company’s automated systems had erroneously suspended Mr. Guo’s account and that once the company was able to investigate the error, it had restored the profile. The precise reason for the suspension would be difficult to determine, the spokeswoman said, adding that publicizing the reasons could allow others to manipulate the system.

              Perhaps they were aiming for irony on the question of being public about manipulation of the system.

              The Times also notes, “Some Chinese activists have complained about accounts being sporadically suspended on Facebook and other sites without explanation.” Hmm.

              On this occasion Guo’s account is restored within days.

              Five months pass, and then Guo’s thrown off Facebook permanently in September 2017. This happens around a week after China blocks WhatsApp—one of Facebook’s most important bets for growth internationally. I know the fundamental challenge that an important country blocking Facebook presents to Mark. A member of the China team tells me the removal of Guo from Facebook was Mark’s decision. He’d initially wanted a middle ground, a temporary suspension, but given China’s demands and the stakes, he ultimately decided to do the full suspension.

              Weeks later, Facebook’s general counsel is asked under oath about Facebook’s treatment of Guo’s account by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

              Senator Rubio: My question—so what I want to be clear is, was there any pressure from the Chinese government to block his account?

              Colin Stretch: No, Senator. We reviewed a report on that account and analyzed it through regular channels using our regular procedures. The blocking was not of the account in its entirety, but I believe was of specific posts that violated our policy.

              Rubio tries again:

              Senator Rubio: But you can testify today that you did not come under pressure from the Chinese government or any of its representatives, or people working for them, to block his account or to block whatever it is you blocked?

              Colin Stretch: I want to make sure I’m being precise and clear. We did receive a report from representatives of the Chinese government about the account. We analyzed that report as we would any other and took action solely based on our policies.

              This is not precise or clear. Facebook was under direct pressure from the Chinese government. Told explicitly there would be a quid pro quo, that the way they handled Guo would affect whether Facebook would be allowed into China. The reports were not analyzed “as we would any other.” Actions were not taken solely based on Facebook’s policies. China demanded action. Raised Facebook’s China project. And Mark blinked. And blocked.

              • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                0·
                1 year ago

                Chapter 43 Cont

                In May 2017, I’m told that Facebook has launched two apps in China. This is surprising news because Facebook and its apps have not been licensed or authorized to operate in China in any way, despite every effort from Mark and the team. What’s more surprising is that the only reason I’m told about this is that a New York Times reporter has somehow learned about these apps and is preparing a story. I’m supposed to help the comms team figure out what to say to him. When Vaughan lays out some facts in an email to us, one of my favorite comms people writes just to me,

                “Oh Jesus. I just read it. WTF am I supposed to do with THAT?”

                For years, Facebook had tried and failed to get a Wholly Foreign-Owned Entity (WFOE) license or a representative office that would allow Facebook to operate in the country. Apparently, this is no deterrent to the team. They created a shell company incorporated in Delaware named Leaplock. Leaplock creates a subsidiary in China. They call it IvyCo after Ivy Zhang, Facebook’s head of business development in China—who’s a Chinese citizen and has only been working for the company a few months. They obscure Ivy’s employment arrangement by taking her off of Facebook’s payroll and making her an employee of a Chinese human resources company. Neither Leaplock nor IvyCo has a WFOE or a representative office. Officially, Ivy is the owner of IvyCo, and the only employee of IvyCo.

                Facebook takes two apps it has deployed around the world—Moments and Flash—and makes minor adjustments to remove Facebook’s name from everywhere in the apps and Terms of Service. Then it launches them in China.

                Moments is a photo-sharing program that is renamed Colorful Balloons for China. Flash is Facebook’s Snapchat clone. They modify the logos of the apps, but not very much despite Vaughan claiming these apps were “designed for China.”

                It’s unclear if they’re storing user data for these apps in China but I doubt they are. Facebook already has a global infrastructure to serve Moments and Flash. Moments gathers facial recognition data of all its users, but there seems to have been no consideration about whether they’d be turning this data over to the Chinese government if asked, or whether they would censor content at the request of the Chinese government. If I’m right about this, the level of illegality is staggering. It would mean that the user data is stored on Facebook’s servers outside China, in violation of Chinese law. And that Facebook has launched apps in China without any disclosure to investors, employees, the Federal Trade Commission, or even Congress, all of whom have taken a close interest and asked questions about what Facebook is up to in China. Facebook keeps saying it is “studying and learning about China,” not telling the truth that it is operating apps there.

                As soon as I learn about all of this, I go straight to Joel, assuming he’s unaware that this has happened. The series of decisions that led to such a clownish attempt at subterfuge are incomprehensible to me. And I’m not alone. I know that one of the senior lawyers at Facebook has flagged concerns about the launch of apps in China. But Joel’s fine with it.

                “Are Mark and Sheryl okay with it?” I ask.

                He admits that they weren’t aware of it. I tell Joel that they need to know. He tells Vaughan to write a memo for Mark and Sheryl. The draft begins, “Over the past couple months we’ve quietly released Moments and Flash in China.” Turns out these are not even the first apps we’ve launched in China. Facebook has also released Boomerang, Layout, Hyperlapse, and MSQRD. Again, in all cases they have completely hidden this.

                I am surprised to read, “We’ve done this with the tacit approval and encouragement of the CAC.” He also states,

                The CAC unofficially and verbally recommended that we not use the Facebook name, and that the distributor be a Chinese entity for social apps. The CAC has implied that they want us to succeed—but they don’t want the apps to attract undue public attention, and could shut them down if that were the case.

                Reading this I wonder if it’s true that the Chinese know about the apps; it’s entirely possible they knew and are in cahoots with this subterfuge. But it’s also completely plausible that the “tacit approval” from the CAC is the barest possibly-lost-in-translation head nod from a random official. I like Vaughan, but he can be a cowboy sometimes.

                The memo to Mark and Sheryl gets delivered. In my regular weekly meeting with Joel, I ask, “Has Vaughan been fired yet?” He tells me Mark and Sheryl are fine with what Vaughan’s doing.

                Of course they are.

                The secret launch of Flash then becomes, in Vaughan’s words, “a priority for Mark.” The way Mark sees it, “the biggest risk is that Facebook gets stuck with a small business in China and all the costs outside China,” so he’s aggressively pushing every lever to get in, no matter how dodgy.

                The way Vaughan’s memo frames things, the big issue with these apps isn’t the Chinese government but “critical media attention from the Western press.” To be ready for this, the comms team puts together a plan.

                This reactive comms plan is here in prep for the worst case scenario when and if we have investigative journalists sniff out all the information on the points below.

                The plan starts with some possible headlines we might be facing when the news breaks:

                “Facebook sets up sketchy shell companies in an effort to get inside China”

                “Zuckerberg will stop at nothing to get into China. Inside the story of the web of deceit that Facebook has spun to get a piece of the world’s most lucrative market.”

                “Facebook will do anything to get into China, except use the name Facebook”

                This is bad. It gets worse. As the New York Times reporter is about to publish his story I learn two things: someone at Facebook is leaking to the New York Times, and something is very wrong with the documentation used to register the company that is launching the apps in China. I go straight to Facebook’s lawyers. I explain that the New York Times has discovered that the address used in the registration documents for this Moments/Colorful Balloons app is fake. There’s no office there. And there’s a bigger issue with the registration documents. IvyCo’s subsidiary Youge Internet Technology, which is officially launching this Facebook product, also has Ivy’s husband as a registered director. Unbelievably, it appears they have registered this shell company as a couple. I have no idea who her husband is, but he is definitely not employed by Facebook and no one at Facebook appeared to anticipate his involvement at all. There’s some suggestion that he’s trying to get business with Facebook, and I guess registering yourself as a director of a product being illegally launched would give you some leverage in those endeavors.

                In the hours leading up to publication of the New York Times story, everyone involved in the China project is in full-blown panic. Debbie messages me, “OMG this china thing is a shit show.”

                “Yes—how can I help?” I respond.

                “One: Represent me when I kill Vaughan. Two: Bring rosé to my house.”

                One of those instructions is easier to follow than the other. The story publishes. But it doesn’t have some of the key details and is not as bad as Facebook feared.

                I’m told that Chinese officials are upset about the leak to the New York Times and that “Facebook has to get its house in order.” The apps are shut down. But months later Ivy’s name is added to more Facebook applications with the Chinese government: applications for an Oculus license in China and a start-up incubator Facebook sets up in 2018 to give out $30 million to small businesses in China. After all, it’s worked for them so far. This is after Facebook had simply launched Oculus and its apps in 2014 with the strategy of not seeking a license and “playing dumb.” China eventually grants a license for Oculus years later when Ivy applies and approves registration for the Facebook subsidiary designed to give out tens of millions to China’s small businesses, although the subsidiary’s registration disappears from the public record under mysterious circumstances. I don’t know what happened to that $30 million.

                Beyond all this, Facebook’s chief financial officer has flagged serious concerns from the tax team around public statements the company’s making about Facebook’s China advertising revenue, its second-largest market after the United States. Which Vaughan is forced to concede “is challenging” because “what we do in accounting will impact the important tax negotiation we hope to have shortly.” The CFO’s also concerned about all the hiring Facebook is doing in China.

                This leads me to discover yet another issue, this one with our employees in Beijing. Facebook’s chief representative in China—who used to report to Joel and now reports to me—is working there illegally. They don’t have the correct work permit and—beyond that—Facebook is required to have a local subsidiary if it wants to employ anyone in China, which it does not. I ask one of our lawyers to look into this, and she writes explaining that if Facebook’s chief representative in China decides to point out the ways Facebook is breaking the law to Chinese authorities, they could cause “significant harm” to Facebook.

                • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  0·
                  1 year ago

                  Ch 43 Cont

                  As I see it, they have the ability to “bring the house of cards down” by simply raising a grievance—any grievance—in relation to their employment in China, e.g. failure of FB to pay appropriate social security contributions, incorrect tax reporting, absence of company regulations, claim for additional bonus, etc.

                  What’s strange is that no one seems to have considered how hiring Facebook’s chief representative in China this way might “bring the house of cards down.”

                  I guess no one’s considered it because Facebook’s chief representative in China is not the only one; other parts of Facebook are staffing up teams in China. Facebook has had office space for employees in China for years now. In response to concerns from Facebook’s CFO, Vaughan claims this has all been “blessed” by legal, but this is quickly shot down by one of Facebook’s most senior lawyers with a “clarification” that it was “not blessed.”

                  Facebook is operating illegally in China. One of America’s biggest publicly listed companies is completely indifferent to the rules.

                  Ch: 46 Off the cuff mention with regards to total moderators in Myanmar (1) vs China (100)

                  I disagree. At this point in 2014, Myanmar is too explosive—grappling with hate speech, fake news, and mob violence, struggling to become a democracy—for us to treat it like any other country. Millions in Myanmar think of Facebook as the internet, and we have only one person who speaks Burmese in Facebook’s operations team. That’s it. One person. Compared with the hundreds for China. One man in Dublin, who isn’t even on staff, to resolve all of the hate speech roiling Myanmar.

                  […]

                  To properly cover the country as well as we cover, say, Germany, we’d need hundreds of skilled moderators. And in China we had promised four hundred initially, rising to over two thousand Facebook employees. I know the size of the Myanmar staff is woefully inadequate, so my team and I do what we can. On the cusp of the election, I divide up the clock with a teammate in Australia so there’s always someone from our team monitoring any reports to Facebook and our secret groups even in the middle of the night, the fear of catastrophe ever present.

                  Chapter 47 Mentioned with regards to her firing.

                  Standing in the driveway in front of the building, waiting for a taxi to take me home, I have an awkward conversation with the company’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, who has no idea why I’m standing there stunned. He asks me if I’ve figured out a way to stop working on Facebook’s entry into China. He knows my views on Facebook’s plans there.

                  “You could say that, yes,” I tell him.

                  “Congratulations!” he exclaims, and my taxi pulls up.

                  get in and the driver quickly pulls onto the Bayfront Expressway. Through the rearview mirror I take one long last look at Facebook’s gargantuan headquarters as we speed past the scrubby marshland surrounding it and onto Highway 101.

                  I’m stunned by the firing. I saw the possibility, sure. But it’s all so abrupt.

                  Mostly I’m scared about what comes next for me and my family.

                  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                    0·
                    1 year ago

                    Chapter 48 It’s increasingly obvious she’s tired of writing this because this is a tiny chapter.

                    So that’s how it ended for me at Facebook. I faced the behavior so many women at Facebook and other tech firms have faced. I wasn’t silent enough. But if they hadn’t thrown me out, I wouldn’t have lasted much longer at the company anyway. I had told myself I could do more on the inside than the outside, but realistically, being the grit in the machine wasn’t working.

                    I think all the time about how the company looked to me before I joined. All the possibility of it, the promise of connecting everyone in the world. How I was so sure that Facebook would change the world for the better. The Facebook I saw then has been corrupted.

                    In the early days, when I traveled anywhere in the world with Mark, people would approach us and pour out heartfelt stories of how the platform changed their lives; how they reconnected with someone who became their husband or wife; how they made new, life-changing friendships; how it helped them start their businesses; how they were all alone—immigrants to a new country like me, gay kids in conservative towns, people with rare diseases and no one to talk to about their care—and found community on Facebook. It felt promising and vast, and sometimes actually historic.

                    Now I’m consumed by the worst of it. The grief and sorrow of it. How Facebook is helping some of the worst people in the world do terrible things. How it’s an astonishingly effective machine to turn people against each other. And monitor people at a scale that was never possible before. And manipulate them. It’s an incredibly valuable tool for the most autocratic, oppressive regimes, because it gives them exactly what those regimes need: direct access into what people are saying from the top to bottom of society.

                    It really didn’t have to be this way. I can’t state that strongly enough. If I had to sum up what seven years of watching the people running this massive global enterprise taught me, it’s that something else was possible. They really could have chosen to do it all differently and fix so much of what’s been destructive about Facebook. At every juncture, there was an opportunity to make different choices; China, Myanmar, elections, hate speech, vulnerable teens. They could’ve made it right again. A different path was possible. And in the long term, it would’ve been in their own self-interest too. Facebook, the business, the brand, and the company, would be better off. We all would be better off.

                    And my bosses seemed deeply and blindly unconcerned about any of this. In fact, just the opposite. Turn after turn they encouraged it. In China, they specifically built the software to order. In America, they put staff in with the Trump campaign to help them stage the war of misinformation, trolling, and lies that won him the election. And in Myanmar, they enabled posts that led to horrific sexual violence and genocide. A lethal carelessness.

                    That’s what this company is, and I was part of it. I failed when I tried to change it, and I carry that with me.

                    You’d hope that people who amass the kind of power Facebook has would learn a sense of responsibility, but they don’t show any sign of having done so. In fact I see the opposite. The more they see of the consequences of their actions, the less of a fuck Mark and Facebook’s leadership give. Instead of fixing these things, this ongoing suffering they caused, they seem indifferent. They’re happy to get richer and they just don’t care. It feels crude to put it that way, but it’s true. They profit from the callous and odious things they do. Which seems so crazy. They could’ve tried to fix these things and still been insanely rich and powerful. They were in the rare situation where the money was there in abundance. They could have afforded to do the right thing. They could have told the truth. They could have exercised basic human decency. It was all within their power. Instead, they focused on commencement speeches, vanity political campaigns, vacation properties, raising artisanal Wagyu beef from macadamia-eating cows, whatever their latest plaything was.

                    And it seemed that none of these choices, these decisions, these moral compromises, felt particularly momentous to Facebook’s leadership.

                    They didn’t seem to lose sleep over any of it.

                    It’s simply what they did day-to-day.

                    Just business.