Facebook Staff Lamented 'Unethical' Practices But Were Rebuffed (bloomberg.com) 26
Facebook employees repeatedly chafed at what they viewed as anti-competitive or unethical practices by the company, internal chats show. But their concerns, voiced in 2012 and 2013, were overruled by senior managers including Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who argued that the survival of the social network was more important. From a report: The messages come from a roughly 7,000-page trove of leaked documents that were part of a years-old lawsuit in San Mateo County, California. The interactions are likely to be scrutinized further as Facebook faces ongoing antitrust investigations. In multiple discussions found in the documents, employees, including some top executives, argued against policies that would cut off competitors' ability to advertise on the platform and access Facebook's audience and user information, which it provided to non-competing companies.
Zuckerberg, in a November 2012 email, justified the decision to not provide services to competitors. Facebook software that helped app developers increase sharing "may be good for the world but it's not good for us unless people also share back to Facebook and that content increases the value of our network," Zuckerberg wrote. The company's ultimate goal should be "to increase sharing back into Facebook," he added. In later messages, Zuckerberg also argued against giving competing companies access to other Facebook services.
Zuckerberg, in a November 2012 email, justified the decision to not provide services to competitors. Facebook software that helped app developers increase sharing "may be good for the world but it's not good for us unless people also share back to Facebook and that content increases the value of our network," Zuckerberg wrote. The company's ultimate goal should be "to increase sharing back into Facebook," he added. In later messages, Zuckerberg also argued against giving competing companies access to other Facebook services.
Get it in writing or you take the blame (Score:5, Insightful)
Middle and senior management got to their positions by taking credit for the successes, and making sure other people took the blame for failures.
If a manager asks you to do something grey area, make damn sure you get it in writing or you are going to be the one that gets crucified.
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Rule of Acquisition 211: Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them.
Re:Get it in writing or you take the blame (Score:4, Informative)
If a manager is asking you to do something unethical or even something that doesn't quite smell right, it's not often than outright asking them to confirm via email will get you the results you need to protect yourself. In most cases, the manager will realize that you're asking them to incriminate themselves or, at the very least, establish a paper trail back to themselves should things go awry.
Instead, what you want to do is request clarification or confirmation in a way that doesn't set alarm bells ringing. For example:
Manager: *verbally* I need to change the numbers on this chart to show a quarter over quarter improvement
Analyst: *via email* OK, I think I got it figured out. I was able to adjust the numbers to align to your vision because the standard model didn't achieve the goal. I had to filter out some of the data but think I got it in the end. Can you take a look at this and let me know if it tells your story?"
Doesn't matter if you get a response or not. Take a screenshot, fwd the email, or print it out. Just make sure you have a record. Everytime you get a verbal request, follow up with an email without making it sound like you know what's up.
Lord, what a sorry state of affairs we're in....
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Lord, what a sorry state of affairs we're in....
Yep:
Taylor: Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?
Sondland: Call me.
Unethical to provide services to competitors??? (Score:1)
Since when? Yet I bet the same people complaining its unethical to provide services to competitors complain the US imports too many goods, especially from autocratic countries.
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The claim is the reverse, that it is unethical to decline to provide services to competitors. Equally specious however.
Those customers don't pay Facebook a cent. Why should they get to piggyback off Facebook's services for free? Facebook has every right to protect this considering there would be services to offer if Facebook didn't exist.
I also like to lament unethical practices (Score:2, Insightful)
while drawing a huge salary that is a direct result of the said unethical practices.
It is very nice, you're so clean and morally superior, and well-paid at the same time.
Win-win, so to speak.
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I presume from the tone of your comment that you have information on how many of those people have (or haven't) moved on to work for other companies since? It's a "feature" of our corporatist system that sometimes people have to work for scum or find themselves living in a gutter.
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sometimes people have to work for scum or find themselves living in a gutter.
The relevant emails were from 2012-13 when the tech economy in SV was booming. By quitting, none of these people would have lived in the gutter or likely even taken a pay cut.
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This is my personal ethos and it has been very effective. The results take longer than I would like but there's two ways to change people's minds:
1. Brute force or threat 2. Education a
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Yes, yes!
I strongly believe in the theory that the nuts and bolts in a corporate machine oriented to extorting profits with unethical practices "change the world for the better from within".
The millions honest people serving in the repression apparatus of the regimes in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Maoist China, Pinochet's Chile and so on, who chose "not to find themselves in the gutter" are a testament to the truthiness of that theory.
Alas, it is just a theory and never bears out in practice.
So, what he said, essentially is... (Score:2)
âoeThis benefits the world, but it does not benefit me or my company, so, nope, not gonna do itâ. Says the leader of a company that is able to influence the world with anything he does.
Sigh.
Whistleblowers this week (Score:1)
Couldn't have been that bothered (Score:3, Interesting)
People that lament the unethical business practices of their employer, yet continue to work for the same employer, are complicit in said unethical conduct. Presumably their salaries exceed their level of concern, which is why this hasn't escalated beyond whining about it internally.
This is how things work. (Score:3)
I'm not surprised by any of this. In fact, this simply validates my working theory that corporations as a whole are wholly sociopath because individuals in each department are willing to push the envelope in ways that other employees in the company may object to.
Before you interject with an anecdote, I would point to my other working theory that corporations work like optimization algorithms where employees are replaced by others who are more effective at executing the goal of the position resulting in increasingly unethical actions. This is to say, that as time goes on, corporations self-optimize to become unethical as it's more profitable. As for you anecdote, just because you/someone stopped something, doesn't mean you/they weren't replaced with someone willing to do that or something like it at a later day.
Note to employees (Score:4, Interesting)
Dear Facebook employees. There have been some misconceptions going around recently about what we do and why we do it. So, upper management wants to clarify a few things. Read this carefully. We are a private company. Therefore, we are driven by profit and nothing else. We make most of our profit by selling ads. At our core, we are an advertising company. Never forget that. We also have a profitable sideline selling user data to anyone with a checkbook. This is what we do. This is why we exist. The social media platform is nothing but a loss leader - a honeypot that we have to maintain in order to collect the user data. We will not do anything that gets in the way of monetizing this data. Always remember who our customers really are. Our customers are the ad companies and the people who buy user data from us. They are the ones that matter. The users are the product. We care about the quality of the product but we have no moral obligation to it. Yes, upper management uses "it" instead of "them". This is a practice that should spread across the company.
Our CEO is currently on a charm offensive to convince the public that Facebook cares about the users. We don't. This is a PR campaign meant for the public - it is not to be taken seriously within the company. In reality, we will quietly work to assassinate any legislation or regulation that restricts our ability to sell ads or user data. If you don't like any of this you can 1) keep quiet, 2) leave the company, or 3) find yourself "redundant" and out of a job. Hopefully this clarifies our policies.
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We are a private company
They are not a private company https://www.nasdaq.com/market-... [nasdaq.com]
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"Charm offensive" sounds about right.
Also, "When we employees complained that continuously buffing us was unethical, we received a response of 'Is your old buffing wearing off? Would you like us to rebuff you?', and we were like, 'No, that's not the point ...'"