Editorial: Facebook needs to change to win friends back
Move fast and break things was once the defining force behind Facebook’s success, but perhaps Mark Zuckerberg may reflect that the mantra was supposed to be about technological innovation – not the social fabric that holds us together.
Let’s be clear: Facebook is in a lot of trouble. Regulators are gearing up for a fight, youngsters are leaving the platform, and there are precious few answers from the Silicon Valley giant. Zuckerberg’s new plan – to take the firm into the metaverse (us neither) – looks at best a corporate distraction exercise.
At the heart of it are the so-called Facebook papers, which reveal internal messages between employees that suggest concerns around hate speech, the mental health impact of social media, and ‘fake news’ were all prevalent within the building even as the organisation did little to address them.
“It’s not normal for a large number of people in the ‘make the site safe’ team to leave saying, ‘hey, we’re actively making the world worse FYI.’ Every time this gets raised it gets shrugged off with ‘hey people change jobs all the time’ but this is NOT normal,” reads one comment.
Another: “We were willing to act only after things had spiraled into a dire state.” To these, we can add last week’s BBC Panorama investigation, which found users who have shown signs of misogynistic tendencies were then nudged towards extreme, anti-women content. This is just the ‘Western’ charge sheet; many have suggested Facebook’s moderation work is even worse in developing economies.
Facebook’s ability to rebuild trust starts with the word ‘sorry.’ Instead last week Facebook’s newsroom tweeted an ad hominem on journalists going through the papers. For a company that could do with some friends, it’s not acting like it yet.
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