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July 12 - July 14, 2025
They want Facebook to be more vigilant in pulling down hate speech. Marne explains that Facebook’s built on the kinds of free speech rights embodied by the First Amendment in the United States, so we generally leave content untouched.
We won’t build our own organ or patient registries or gather detailed health information. In fact, we’ll try to limit the information Facebook collects and holds. Sheryl seems baffled by this and fixates on why we haven’t designed the initiative in a way that would allow Facebook to play a bigger role in the collection of data, marketplace of organs, and more. I start to explain the legal, cultural, and religious complexity around organ donation globally, and the sensitivity of the information that organ registries hold. She looks at me as if I am a complete idiot and have missed the obvious,
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“Do you mean to tell me that if my four-year-old was dying and the only thing that would save her was a new kidney, that I couldn’t fly to Mexico and get one and put it in my handbag?”
What??
Sheryl also directs me and the organ donation team to include a megaphone—a pop-up that will dominate the screen for anyone who logs on to Facebook—telling them about the organ donation tool. The engineers aren’t sold on this idea. They don’t think Facebook should be using the platform to push people to do anything—donate their organs, vote, eat more vegetables, floss, adopt stray puppies, anything. I agree with them.
Mark responds with a series of withering attacks, underpinned by his strong belief that Facebook must be a “neutral platform” and we should never use “Facebook’s voice” to interrupt people’s experience on the platform.
The expectation at Facebook is that mothering is invisible, and the more skilled you are, the more invisible it is. Months later when the baby’s rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, I don’t mention it at the office for days. Then I only mention it in passing, assuring Marne that it won’t affect my work in any way.
Parents at work talk about how they don’t allow their teens to have mobile phones, which only underscores how well these executives understand the real damage their product inflicts on young minds.
After his blusukan with the Indonesian president-elect, and his first experience of wild, politically fueled adoration, a switch seems like it’s been flipped in Mark.
Possible catalyst for FB becoming actively involved in politics?
Joel, the former Bush aide, is coming from the role of vice president for US policy.
This is important context for the notes to come.
When he eventually joins Facebook, he makes clear that he’ll only consider the job if he doesn’t have to interview for it. His first position is running US policy. Because Facebook is so heavily aligned with the Democrats, it needs someone who can handle Republicans.
Joel is surprised to learn Taiwan is an island.
This fuckin guy
Often when we start to talk about pressing issues in some country in Latin America or Asia, he stops and asks me to explain where the country is. This happens so frequently that a few weeks into his tenure, I offer to buy him a world map. He turns that down, but days later, a large framed map shows up in his office.
THIS. FUCKIN. GUY.
Joel wants the policy team to generate revenue. The way he sees it, Facebook is a business and the policy team should be contributing to the bottom line.
“We were so late in establishing Facebook’s PAC in the US; I don’t want to make that mistake in other countries,” Joel says insistently. “We need to get moving to establish PACs outside the US. We should have done this a long time—” “So, this is awkward,” I cut in. Joel looks puzzled. “That’s illegal. Only US citizens can contribute to elections here. That’s true everywhere. Nobody wants foreigners bankrolling their elections.” “Really?” Joel looks shocked.
HE WAS AN AIDE TO THE PRESIDENT FOR US POLICY
Andrea holds firm at 12:30 P.M., and after much coaxing the president’s staff concede to 12:15 P.M. The plans are back on until a day before the event, when Andrea lets the palace know we’ll be there at 12:30 P.M. They respond—confirming the meeting for 12:00 P.M., their original time. At this point both sides remove me from the emails.
I don't really know what happened in this paragraph
Hunger Games for the 0.001 Percent
This chapter is fascinating, and now I hate rich people even more than I originally thought
Facebook deploys something called a “double Irish” to avoid paying taxes. It’s something Google and Apple do as well. The way the double Irish works is that when one of these companies makes a dollar selling ads (or iPhones in Apple’s case) in Italy or Germany or elsewhere in the European Union, that revenue can be shifted to Ireland for tax purposes, and then on to a tax-haven country like Bermuda that charges no taxes at all. To do this, the companies have to set up subsidiaries in Ireland and transfer their foreign IP rights to those subsidiaries. What Ireland gets out of the deal is big
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This was fucking legal???
Days later she tells the press that she and Mark limited their conversation to Facebook building internet infrastructure in Brazil and didn’t discuss Internet.org or zero rating. Not true at all, but at least she’s giving a clear signal where Internet.org stands with her.
Considering Mark couldn't answer the questions about those topics perhaps she did him a mercy telling the press that they did not discuss them?
Kirchner [the president of Argentina]
I think she knows that, she set up the meeting as per the first part of this very sentence.
In Mandarin, he asks Xi if he’ll do him the honor of naming his unborn child. Xi refuses.
Even billionaires can be bootlickers. Who knew?
I wonder, just for a moment, if Big Bird is behind this.
But no, he just quietly backs down the stairs on the side of the stage while still facing the crowd. It reminds me of the GIF of Homer Simpson backing away through a hedge.
The problems identified by the digital rights groups are so cartoonishly awful that I initially assume they have it wrong.
I have a feeling that they are not wrong
But I discover they are right.
ope
Sheryl emails the leadership team from Davos breathlessly highlighting how terrorism is working to Facebook’s advantage: “Terrorism means the conversation on privacy is ‘basically dead’ as policymakers are more concerned about intelligence/security.”
“Was it maybe when one of our board members was suggesting to our largely Jewish leadership team that Facebook needs to get much closer to the far-right political parties in Europe because that is where the power is shifting to?”
Five years earlier when I arrived at Facebook, Mark didn’t have a theory of how he and the company should be in the world; he didn’t really have developed opinions about policy or politics, beyond “sign up more users.” The rest of Facebook’s leadership wasn’t very different. Mark really couldn’t be bothered to care. Now he’s developed priorities, and they’re mostly pretty horrible and ignorant of the human costs.
it’s thousands of dollars that we absolutely couldn’t afford—and
How much money is she making? She's been at FB over 5 years at this point
“There are a lot of good guys in the Trump administration who want to do what’s best for America.”
Facebook blocks Guo’s page in April 2017. I don’t hear about it till I read it in the New York Times. Facebook doesn’t tell the Times about the pressure—or the quid pro quo—from the head of the CAC. They explain the shutdown of Guo’s account as an accidental act of God. Their story is that it’s a random bug in the software that coincidentally struck exactly the person China said would need to be suspended to help it’s “co-operation with Facebook.”
???????
The series of decisions that led to such a clownish attempt at subterfuge are incomprehensible to me.
“Are Mark and Sheryl okay with it?” I ask. He admits that they weren’t aware of it.
THE CEO DOESN'T KNOW THAT THEY'VE LAUNCHED APPS IN THE SECOND LARGEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD???
Turns out these are not even the first apps we’ve launched in China.
WHAT?????
In response to concerns from Facebook’s CFO, Vaughan claims this has all been “blessed” by legal, but this is quickly shot down by one of Facebook’s most senior lawyers with a “clarification” that it was “*not* blessed.”
It’s harder to recruit. In fact, prospective hires are telling recruiters to never contact them again, that they’ll never work for Facebook. That’s new.
Vector Space
le maths???
Faced with the absurd situation that Facebook can’t actually post in Burmese on its own platform, my team translates the Community Standards and a tip sheet on how to report questionable content, and we print it as a handout. A leaflet. Like it’s the year 1776 and Thomas Paine has this great commonsense idea about independence from Great Britain. That’s how we’re going to get the word out.
At this point it is perfectly plausible to me that Tom has simply had enough of trying to support me through painful situations that are out of his control and is driving off into the sunset. I almost don’t blame him.
Standing in the driveway in front of the building, waiting for a taxi to take me home, I have an awkward conversation with the company’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, who has no idea why I’m standing there stunned. He asks me if I’ve figured out a way to stop working on Facebook’s entry into China. He knows my views on Facebook’s plans there. “You could say that, yes,” I tell him. “Congratulations!” he exclaims, and my taxi pulls up.
I'm dying this is hilarious
After my friend and former Facebook coworker Ifeoma Ozoma cowrote and cosponsored California’s Silenced No More Act, legislation that protects employees who speak about harassment and discrimination even if they’ve signed a nondisclosure agreement, I reached out.
It's always California
