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Key insights from
An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle
for Domination
By
Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang
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What you’ll learn
For an enterprise that
gained $85.9 billion in revenue and $800 billion in market value by 2020,
Facebook’s first days were hardly auspicious. Even the most committed of
the site’s 2 billion users can sense something’s amiss as they log on for
their daily scrolls. Delve into Facebook’s prophetic beginnings and
clandestine inner workings with expert journalists Sheera Frenkel and
Cecilia Kang and explore the phenomenon they argue was fated for disorder
from its initial click into being.
Read
on for key insights from An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for
Domination.
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1. Entrepreneurial
details bored young Zuckerberg—he simply wanted people to notice his
brainchild.
Facebook’s turmoil began
even before Mark Zuckerberg’s fateful dorm room venture at Harvard.
Facebook’s zeitgeist first came to life in 2001 at a New Hampshire boarding
school called Phillips Exeter Academy. From the moment young Zuckerberg
tampered with his high school’s beloved and newly digitized information
repository, “The Facebook,” concealing the details of his page through a
coding hack, his idea evolved and dragged tension along with it.
Arriving at Harvard’s
campus as a psychology major in 2002, Zuckerberg channeled his talents into
an even grander idea, the eventual platform “FaceMash.” Despite the
program’s initial achievement, though, it wasn’t a hit with everyone.
Various students and officials at Harvard were anything but delighted with
the exploitative program Zuckerberg and his pals set up. So, Zuckerberg
tweaked his model, seeking the aid of fellow Harvard peer and creator of
the program “the Face Book,” Aaron Greenspan. Though the pair seemed like
similarly minded innovators, they were, perhaps, a bit too alike. Both
students were resolute in the consistency of their visions—Zuckerberg’s
idyllic landing place for what the authors call a “social network” and
Greenspan’s more LinkedIn-esque approach were irreconcilable. Moreover,
Greenspan’s idea was far too limited for Zuckerberg’s liking.
According to a later
statement from Greenspan, he noted that, “Data is extremely powerful, and
Mark saw that. What Mark ultimately wanted was power.” The exchange
crystallized Zuckerberg’s intent for “Thefacebook,” which not long after,
in September of 2005 became the triumphant outlet “Facebook.” Ditching his
dorm at Harvard for a mansion in Palo Alto, Calif., Zuckerberg drew the
eyes of Silicon Valley gurus and investors. Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen
were among his earliest encouragers, exposing Zuckerberg to what journalist
Kara Swisher called their “libertarian mindset.” Despite many people’s
goading toward greatness, though, which even included a $1 billion offer
from Yahoo, Zuckerberg’s desire to attract users with his tech never
wavered.
And his next development
was one that would prove both definitive and gradually divisive for the
still up-and-coming startup. Facebook’s “News Feed,” a revolutionary
addition designed by Zuckerberg and developed by Ruchi Sanghvi and Chris
Cox, sought to employ users’ previously given information to concoct tailor
made (and irresistible) landing pages. When the “News Feed” was finally let
loose on Sept. 5, 2006, many people were yet again upset by the way it
harnessed and exposed their personal details. Though Zuckerberg registered
the discontent, he also recognized that the addition made Facebook’s
presence even more imposing.
The “News Feed” was
nonnegotiable now, a simultaneously evocative and representative element,
and a tool Zuckerberg was not about to lose—not even in the wake of blatant
protest.
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2. Sheryl Sandberg
transformed Facebook from a stalling startup to a Silicon Valley standard.
With millions of members by
2007, Facebook was compelled to consider financial matters. Luckily for
Zuckerberg, there was a vice president from Google on the move—a woman who
also attended Harvard years before, was called “a Mozart of human
relations” by World Bank’s Lant Pritchett, and fostered expertise in
handling capital and pleasing a crowd. Even then, Sheryl Sandberg was a
sought-after wonder. When the close of the year brought both her and the
similarly notable Zuckerberg together at a colleague’s Christmas party, the
encounter couldn’t have gone better if the meticulous Sandberg had planned
it herself.
Prior to her time at
Facebook, Sandberg’s contribution to Google was unrivaled. According to New York Times writers
Brad Stone and Miguel Helft, Sandberg pulled in $16.6 billion for her
former company, a feat that was primarily accomplished through her work on
the site’s advertising features, “AdWords” and “AdSense.” Both of these
tools are elements of “behavioral advertising,” a marketing tactic that
appeals to people’s particular interests to move them toward purchasing
products. When people use Google’s search engine, for instance, they
unknowingly initiate what the authors’ call “an in-house ad auction.” Within
this process, companies related to that particular search vie for the
advertising spots with the greatest potential to receive a click. So, while
it seems that the user herself is the source of that materializing page,
she’s simply at the receiving end of a complicated advertising
scheme.
On March 4, 2008, when
Zuckerberg announced that Sandberg would serve as the new Chief Executive
Officer of Facebook, she wanted to put that same advertising brilliance to
work. From the beginning, Sandberg knew Facebook was something special. She
also knew that, with a bit of help, some of the components she used at
Google could be employed on the seemingly unrelated social media site, too.
In the biting words of Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff, Sandberg was
“Typhoid Mary, bringing surveillance capitalism from Google to Facebook,
when she signed on as Mark Zuckerberg’s number two.”
Sandberg and her new team
soon reasoned that filling users’ feeds with advertisements for different
brands—such as Sony, Adidas, Coca-Cola, and Papa Johns—depending upon the
details of users’ profiles, was the best plan for Facebook (and their
advertisers, too). A 2016 study by ProPublica revealed that this method
eventually allowed participating companies to appeal to members dispersed across
50,000 identifiers. According to Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, these
include “religious preference, political leaning, credit score, and
income.”
Sandberg’s instincts were
pivotal in Facebook’s evolution. They enabled the company to make money on
those who were already crowding its News Feed, a space that the authors
wittily remark exists as a “virtual town hall.” And, with Zuckerberg and
Sandberg as co-mayors, its population expanded to 350 million members at
the start of 2010. Despite this seemingly upward movement, many people
questioned the ethics behind Facebook’s proliferation of ads. These
alluring digital billboards aren’t always helpful or even respectful of
users, but may be telling hints of the platform’s perilous future.
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3. Before the Russians
fiddled with Facebook’s structure, the platform had some unaddressed “data”
issues.
Shortly after the notable
“Like button” appeared on the screens of millions of Facebook members in
2007, the site began to experience some problems. The first of these issues
garnered a strict (and later disregarded) warning from the Federal Trade
Commission on Dec. 17, 2009. With barely a warning, the company revealed
more of its users’ information to advertisers and other members than they
initially agreed upon, moving countless members and public rights defenders
to petition the government. Thinkers like Jeff Chester, the founder of the
Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), proposed that the most worrisome aspect
of Facebook’s actions concerned their flippant disregard for users’
data—that lucrative digital bait they use to snag advertisers. The case
that Chester’s CDD eventually brought forward landed the platform 20 years
of privacy audits, but as the future would soon prove, this limitation did
little to stifle Facebook’s reach or prevent its present failings.
In 2016, success and
subversion arrived hand-in-hand for Facebook. As users’ News Feed
“sessions” continued to expand, so did the presence of what nearly everyone
now glibly calls “fake news.” Despite concerns about these ads and articles
brought forward by Facebook’s staff, its leaders continued to defend the
platform’s structure. Perhaps Facebook’s substratum was unwieldy, allowing
blatantly inaccurate though highly “popular” posts to trickle into users’
feeds, but that feature was a necessary evil. According to a statement from
one of Facebook’s department vice presidents Andrew Bosworth, (a quote from
which the authors derive the title of their work), “The ugly truth is that
we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to
connect more people more often is de
facto good”—even if that so-called connection gradually
corrodes those it’s trying to unite.
Facebook’s experience with
the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) in 2016 encapsulates one of the
company’s most dangerous mistakes. With 44 percent of American voters
turning to social media for political direction, the platforms were
stomping grounds for ideological prodding. And, out of every platform
online at the time, the ad-laden Facebook was perhaps the most susceptible
to intrusion. With the guidance of Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos,
Facebook’s security analysts discovered that during the highly fractious
American elections, Russian hackers were at play. Under the not-so-secretive
guise of Facebook pages called “DCLeaks” and “Fancy Bear Hack Team,” the
Russians sought to jostle the American mind. And, with the full force of
Facebook’s machinery behind them, they did just that.
Only later in 2017 did
analysts Olga Belogolova and April Eubank find out how pervasive these
masked Russians were on the platform. The IRA’s efforts sent more than
3,000 Facebook ads and 80,000 articles to 126 million voting Americans.
Through this, they instilled even greater contention into what the authors
identify as “seam line” issues, or stirring public questions concerning
topics like gender identity and racial tension. Even with an expanding
corpus of evidence, the efforts of Stamos and his team were consistently
stymied by Facebook’s higher-ups due to issues of communication and more
nefarious concerns. There was simply too much for Facebook to lose should
the full truth come out—the platform’s structure, public image, and even
its relationship with the U.S. government were at stake.
When the company at last
released the details of its dilemma with Russia, listeners were flummoxed.
So much for that elusive “connection.” Facebook’s operations were forever
tainted in the public eye.
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4. Facebook is a
cutthroat juggernaut that various officials want to cut down to size.
If Facebook’s integrity was
a balloon, then Russia was a needle. As the company’s worth deflated,
people began to spot even more problems in the platform’s withering though
still crafty infrastructure. On the heels of a horrifying New York Times article
entitled “Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought through
Crisis,” Zuckerberg and Sandberg had even more issues to contend with.
Though the 2018 write-up exposed the platform’s slippery conduct regarding
the Internet Research Agency, various thinkers began probing yet another
problem—Facebook’s unimpeachable size.
The first of these warnings
was an especially painful blow to an overwhelmed Zuckerberg, who was trying
to regain some momentum in a series of talks around the world. In another New York Times
article, his former Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes contested the
platform’s potent News Feed and lamented the site’s status as “one of the
biggest monopolies in the United States.” Hughes proposed that limits be
placed on the platform’s increasing size. The fact that Facebook was still
financially stable even after the controversy with Russia was unnerving.
Though its practices were inhumane, Facebook didn’t seem to be feeling a
thing as far as its bank accounts were concerned.
After Zuckerberg introduced
yet another dangerous feature to his brainchild, people from a range of
fields took its “Big Tech” to task. In 2019, Zuckerberg sought to blend
some features from Instagram and WhatsApp, both of which he acquired in
2012 and 2014 respectively, to function with Facebook’s motherboard.
According to Zuckerberg, he wanted to create a single mechanism within
which members could talk (for the users’ own wellbeing, of course, not his
own). Considering that the apps drew 2.6 billion members with money-making
profiles at the ready, Zuckerberg’s intentions were less noble than he
claimed.
A couple of the most
notable Facebook soothsayers detected even greater strategizing in
Zuckerberg’s move. Columbia University law professor Tim Wu and New York
University law professor Scott Hemphill argue that Facebook’s additions
function like a cushion for possible legal issues. Wu’s 2018 work The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in
the New Gilded Age follows Facebook’s behavior over the years,
positing that its gradual expansion was highly calculated and unfair in
several ways. Zuckerberg’s most recent effort is simply another stone
skipping across an already rippled sea. Both Wu and Hemphill conclude that
Facebook is getting ready for what the authors note is “antitrust action,”
ensuring that should the law come against them, its proponents would have a
painstaking time pursuing their punishment. Since Facebook wove WhatsApp
and Instagram into its system, the authors write that “the process of
breaking them up would be too complicated and harmful,” an undesirable task
for lawmakers to assume.
Thankfully, though, Wu,
Hemphill, and various others are undeterred. As massive as the tech giant itself,
the issue is one that lawmakers surely cannot ignore.
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5. Facebook is
working on a status update—though it may take a while to appear.
Within the platform’s
17-year history, the month of December has proven especially eventful.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg’s unanticipated meet-cute, Facebook’s first brush
with the law, and the company’s most recent legal entanglement all
originated within one of the most frigid months of the year. In the latest
of these winter days, Dec. 9, 2020, at the behest of various Facebook foes,
the Federal Trade Commission and 48 attorneys general filed a powerful
lawsuit, yanking the cultural phenom off its pedestal and into the
courtroom. But even despite the potency of their arguments as headed by New
York State Attorney General Letitia James, the company continues to
persevere. As Facebook legend Chris Cox insightfully remarks, “Social
media’s history is not yet written, and its effects are not neutral.” Cox’s
thought-provoking statement may refer to the concept of social media as a
whole, but it fits Facebook perfectly.
The resulting legal
initiatives of that December lawsuit found both Zuckerberg and Sandberg
poised under relatively personal fire. According to the FTC, Facebook’s
leaders wielded the platform’s reach insidiously, swiftly getting rid of
all threats (such as those supplied by Instagram, WhatsApp, and Twitter),
and employing unethical practices to ensure that its faithful members
remained online. The addition of Instagram and WhatsApp to Facebook’s army
of more than 70 companies was an especially consequential piece of evidence
for the FTC, too. But Zuckerberg and Sandberg would have none of it. The
FTC had given Facebook a glowing blue thumbs up at the time of the numerous
acquisitions, making their arguments moot in the leaders’ eyes. With over
100 lawyers behind them, Sandberg coolly advocated for the platform, while
Zuckerberg proved uncharacteristically diplomatic, concealing his take and
leaving the lawyers to circumvent the dilemma for him.
At the time of the book’s
writing, the nation was still waiting on the conclusion of the Facebook
affair. Regardless of its outcome, though, the platform continues to revel
in its leaping revenue (amounting to $28 billion in the first portion of
2021) and some of its hopefully promising changes. For instance, in a talk
Zuckerberg gave on Jan. 27, 2021, the CEO revealed that the platform’s hand
in political matters would come to an end. Facebook’s News Feed will no
longer be a place for users to catch up on their manipulated morning news
served with more than just a side of mayhem and overdone anger—at least,
that’s what Zuckerberg promises.
Perhaps you regard
Facebook’s alterations as public image maneuvers, pandering to a nation
that’s grown dissatisfied with its schemes, or maybe you see its actions as
a prelude to something better. Whether you view the company as a social
media monstrosity or magnate, Facebook isn’t rolling over just yet—not as
long as its members keep on scrolling.
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