
Facebook's PR feels broken - cjbest
https://themargins.substack.com/p/facebooks-pr-feels-broken
======
jyrkesh
> I’m sure, internally, it’s looked at as the “mainstream media trying to get
> clicks...

I interviewed with FB shortly after the Cambridge Analytica stuff came out
(but long enough after that it was clear to _everyone_ that FB had screwed up
big time).

When it was my turn to ask questions in one particular interview, I gave a
standard fallback when I have nothing else: "[despite all the blahblah
positives], having worked at other technology companies, what's your least
favorite thing about working at FB?"

This guy was a FB vet (maybe 5 or 10 years? Very long in FB time, I think). He
gives me this spiel about how hard the teams work to maintain user privacy and
how unfairly they're being treated by the public and the media, and how hard
it is to work in an environment where everyone treats you so unfairly.

I was floored. Not even a hint of apology, remorse, or "we could have done X
better". "Unfair. Fake news. We're doing great things, and no one thanks us
enough." And from someone that had probably made a _mint_ having been around
at FB near-IPO time. It was my first or second of the day, and while no one
else was so blatant, the sentiment persisted throughout the rest of the day.

I bombed the interviews hard, they didn't want me back, but I had basically
decided I'd never work there by the time lunch rolled around.

~~~
manfredo
Someone who worked at Facebook for the better part of a decade responded that
they felt the media coverage was unfair to Facebook. You were suprised by this
response because from an outsider's perspective you felt that Facebook
employees should be apologetic? What makes you more qualified to judge whether
the public perception was accurate as compared to someone who actually worked
there - an "FB vet" in your own words?

Having dug into the Cambridge Analytica story, I can see a number of reasons
why Facebook workers would feel wronged by the coverage. In particular, many
outlets omitted or downplayed the fact that Cambridge Analytica had lied about
the purpose of their data collection, falsely claiming that it was for
academic research. Dozens of other academic institutions were similarly
allowed to solicit data from users, yet those go unmentioned because most
people don't see users voluntarily sharing their data for academic purposes.
But that's what Cambridge Analytica was, from Facebook's perspective. The
picture painted by the media was one where Facebook brazenly sold people's
data to nefarious actors, when in reality Facebook treated Cambridge Analytica
just like other academic organizations in allowing them to solicit users for
data - except it turned out that CA had lied about the purpose of its data
collection.

This story leaves makes me more empathetic towards your interviewer. If my
company was so throughly demonized by the media such that candidates discount
my own experience actually working at the company and are "floored" when when
I tell them that the reality is different from public coverage, I'd be pretty
salty too.

~~~
Barrin92
>What makes you more qualified to judge whether the public perception was
accurate as compared to someone who actually worked there - an "FB vet" in
your own words?

For starters, most of us here don't benefit financially from putting a
positive spin on disasters at Facebook. As the Upton Sinclair saying goes, it
is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it.

I've not talked to Facebook employees personally but I've witnessed the same
degree of delusion at other large tech companies. Some are straight-up like a
cult with employees willing to defend just about anything their company does
regardless of how hazardous it was. Which is even more baffling if one takes
into consideration that these are usually salaried employees working there
only for a few years with no personal stake whatsoever.

The point isn't even to discuss some sort of internal nuance about the
technical details of CA. If you are a company as large as Facebook and you
allow user data to be abused to this degree, even if there is some nuance to
it, when facing the public you apologize, tuck your tail between your legs,
admit that you screwed up, and fix your problems, and you turn the arrogance
and the world saving rhetoric down a notch.

~~~
kd5bjo
I was working at Facebook when the CA story broke, but not when the events
happened. I was in a department far removed from any of the involved parties.
I haven't worked for them for several years now, and I currently own no FB
stock outside of broad-based index funds¹.

As I recall, the sense of unfairness that was going around was rooted mostly
in it feeling like old news. CA was the ghost of a bad policy that had already
been rescinded, and there was very little awareness of that in the media
coverage. Instead, there were loud calls for Facebook to do something, but
every reasonable thing had already been done years before.

When I worked there, nobody believed that the policy which birthed CA was a
good idea, which is why it was long gone. Also, everything had played out
already in the public eye (in the tech press) -- anyone who had been paying
attention should have known about most of these things already.

¹ It seems silly to make all these disclaimers, but they seem necessary with
the mood here.

~~~
tonfreed
I remember all the puff pieces when Obama's campaign did something similar in
2012, where his app would drink down all the data it could from the social
graph. When CA broke, I was asking people why they thought this was news and
why I only used Facebook to shitpost on company pages, it wasn't exactly a
well kept secret that you could do that.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
I feel pretty contrarian about this piece. In the same piece that talks about
how dangerous it is and how regulation is needed because facebook has the
_ability_ to influence public opinion, they talk about how "totally normal" it
is for the media to act as mouthpieces for whomever wants to pay. No mention
of how Fox News can swing public opinion, and really needs to be unbiased and
in fact needs regulation to that end. Or any number of other media. And then
it includes a gif making fun of zuckerberg for being robotic while complaining
about him writing a post that was human instead of corporate.

~~~
hogFeast
Comment talking about bias, only mentions Fox News. Welcome to hell (imo, this
is what you get when you don't teach people how to argue and feed them too
many Disney films).

No, the press shouldn't be regulated. Yes, bias is normal. No, Fox News
doesn't "swing public opinion" (they reflect views that already exist, and
pander to them). Life is difficult, you have to think for yourself.

~~~
notafraudster
You seem to be arguing two different things: first, Fox News does not
influence public opinion; second, that it shouldn't matter if they do because
adults should think for themselves.

The second is fundamentally a subject view of the world, so you are neither
right nor wrong. I disagree with you strongly. We should be concerned about
things that harm the our civic health even if we ourselves to blame for them.
I think there's a clear parallel to our actual health: when 80% of our
population is overweight or obese, it's maybe time to think beyond "adults are
responsible for what they eat" and towards "the world would be better if we
could make progress on this issue". Ditto our past history with smoking. We
know that people are subject to persuasion and psychological manipulation and
exploitation of their cognitive biases. A model of the world that has everyone
as solely responsible for their own destiny is a pretty useless one, in my
opinion.

But, your first claim -- "Fox News doesn't 'swing public opinion'" is an
empirical one. Either it does or it doesn't. You're either right or wrong.

DellaVigna and Kaplan's 2007 piece in the Quarterly Journal of Economics
investigates this question. They exploit the fact that the phased roll-out of
Fox News between 1996 and 2000 impacted 20% of the country. This allows for a
natural experiment where some markets are "treated" by Fox News and others are
not.

Okay, so, first, should we believe this design? If the entry of Fox News into
a market was random, then this is an experiment and we have a treatment
effect. If the entry of Fox news into a market was conditional on market
characteristics that we can assess, we have "selection on observables", and we
can recover a treatment effect. We need only a good selection model. It is
also the case that if entry into a market was non-random, but conditionally
ignorable with respect to the potential outcomes of the market (e.g. random
with respect to politics), we can get a treatment effect without knowing the
full selection model. So we have some different routes to the answer here.

The answer is between #2 and #3 -- Fox News did enter markets in a non-random
way, but not based on demographics or past voting history, based mainly on
geographic considerations. Given the regulatory and infrastructural component
of entering a new market, this is probably not surprising, but it does guard
against "Fox entered conservative markets first" as a counterclaim.

Now, having clarified the design based considerations, the authors find that
Fox News was responsible for a ~0.5 percent vote share increase in Republican
vote share in the presidential election of 2000. Whether you consider that
large or small depends on your frame of reference. My sense would be that 0.5
percent is small cosmically, but it's maybe possible that you could have an
election where that kind of margin is decisive. Remind me again, was the 2000
election close?

This is a fairly credible and careful design published in a good journal and
widely cited (1486 citations, which is quite high for a nonmethods economics
paper). That doesn't make it true, but it does suggest that the field of
Economics views this as an important paper and that it has been exposed to
scrutiny from a wide variety of sources.

If there's a little contempt in my reply here, it's because I think your off-
hand claim that media diet, priming, and framing effects are solely demand
driven and have no actual impact on viewers seems to fly in the face of like
50 years of communications, economics, and political science research. In
other words, it feels like your first reply was "50 years of research doesn't
matter, humans aren't influenced by any of this stuff". Maybe that's not what
you meant, but when I see someone flippantly respond without evidence, I think
"Welcome to hell" \-- imo, that's the kind of thing we get when we don't teach
people to argue.

~~~
millstone
What a thoughtful and well articulated reply (sincerely). I hope some day one
of my stupid opinions gets this treatment.

~~~
hogFeast
Understanding that everyone is biased is not a "stupid" opinion. It is
reality. Thinking otherwise is certainly a very common belief, and quite
"stupid" indeed (the hallmark of stupidity is thinking you are becoming more
intelligent, the stupider you become).

------
cjbest
This part really struck me:

> It feels like finance in 2009.

> One one side, you had smart, ambitious people who ended up there simply
> because you were told to go. On the other, you had the classic Gordon Gekko-
> ish types reciting Liar’s Poker anecdotes ad nauseam.

> Enter the crisis and everyone was equally tarred as the bad guys. The former
> have slowly made their way out (mostly over to tech), while the latter
> remain[...]

It does feel like the tide of public opinion might be turning from "too
uncritical" to "too critical".

At least, as somebody who spends too much time on both Hacker News and
Twitter, this seems believable to me.

~~~
TheFiend7
I don't really agree with the idea that people are being too critical of FB,
or these massive social media giants in general.

People vastly underestimate the power of data IMHO and therefore the
responsibility that comes with it. We'll look back in 20 years and wonder wtf
we were doing just like any other decade, cause hindsight is 20/20 (after a
certain number of years out ofc).

I don't think our society is really prepared for the digitization of so much
information and there will be growing pains.

~~~
K0SM0S
I studied a bit of politics, anthropology, history in my 20s. The one things
that frightens me the most is that a relatively "safe" constant of pretty much
all dictatorial / totalitarian / fascist / <insert_new_dystopia> regimes of
the world, going back _millennia_ , is control of information, and thereby the
population.

It's one of the simplest rule of a State hostile to its citizens: the more you
control information, the stronger the leash. The tighter your hold. And if
cruelty is on the menu, the worse it can get with more, better, faster
information.

So I thought, when Facebook really took off, "people do this now because
there's this fad, this dopamine of novelty, but surely soon enough it'll
recede" and I was damn wrong.

I also thought, "oh but governments with half-decent minds will undoubtedly
choose to increase protection for citizens, enact "digital rights" to further
the reach of the sanctity of one's "home territory" to internet, a "digital
democracy" in terms of infrastructure rules so to speak, and again I was dead
wrong — they're doing it the exact opposite direction, proving that the
concepts were not lunatic and very much implementable, but as it turns out in
the form of "digital authoritarianism".

So yeah, I'm the usual optimistic about most things, even the worst like
climate change; but in this case, I know no example in history to disprove
this assumption: in the current context, if any major western country falls
into dictatorship / totalitarianism / etc, it may get very dark very fast. The
powers of such a modern incarnation of extreme regimes would be, well,
unprecendented, and that's kind of understating orders of magnitude in scale.

------
ogre_codes
One thing this piece really brings home to me is how unethical it is for media
to sell sponsored content intermixed and indistinguishable from their own
content. How do you trust a media outlet when their content is for sale? I
know this practice pre-dates the internet, but it's hugely damaging to
people's faith in the media.

I think Facebooks' failure in PR is more a symptom of how far Facebook has
slid down the ethical slope into outright corruption. As you do more and more
heinous things, it becomes more difficult to defend those actions.

~~~
rhubarbquid
It's almost like there's a reason the FTC requires disclosure of paid
content...

~~~
ogre_codes
In this specific case, it was clear Teen Vogue and Facebook were trying to do
exactly that, and the fact that they pulled it suggests to me that omitting
the "Sponsored Content" warning was part of the terms of the deal. I suspect
this is extremely difficult to police and people get away with it all the
time.

------
drewrv
It still amazes me that the line of reasoning they publicly went with, around
their decision not to fact check political advertisements, is that no one
company should have that amount of power. The logical conclusion of their own
argument is that Facebook should be broken up.

~~~
farisjarrah
While I agree Facebook is doing a bad job with regards to political
advertising, I am actually really glad facebook isnt stepping in and deciding
whats truthful or not. Does anyone really think that we should give Facebook
any power over our political system or give them the power to be the
gatekeepers of what political ads we see? I think facebook should do what
twitter did and just totally get out of the political ads game, however, since
theyre not, call me crazy but I am kinda glad they arent deciding whats
"right" and whats "wrong". Facebook has already proved to us over and over
that they don't know the difference between right and wrong and that they make
decisions that are bad for society.

~~~
arrosenberg
Disagree. Since they have chosen to platform those ads, they should at least
be held to the same standards as networks and not show ads that are provably
false. It would be better if they didn't platform them, or better yet, they
didn't have that much potential influence in the first place.

~~~
Diederich
> same standards as networks and not show ads that are provably false

I was going to ask you for a reference on this, because I was pretty sure that
no such standard existed.

I was quite wrong!

[https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/complaints-about-
broadc...](https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/complaints-about-broadcast-
advertising)

"Broadcasters are responsible for selecting the broadcast material that airs
on their stations, including advertisements. The FCC expects broadcasters to
be responsible to the community they serve and act with reasonable care to
ensure that advertisements aired on their stations are not false or
misleading.

The FTC has primary responsibility for determining whether specific
advertising is false or misleading, and for taking action against the sponsors
of such material. You can file a complaint with the FTC online or call toll-
free 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357)."

So we have:

"The FCC expects broadcasters to be responsible to the community they serve
and act with reasonable care"

and

"The FTC has primary responsibility for determining"

So...maybe we should give online advertising the same treatment?

As an aside: this FCC regulation surprises me; I'm quite aware that there are
numerous limits to free speech, but I didn't expect this to be one of them.

I've always been an ardent believer in expansive free speech, and I still am,
though age has allowed me to accept more limits. Though it doesn't feel right
to me, the negative impact of (largely?) unregulated online political
advertising is big and getting bigger.

~~~
Keverw
I think that's only for local TV though for the FCC ones, like your ABC, NBC,
FOX, CBS affiliates. They have other obligation like providing children
programming which is usually early on the weekend, in exchange for the
airwaves too. So cable and satellite network stations are treated differently.
So like cussing on the local TV stations is a no, no but a show on HBO can
cuss all they want.

Then also some states like Ohio it's illegal to sell ads to businesses that
aren't solvent, Facebook is currently being sued by school districts for
selling ads to a charter school that later ended up closing, which I feel is a
huge overreach since most of it's automatic and the school themselves decided
to buy the ads. So I guess you have to do a financial background check before
selling ads. Probably easier to just exclude Ohio from selling ads, but the
lawsuit hasn't been settled yet. So far no activity for 7 months but still on
the docket as a open case.

~~~
bduerst
No, online ads do not get an exception with the FTC. The FTC enforces truth-
in-advertising laws on ads across all mediums.

Edit: FCC -> FTC

~~~
inetknght
> _The FTC enforces truth-in-advertising laws on ads across all mediums._

Hahahahahahaha yeah sure they do.

~~~
Keverw
Yeah. I thought I seen something before that Hollywood had some exemption, so
movies could have paid placement without disclosing it. Like I think the Emoji
movie could be an example, never watched it but remember seeing posts saying
it was nothing but a big advertising. The first Jurassic World had a bunch of
product placement too, people didn't like. Maybe it's mentioned in the credits
somewhere though? I liked the movie and kinda felt the brands added realism.
Like real brands sponsor stuff at Disney, so makes sense for a fictional theme
park around dinosaurs but I know some feel it takes away from the movie.

Then there's another show about entertainment and news, and the woman on their
sometimes gets dresses provided to wear. I noticed that's mentioned in a text
overlay at the very end... However guides for YouTubers say you should mention
say it on audio too, don't just put in the text description or on the screen
as text.

Then Apple gives TV shows and movies free iPhone's and Macbooks for
promotion... I seen it mentioned in the end screen but don't remember ever
hearing a voice over saying products provided by Apple, but if you are a
YouTuber you are supposed to mention you got a free Macbook every time you
mention it according to one guide. So seems unequal and some confusion out
there too. I know some tech channels, rving, camping, etc will accept free
products to review, but if you use or mention them in any future videos or
blog posts, people might of not seen your first post where you reviewed and
disclosed you got it for free to review... So I guess you have to repeat a
bunch of legal jargon in every video then.

I doubt many people get free Apple products as vloggers, but one of the
examples was if you got a free knife as a hunting channel, you should disclose
it in future mentions. So that's a more realistic example probably, but
wouldn't surprise me if someone even forgets who sent them a knife if they
collect them after the initial review. Then recently the FTC set more rules
for videos targeted at kids on YouTube, and some lawyer mentioned he spoke
with the FTC and some of these people don't even own phones or really
understand what YouTube even is. Also not sure if I remember if the Price is
Right mentioning products they are giving away, I think they just show the car
yet as far as I know GM or KIA is giving it to them for free for the product
placement, I bet if a YouTuber gave away cars they'd have to disclose it much
more. I guess the old media probably can afford more people in DC than the
independent vloggers can.

Then if you got paid to go to a conference, and wanted to live tweet about it,
you have to mention it in every single Tweet some how from my understanding.
Not sure how you'd do it with the space limit. Maybe when I read these things,
I'm taking it more literally than most do. I bet a lot of businesses are out
of compliance with many things if you look for it. I was reading up on PCI
recently for credit card processing, and I helped a lady once years ago with
her shopping site and if I remember right she just gave people a generic admin
login shared between people, but I guess that's a major no no as everyone
should have their own separate account. Then some web hosts market their
servers as being PCI compliance too, but wonder if it's really true. Just
seems like a lot out there, but I do remember hearing once that the average
citizen commits 3 felonies a day.

I think it'd be fun to be a travel vlogger some day, so I think my personal
policy would be not to accept free stuff to review, but I know some companies
just send people stuff in general if they post a PO Box without asking, so
wonder if they feel pressured to review items... but I think the whole idea of
fans sending you random stuff is creepy, there's some vloggers who do mail
vlogs and people send them candy and stuff... Mommy and daddy says not to take
candy from strangers, yet you let random people from around the world mail you
candy... I rather just use things I paid for myself, and if I liked it enough
mention it on my own. Don't want to feel obligated to some brand.

I do think the general idea of the FTC is good though, don't want companies
lying and scamming people. There's probably selective enforcement too, for
like the most outrages cases.

~~~
zimpenfish
> Maybe it's mentioned in the credits somewhere though?

There's a credit for a product placement researcher and a "thanks to Thermo
Fisher for lab equipment" (plus a couple of others that don't stand out as
companies you'd recognise) but there's no "Promotional Consideration from ..."
section in the credits that I can see (Bluray version, 2:04:21 length)

------
biznickman
LOL "Before 2019, it felt like the Facebook communications machine was a well-
oiled, unstoppable juggernaut." Umm how about Cambridge Analytica?

Facebook's PR has been troubled for a very long time. To suggest that they has
a stellar image before 2019 is a joke. I can list many other slip ups where
Facebook could have come out and said something (or even better, did
something) and then weeks later they come up with a weak statement. If that's
great PR, I'd like to offer my services to anybody who needs it.

While I'd agree that "No one ever broke rank. The messaging was crystal
clear.", the message was always an awful one and now they have a relatively
negative reputation despite being a remarkable success.

~~~
danso
Cambridge Analytica is one of FB’s most known debacles but how did the PR team
specifically fail?

~~~
reaperducer
How about by using "We can do better" over and over after every single gaffe
that it's become a joke to people outside the SV bubble?

~~~
danso
FB stock hit a low at ~$157 right before Zuckerberg's April 10, 2018 testimony
to Congress, and bounced back into a steady increase, hitting a then-all-time
high in late July before going into a dive after the earnings report. The July
2018 dive was attributed to missing revenue expectations, but AFAIK, the
general opinion [0] was that when it came to public fallout specifically
related to Cambridge Analytica, FB weathered it quite well – hence the stock's
steady climb from Zuckerberg's testimony until the July earnings report.

That confidence in the stock is obviously not just from good PR, but I don't
see the evidence that the PR folks fucked things up either, given how much
potential damage the CA scandal was predicted to cause.

[0] [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-stock-crushed-
aft...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-stock-crushed-after-
revenue-user-growth-miss-2018-07-25)

------
creaghpatr
>Boz posted an explanation on Facebook, where he advertises the post as an
organizational, internal call-to-debate. But while it's great to have a safe
space for internal, organizational debates, it's still hugely concerning when
that internal debate is whether we should all have a free and fair election in
the U.S.

Was Facebook having an internal debate over whether we should all have a free
and fair election in the U.S.?

~~~
svachalek
I think the argument goes like this:

1\. The US Presidential election is decided by a small percentage of voters
who have an open mind and live in the right districts.

2\. Facebook’s targeted advertising allows advertisers to efficiently buy the
votes of these select voters.

3\. Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening.

Personally, I believe #1 is more or less indisputable, and I’m willing to
believe #2. But I’m not so sure about #3.

~~~
Seenso
> 3\. Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening.

> Personally, I believe #1 is more or less indisputable, and I’m willing to
> believe #2. But I’m not so sure about #3.

I think you overstate #3 a little bit. It could have been happening without
Facebook, but at a lower scale and not effectively enough to matter.

I think there's also a #4:

4\. Facebook ad-targeting allows the influence to be covert, because watchdog
group members are probably not part of the targeted demographics.

~~~
sp332
4 isn't right (anymore) because they made all political ads available to
anyone who wants to see them.
[https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2405092116183307?id=2...](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2405092116183307?id=288762101909005)

~~~
Seenso
> 4 isn't right (anymore) because they made all political ads available to
> anyone who wants to see them.

I think #4 is still valid:

1\. Facebook may not be to correctly identify political ads vs other ads.

2\. Their Ad Library seems to be missing important information [1].

3\. A disclosure like the Ad Library still obscures influence campaigns by
greatly reducing the ability of watchdogs to _passively monitor_ the political
discourse. Instead they have expend much more manpower to actively monitor the
library with the right search terms, and if they fail to do that they'll miss
things.

[1] [https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-blocks-ad-
transp...](https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-blocks-ad-transparency-
tools)

> Facebook has launched an archive of American political ads, which the
> company says is an alternative to ProPublica’s tool. However, Facebook’s ad
> archive is only available in three countries, fails to disclose important
> targeting data and doesn’t even include all political ads run in the U.S.

> Our tool regularly caught political ads that aren’t reflected in Facebook’s
> archive. Just this month, we noticed four groups running ads that haven’t
> been in Facebook’s archive:

------
rhubarbquid
I've worked in media, and I can confirm the "packages" that sponsors buy as
described are totally normal in media.

There's a reason editorial departments are totally separate from ad sales.

FTC disclosure of paid content is extremely important and taken very seriously
(at least where I worked and by the FTC).

IMHO Facebook doesn't have any reputation left to tarnish, but Teen Vogue
screwed themselves here, badly.

~~~
vwcx
In my experience, editorial departments of most outlets are no longer separate
from ad sales. On paper, maybe, and as a concept/line that too brass can say
publicly, but the four major outlets I’ve worked all had edit staffs that end
up being influenced heavily by the business side. Sometimes censorship,
sometimes decision making and influence.

------
mola
Is it just me, or is this completely bonkers? Let's say that teen Vogue were
transparent about the article being sponsored. Meaning it would have had a
tiny print somewhere saying that the article is part of a partnership with
Facebook. How would that matter? Most people reading it would hardly notice
it, even if they do notice it , it will hardly change the way they process the
information in the piece. Our mind have a hard time knowing where certain
facts it recalls came from. The bad thing is not the non cohesion of the
Facebook PR it's the total lack of regard for truth and ethics that these
corporate MBA and media types have. If it gets the job done then it becomes
good, as in: morally good. Even if you manipulate the truth, bend the mind of
the masses towards misconceptions, but do it well, then you are being ethical
and good. Only if you fail then something is not good. That's a pretty messed
up moral system.

Corporate shouldn't be able to buy anything from media outlets other than Ads
that look.like ads and completely visually separate from actual journalistic
pieces. Anything else is just unethical.

------
blackbrokkoli
I feel like the actual change is not really Facebook PR but the reporting
about it? The TeenVogue affair seems to have caused a dam-break which shifted
"reporting facebook as disfunctional" right into the middle of the Overton
window all across the board regarding online media.

Facebooks strategy was always running away from a trail of PR bodies via sheer
sized based on "customers" (which should be called products, to be honest)
which did and do not care. I mean sure, this PR debacle is not a bath in glory
by any means. But I can not think of any PR campaign in response to the
countless past scandals which made me think "Wow, nice catch". At least in
Germany, their response to the accusation of manipulating elections was a
billboard campaign advertising that in Facebook you have a settings page where
you can click switches and thus be in full control of your privacy (:D).

Was there ever any effective response to Zuckerberg abusing his company data
to crack journalists accounts? I can even remember an age old thing where
Facebook made all your posts visible forever on your board or something which
was just drowned in the ongoing unchallenged growth of Facebook after some
time...

To clarify, I am glad that media is finally elevating from lizard memes but I
reject the notion that this current affair is the first visible crack of
rotten foundations one could have observed.

------
wffurr
I was wholly unsurprised to see that last tweet coming from someone on the
Hillary 2008 campaign. It reads just like the kind of defensive use women as
human shields to deflect criticism attitude that came from the campaign when
faced with a real primary challenge both in 2008 and 2016.

------
muglug
Facebook is just transitioning to becoming the digital equivalent of an oil
company. They make a product that billions consume, but that many people think
is doing damage to the environment (even though many of those critics still
consume the product).

That's why their PR machine is now switching to these slightly astroturfy
campaigns. The next step is an advert along the lines of "They call it
pollution. We call it life".

~~~
protastus
Oil so useful that modern society would collapse without it.

Facebook is not meeting a core need. It's peddling something entirely optional
to society. At best it provides entertainment value, while being extremely
addictive and dangerous.

Facebook is like crack.

~~~
muglug
Human connection is a core need. Facebook provides it (or something a lot like
it).

~~~
protastus
Human connection can be had in many alternative ways, with a lot less drama
and controversy.

Reading these posts full of hyperbole, one would think human society couldn't
exist without Facebook.

~~~
throwaway1777
It certainly could and did for thousands of years... but it would be very
different. If facebook went away you would just get other companies springing
up to fill the void (Snapchat, Tiktok, etc). That’s how you know it’s a core
need.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
I don't understand how "it would be very different" if other companies were to
just spring "up to fill the void."

Doesn't this phenomenon merely indicate that some market forces believe that
the industry Facebook works within has potential for more profits than are
currently being extracted?

------
tempsy
i don't think FB ever had great PR.

The Social Network was largely a negative portrayal of Zuck and FB.

I remember when FB bought Instagram there was a lot of initial backlash.

Most of the positive stuff around Facebook was mainly due to the huge upward
movements in it's stock price post IPO that solidified Zuckerberg and Sandberg
as business geniuses. Would argue that their individual profiles became much
more positive as the stock price increased, but would not really ever say
Facebook the company was really perceived in a positive light outside of
business community.

~~~
bhl
Ben Mezrich, author of the Accidental Billionaires which was later adapted
into the Social Network, has a differing opinion: like Liars Poker and Wall
Street, the movie made Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg more well known and
popular than before.

~~~
tempsy
highly doubt it but would trust internal Facebook data on any bump in users if
that was the hypothesis

------
JohnFen
In my opinion, the problem with Facebook isn't really the PR. Yes, Facebook's
PR is broken as the article describes, but the real problem started years ago,
back when it was a "well-oiled machine".

The problem is that there is a huge distance between what Facebook PR says and
what Facebook does. The constant apologies for misbehaviors that never are
never corrected, the apparently deliberate misinterpretations of much of the
criticism leveled at Facebook, the continual discovery of new misbehaviors
that should have been stopped, and so forth.

That Facebook has now taken an official public stance of being antagonistic,
dismissive, and condescending is bad, but it's just bad icing on an already
bad cake.

~~~
duxup
Yeah it seems like whatever rules there are ... there aren't many.

The whole VPN they ran that tracks kids ... that's not even a mystery as far
as being a terrible idea.

Then Apple told them to knock it off.

So Facebook renamed it (sloppily too) and put it up on the app store again
until they got caught again.

Kids, users, other companies, they don't care.

How can a PR person even craft a response like "hey we did wrong but we're
sure we won't ... well yeah we probabbly will do that again, maybe
immediately"

~~~
artemisyna
As someone that knows the person that originally tipped Apple off about the
tracking... this is such a misinformed editorialization of what actually
happened where I don't even know where to start.

~~~
duxup
Can you help clarify what really happened?

~~~
saagarjha
From a factual perspective, it wasn't on the App Store. (It was distributed
via an enterprise certificate, which I find to be even worse, since they are
explicitly not supposed to be used in the manner that they were.)

~~~
artemisyna
Not going to comment on whether or not it was philosophically correct, but I
will note that Google (not to mention dozens of other companies) were doing
the exact same thing — just that they didn’t get called out for it until a few
days after.

IMO, I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened this way cause Apple had decided
to use FB as the fall for a PR media blitz. (In particular, Apple made the
decision to “enforce on FB” basically the day after their “someone else can
turn on your camera with FaceTime without you knowing” bug.)

------
ar_lan
The beginning of this article really plays out like the author is just against
Zuckerberg simply talking to people with conservative viewpoints.

Being willing (and encouraging) others to listen to other viewpoints should
not be considered a PR issue.

~~~
ptcampbell
That is what Zuck thought. And it would be missing the point. That is not what
the author took issue with.

------
DevKoala
The author reads way too much on Zuckerberg’s response. It Makes me question
their perception of the events and as a result, the analysis as a whole.

~~~
stronglikedan
If _I 'm_ interpreting it correctly, it appears that the author is actually
_offended_ at the suggestion of listening to viewpoints that conflict with
their own in order to possibly learn things from it.

~~~
lobe
I didn't read it like that at all. As stated in the article, the offending bit
was the last two lines. "If you haven't tried it, I suggest you do" is the
smug, condescending jab that was completely unnecessary. It is inflammatory
for no benefit.

The start of the response was perfectly fine and I did not feel the author
took offence to it.

~~~
Aperocky
And the author should not take offense to that either.

I have no idea why people would take offense to 'If you haven't tried it, I
suggest you do'. Maybe the same reason they would be offended by talking to a
person with different opinions.

~~~
enraged_camel
>> I have no idea why people would take offense to 'If you haven't tried it, I
suggest you do'.

On its own it’s an innocent enough statement, and even correct. But in this
context, i.e. when people are accusing you of something, and it is part of
your response, it comes off as very condescending and smug.

There is a reason PR departments exist: they tend to be hypersensitive to the
different ways in which a piece of communication can be perceived, and to dull
its sharp edges.

------
nabla9
From 2017:

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Is Hiring a Team Worthy of a 2020 Presidential
Campaign - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's latest hire is further fueling
speculation that he could be planning a 2020 presidential bid
[https://people.com/politics/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-
team-20...](https://people.com/politics/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-
team-2020-presidential-campaign/)

>Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan have hired Democratic pollster Joel
Benenson, a former top adviser and longtime pollster to President Barack Obama
and the chief strategist of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, as a
consultant,

>In January , Zuckerberg, 33, and Chan, 32, hired David Plouffe, campaign
manager for Obama’s 2008 presidential run, as president of policy and
advocacy. They also brought on Amy Dudley, a former communications adviser to
Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine. Ken Mehlman, who ran President George W.
Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign, is also on the charity’s board.

>And Zuckerberg’s personal photographer, Charles Ommanney, was the
photographer for Bush and Obama’s presidential campaigns, Business Insider
reported.

Joel Benenson and David Plouffe are working elsewhere now. Amy Dudley is still
the spokesperson for Zuckerberg iniative.

Zuckerberg has had incredible PR army working just for him, not for Facebook.
I think there has been switch in his personal ambitions and change in PR
people.

------
throwaway122378
Facebook’s PR isn’t broken, Facebook’s just doing some really bad stuff

~~~
MBCook
Are you disagreeing with the argument in the article? Or is this just a
comment on FB in general.

I agree they’re doing bad stuff but I think the argument in the article makes
a very good point about how they used to be good at handling PR for their evil
and getting away with it and now they seem to have lost that touch.

I doubt the level of evil has changed dramatically in the last 18mo but the PR
reactions have.

~~~
cjbest
Yup.

> something noticeably changed. They got combative. They got sloppy.

An interesting take, whatever you think of the underlying merits of the
company and the complaints against it.

~~~
cjbest
In fact, _unless_ you think that the company was better before and is worse
now, it should be striking how much the narrative has changed without any
underlying change.

------
sharcerer
Read this thread. I have been noticing a lot of reporting on tech by NYT etc,
is wrong, not complete. In this case, a lot of arguments are there. But, an
example from the past, they spread misinfo about Google's revenue figure from
news industry([https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/06/that-4-7-billion-number-
fo...](https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/06/that-4-7-billion-number-for-how-much-
money-google-makes-off-the-news-industry-its-imaginary/))

[https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1214685876095045632?s=1...](https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1214685876095045632?s=19)

------
AmericanChopper
> One of their most longtime, loyal leaders is directly saying they have the
> power to sway national elections. It is their decision, and their decision
> alone, to resist the temptation to "change the outcome"!

Oh, he better be careful. That’s pretty close to pushing a right-wing talking
point /s

Facebook, etc.. Is no different in its power to influence elections than
traditional news papers ever have been. The only difference is a matter of
scale and homogeny. Today, instead of thousands of media publications, each
pushing their own biases and perspectives (which they always have), you have a
very small group of tech giants that get to decide what you see (and even more
frighteningly), what you’re allowed to say about it. Sure there’s more media
outlets today than there’s ever been, but a small handful of companies get to
control their reach, and (again more frighteningly) their ability to collect
revenue.

Then you have the issue that traditional media has always represented a
diverse set of opinions and world views. You have conservative and liberal
outlets, outlets the promote free market ideas and those that promote
socialist ideas, outlets that promote regulation and those that promote small
government. The small number of organisations that control access to ideas and
speech today all represent an incredibly homogeneous political world view.

The problem isn’t that those organisations have done a poor job of controlling
the flow of information, it’s that they have the ability to do it in the first
place. Those companies should not have the ability to act as gatekeepers who
determine the credibility of information, or the moral implications of speech.
In a free society, that responsibility falls of on the shoulders of every
individual, and to have an authority doing that on their behalf denies them
the opportunity to do so themselves.

This is also a matter of values, not constitutional law (as people often like
to derail such conversations by claiming regulation would violate 1A). The law
that empowers these companies to to moderate content is the Communications
Decency Act, not the 1st amendment.

~~~
cycomanic
> > One of their most longtime, loyal leaders is directly saying they have the
> power to sway national elections. It is their decision, and their decision
> alone, to resist the temptation to "change the outcome"!

> Oh, he better be careful. That’s pretty close to pushing a right-wing
> talking point /s

> Facebook, etc.. Is no different in its power to influence elections than
> traditional news papers ever have been. The only difference is a matter of
> scale and homogeny.

That's an empty argument. Everything is about the scale, by that argument each
individual has the same power as e.g Facebook to influence elections, it's
just a matter of scale. However, scale is the difference between effectively
no power and a lot of power.

> Today, instead of thousands of media publications, each pushing their own
> biases and perspectives (which they always have), you have a very small
> group of tech giants that get to decide what you see (and even more
> frighteningly), what you’re allowed to say about it. Sure there’s more media
> outlets today than there’s ever been, but a small handful of companies get
> to control their reach, and (again more frighteningly) their ability to
> collect revenue.

> Then you have the issue that traditional media has always represented a
> diverse set of opinions and world views. You have conservative and liberal
> outlets, outlets the promote free market ideas and those that promote
> socialist ideas, outlets that promote regulation and those that promote
> small government. The small number of organisations that control access to
> ideas and speech today all represent an incredibly homogeneous political
> world view.

> The problem isn’t that those organisations have done a poor job of
> controlling the flow of information, it’s that they have the ability to do
> it in the first place. Those companies should not have the ability to act as
> gatekeepers who determine the credibility of information, or the moral
> implications of speech. In a free society, that responsibility falls of on
> the shoulders of every individual, and to have an authority doing that on
> their behalf denies them the opportunity to do so themselves.

> This is also a matter of values, not constitutional law (as people often
> like to derail such conversations by claiming regulation would violate 1A).
> The law that empowers these companies to to moderate content is the
> Communications Decency Act, not the 1st amendment.

------
drongoking
This is a place that famously had a motto "move fast and break things." In
other words, fail early and fail often. For that culture to succeed you need
people willing to admit (and tolerate) mistakes. Sounds like that's pretty
well gone.

------
jarjoura
I am not sure I completely buy the thesis of this essay because...

1\. Facebook has NEVER had positive PR. The tech-media has always used FB as
the Silicon Valley punching bag. Name me one good article in the news about
FB? At some point you're just numb to it all.

2\. Facebook has had leakers for years, and especially when Boz makes posts!

To say that Facebook PR is broken implies it wasn't before. I'd argue that FB
has long needed a comms team representative of the company it actually is. FB
comms feel designed for the old college only network FB once was. When Google
can do similar misdeeds and get only a tiny slap on the wrist, I do agree it's
probably a comms problem in the end.

Also, to completely write off Sandberg because of one corporate misstep reeks
of "Cancel Culture" hysteria, but that's just me.

------
necrophos
The org chart shown in the article is old by 2 years and seems like an oddly
selected on for that time. A current org chart would shown a different split
between men and women.

------
mihaaly
Not everything is run by PR or fixed by PR or even measured by PR (except for
PR personnel of course).

Sometimes things are just bad and it takes time to realize.

Regardless of the packaging.

------
xorcist
The Facebook / Cambridge Analytica story is completely baffling to me.

Here we have a company whose business idea it is to lock up as much of the web
as possible on their platform. Contacts, messageboards, photos, events,
calendars, chat, dating, anything goes really. They then earn money from
selling data.

Then the Cambridge Analytica scandal breaks where a company has used data from
Facebook unethically. How was this not expected? Had it been better if this
company used their data a little less unethically? Had it been better if
Facebook sold PR-as-a-service directly instead of enabling an ecosystem of
smaller companies offering this?

(Because the latter is what is going to happen over the long run should
Facebook continue to be successful. When there is no room to grow anymore the
ecosystem is going to be cannibalized.)

This is all inherent to business models dependent on data ownership. Upon
observing the majority of the population migrating to closed platforms, the
discourse among the people who care about open data must instead be framed in
terms of how to shape the conditions of said business models. Codifying data
ownership is one way to move forward, GDPR being the most known example. It
may be blunt but it at least poses the question of who owns which data.

------
hinkley
Stifling a glib, sarcastic response, who do we feel has good PR that's
working, and not in some sinister meaning of 'working'?

What groups and activities do people who think this way hold up as positive
role models?

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
It's not English, unfortunately, but Berlin's subway operator (BVG) has been
doing an excellent job at PR for the past 5 years or so.

They use mostly (self-deprecating) humour, both on billboards as well as
individually as Twitter messages.

This strategy seems somewhat risky. There were some where I thought "funny,
but I wouldn't want to be the one posting this".

Hard to describe, because it's mostly a function of each tweet being really
good. They must have some larger advertising company behind this, with tons of
talent.

They have seen a spectacular improvement in public approval, and even on such
measures as violence against employees, fare-evasion, and vandalism.

------
Thorrez
> You have someone like Antonia Woodford, rightly called out[2] for the
> absurdity of saying to combat misinformation you should require “advertisers
> use their real identities”. She has Yale, McKinsey and a rapid rise at
> Facebook, on her resume. This is the profile of someone who I imagine isn’t
> wanting to bunker down in a Trumpian hole of calling everything critical:
> “fake news”.

I don't understand. How is it "absurdity"? And the linked Gizmodo article
doesn't seem to call it absurd either.

[2] [https://gizmodo.com/teen-vogue-yanks-puff-piece-on-
facebooks...](https://gizmodo.com/teen-vogue-yanks-puff-piece-on-facebooks-
anti-disinform-1840889839)

------
MeteorMarc
I believe on this forum PR means pull request.

------
allovernow
At this point it is arguably obvious that Zuckerberg is a textbook sociopathic
CEO who will say whatever is expedient to business needs. After constant
misleading and outright false statements, not a single word that comes out of
Facebook can be trusted. It's self serving corporatespeak taken to an extreme
and I simply cannot fathom how so many people, including news media
especially, are uncritical and even trusting of FB public statements.

Zuckerberg's dumbfucks quote is consistent with the content of every public
communication major steering decision FB has made to date. He is truly the
embodiment of lawful evil.

------
rogerdickey
Understatement of the century

------
notadoc
Just their PR?

------
hogFeast
When you have a guy who works at a company wondering if his company was
responsible for an election result and making LOTR references...then you know
something has gone wrong.

No, Facebook isn't powerful enough to sway an election (I get that some people
are really angry about Trump...if you aren't thinking rationally, don't have
an opinion rather than start up with the conspiracy theories). No,
business/life is not like LOTR. There aren't goodies and baddies (irony, this
is part of why Trump was elected).

------
xwowsersx
> Those last two lines. We all know that style of communication. Sardonic.
> Snarky. Sneering. Derisive. Whatever you want to call it, that mocking tone
> captures a dangerous combination of insecurity and arrogance. It feels like
> when Trump ends a tweet with SAD!. You read that and just think, what a
> dick.

I get that's it's kind of sarcastic, but I don't really think "what a dick".
It's not great for someone in his position to be sarcastic like that, but I
think more "he must be hounded by people who are ready to burn him at the
stake for having lunch with certain people so.."

