This is a positive story about Facebook. No, really
Wholesome CEO
Let’s start with the obvious. Keeping Zuck away from scandals means that hecan go around embodying the idea of a wholesome tech CEO. The company pushed executives like COO Sheryl Sandberg and VP of integrity Guy Rosen to issue statements on topics such asthe US Capitol riotsandhandling COVID-19 misinformation.
Instead of addressing election and policy issues as he did during and after the2016and2020Presidential elections, Zuckerberg pivoted towards talking about building ‘innovative’ products, such asthe metaverse.
The CrowdTangle controversy
Facebook also started tolimit the data available to journalists and researchersthrough its analytics tool, CrowdTangle. An NYT report published in April suggested that the company restructured the team behind the tool and opted for the strategy of ‘selective disclosure.’That meant holding back from revealingallthe insights into the top-performing posts across Facebook for selected topics.
The company’s chief marketing officer, Alex Schultz, also floated the idea of the social network publishing its own report for top links across the site for the first three months of 2021. However, after finding out that one of them was about a doctor dying after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, the company refrained fromreleasing the report, worrying that it might promote vaccine hesitancy.
Restricting researchers
Last month,the firm removed NYU researchers from Facebookstating that their experiment of monitoring user activity (with consent) can harm user privacy. Researchers claimed that the access was cut because studies uncovered discoveries, such as a swath of misleading political ads on the platform during the 2020 Presidential elections.
Self-promotion with ads and posts
Facebook also drummed upads on its platform during the Olympicstotalk up its role in helping to create and maintain communities online.
Last week, the company also announced a new technique tobattle trolls that adapt from its bot removal methods.
However,this followed a damning series of stories based produced bythe Wall Street Journal, based on internal documents it had acquired. These reports point towards Facebook’s ignorance towards making Instagram a safe place for teens, its neglect towards employee reports flagging active pages of drug cartels and traffickers in developed countries, and itsfailed efforts to make the social network a less toxic place.
Facebook has a lot of skeletons in its closet. Its strategy of pushing positive stories about the company may prove to be somewhat effective — but only in the short term.
Story byIvan Mehta
Ivan covers Big Tech, India, policy, AI, security, platforms, and apps for TNW. That’s one heck of a mixed bag. He likes to say “Bleh.“Ivan covers Big Tech, India, policy, AI, security, platforms, and apps for TNW. That’s one heck of a mixed bag. He likes to say “Bleh.”
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