
Elliot Schrage on Definers - imartin2k
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/11/elliot-schrage-on-definers/
======
mobileexpert
I read more into this being a Thanksgiving news dump than any particularly
scandalous details.

Facebook is embarrassed by what many orgs would consider routine corporate
communications practices. This is positive that they care about their brand
and reputation at a higher level than your local closely held global
conglomerate.

~~~
Latteland
No. Reputable corporations don't hire pr firms that claim the people against
them are some kind of Jewish conspiracy. They might look for weaknesses in
their competitors but that very different.

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nemild
> This explanation serves to protect Zuckerberg and Sandberg from additional
> blame, even as Sandberg strives to show she’s not passing the buck by noting
> “I want to be clear that I oversee our Comms team and take full
> responsibility for their work and the PR firms who work with us.”

> Schrage’s defense of his bosses provides additional cover for Zuckerberg’s
> comments from a CNN interview that ran tonight in which he said he won’t
> step down as Facebook’s chairman and hopes to continue working alongside
> Sandberg for decades to come. The memo could have been aimed at quieting
> internal unrest about Facebook’s chief lobbyist Joel Kaplan. His ties to the
> GOP, support for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and involvement with
> Facebook’s latest PR troubles had led some employees to question his
> employment. Now Facebook has someone else to take the heat.

> Schrage is effectively jumping on the grenade here.

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/20/schrage-
definers/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/20/schrage-definers/)

For those interested, I did my own reflection into Facebook.

Inside the Bubble at Facebook:
[https://www.nemil.com/tdf/part1-employees.html](https://www.nemil.com/tdf/part1-employees.html)

~~~
TrainedMonkey
I think the analogy of Schrage jumping on the grenade it apt. Here is the
quote from the linked article where he explicitly takes all of the blame:

> Who knew about this work, and who signed off on it?

>> Responsibility for these decisions rests with leadership of the
Communications team. That’s me. Mark and Sheryl relied on me to manage this
without controversy.

~~~
nighthawk1
Like a pressure release valve for Mark and Sheryl. I do think the pressure for
Mark to step aside will grow stronger in the coming year. Even though the
class structure prevents a hostile removal, the social pressure will be
substantial.

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ccnafr
Nothing says transparency like dumping a condemning press release before a
national holiday

~~~
tqi
When would the most transparent time have been?

~~~
iscrewyou
When the story broke? Instead Mark got on the phone and rambled about bad
press and apologized...again.

For a company that boasts itself on moving fast doesn’t really know what speed
to operate at anymore

~~~
Latteland
It was all a big unfair smear campaign, they said, of the NY times article.
Oops, "we take it back" they say now.

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vthallam
> It’s not about Definers. It is about us, not them.

Lol. I mean FB stopped working with them only after they were under scrutiny.
Pure damage control

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panarky
The quantity of doublespeak is off the charts.

"Many of you have raised questions" (our employees are disgusted, ashamed, and
close to open revolt)

"We’ve been looking into this" (as if nobody at FB knew what they'd done until
the NYT story dropped)

"diversify our DC advisors after the election" (kowtow to the same ultra right
wing forces who corrupted our platform to begin with)

"Like many companies" (everybody's doing it, deflect blame and accountability)

"want government to regulate us" (insist that FB clean up the catastrophe it
created)

"became particularly acute in September 2017 after we released details of
Russian interference" (after the public learned that we'd given our users data
to Cambridge Analytica without consent)

And that's just the first six sentences.

Just more "Delay, Deny and Deflect"
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-
data-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-
election-racism.html)

------
bertil
For what it’s worth, that tone ——rather formal, precise, factual and willing
to address one’s responsibility head-on, in this case, being fired, once the
case has been made—— is the closest that I’ve seen publicly from many internal
notes. I find it ironic because I’ve always assumed that Schrage was the one
preventing those notes and their tone from being shared more publicly.

Mark’s more recent note [1] too: the length, the speculative tone not precise
in their detail, but clear in their vision, all that is quite representative
of notes that comes out of certain key teams (typically Core Data science &
Research). I’m happy those come out more. It’s also ironic because you would
typically be asked to summarize those for a notoriously attention-constrained
executive.

[1]: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-
zuckerberg/a-blueprint-f...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-
zuckerberg/a-blueprint-for-content-governance-and-
enforcement/10156443129621634/)

~~~
bertil
> Many people on the Communications team feel under attack from the press and
> even from their colleagues. I’m deeply disappointed that so much internal
> discussion and finger pointing has become public.

That’s a clear internal reference: Friday’s All Hands and comments on related
posts. This and the comment from Sheryl (including the explicit “All Hands”)
make it sound like both were copy-pasted from the internal discussion forum
(a.k.a. Workplace).

Those two sentences are text-book Schrage. Any other executive at the company
would welcome the feedback; remind people that their colleagues are human and
to stay civil; encourage people to keep pushing back, but remember that PR is
hard for a reason. Schrage just… that.

Anyone else would also probably have edited that section to mention that it’s
good that the press keeps us honest, democracy needs uncomfortable
conversation.

One thing that will never be excused though is “much internal discussion and
finger pointing has become public”. Everyone would agree this is not
acceptable. Employees are welcome to (politely) rip a new one to any executive
if they don’t like something, but going to the press, no matter how small or
how bad… I don’t remember any quote in the NYTimes, but that person will have
a very bad time, even if it is the last thing Schrage does.

> Mark and Sheryl have also asked Nick Clegg to review all our work with
> communications consultants and propose principles and management processes
> to guide the team’s work going forward.

If this is an internal post, that sentence is very clearly missing a “and
myself”. This is clear shade, not surprising for Schrage internally, and
uncharacteristic for the company. I’m not confident he’s happy with Clegg.

~~~
puzzle
Schrage was like that even at Google. I met him once. That day, he vented
about Googlers leaking. Yep! I can understand that it made his job harder,
but, as you mention, there's a way to say something and then there's the
better way to do it. For a PR person, I was surprised how he usually went for
the former.

