3/

> what about tax evasion

This is a point that I have raised loudly before I joined. A point that I have raised internally in a fashion that I can only describe as scathing (making a very direct connection with a project that Mark praised and government-funded education). I was later told by people who cared to move the needle on tax that my anger was unhelpful and delayed their own effort. Facebook does it because of its environment (big international American corporation who misinterpret fiduciary duties to their investors) and should be the first company to break that mold (mainly because Mark genuinely doesn’t care about money). I was explained why it’s so slow (Basically, Americans hate government and think that it is inefficient; truth is: they are right, US civil servants are terrible. Countries where civil servants are competent don’t have that issue, and you can expect to get senior leadership to change their opinion on that topic if more non-Americans reach senior positions. Paying tax when you think private foundations are more efficient seems unethical. I don’t like it, but the point makes sense.) I would be happy to vote for anyone (presumably at the European parliament) willing to make it legally impossible for them not to pay proper tax.

> what about political censorship in kashmir

I’m not familiar with that process, but I’m happy to admit with the people who manage that team that they are overwhelmed by their responsibilities and are trying to find a solution to help with political interference. Solutions at scale include a combination of political science, machine learning and clever product design that I wouldn’t trust anyone but Facebook with.

> or maybe political censorship of the kurds

Same: accusations like that are constant. They often come from biased media, which make them quite ironic to process -- but doesn’t make it less important. I don’t think it is a simple process and I don’t think that the company is neglecting it. They are just trying to address it with a hard-to-explain multi-layered approach, using a lot more technology than journalists imagine.

> or religious and political censorship in pakistan

Same. You are basically starting to blame Facebook for the existence of conflict in places where… I mean, censorship didn’t started there. I would not be surprised if Facebook got punked by local authorities. If you want to help, I am sure that the company is hiring political wonks to help explain what is really happening, how to address it.

> what about the censorship of the rohingya trying to tell the world about their persecution

I think that you either over-estimate my ability to travel, or my trust in the objectivity of The Guardian and Al Jazeera. I have no doubt that those places face horrible hardships. I have no doubt that Facebook should, and does, care. I wouldn’t be surprised if their take was more nuanced than what you can get from reading one article on the topic, and I would be even less surprised to see that The Guardian both believes that Facebook should not interfere and have a moral duty to fix the problem.

Facebook is now a meaningful player in the political arena. They are growing to that realisation and hiring people who can help, thinking about what they role can and should be. If you think about them strongly and want the right to tell to Mark, to his face and repeatedly that he’s wrong and misinformed, my recommendation is that you join the company. Disent is not very helpful without the full context, but you absolutely can influence and make things better from the inside. (You can fuck things up too: God knows I did. I didn’t even mention the Growth team constant over-reach; privacy groups simplifications… So many things where data was telling that my instinct was wrong.)

> at what point do you take responsibility for your actions in the context of facebook as a company?

Ten years before I joined; literally before Facebook was started. I made myself responsibly for explaining my PhD to friends who work for the anti-trust authority in Europe. I failed so far: there are no meaningful enforcement of social-media based monopolies.

> i understand that companies are often unethical in tiny steps until they're a monster,

I don’t think that’s true -- and I’ve worked for pretty much any type of (civilian) “bad” company you can think of: Exxon Mobile, TelCos, etc.

Companies have hard choices to make. They get blamed for the ones you see; no one realise that the choice was actually very easy, very impactful either way when they get big. Sometimes the outcome is murky, but the decisions are rarely hard, and very rarely made in the name of greed, or pure evil. There often is a greater good to defend. They just choose to shut up about it because of people like you, who will attack them rabidly even if they tried to save children’s lives.

The best example of that kind of discussion that I could find was actually in the pilot of The West Wing, and pretty much the staple resolution of every episode of TV show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4h0_bz2Qew

> PS: exhibiting restraint in this post was . . . difficult.

That’s fairly obvious, so is the fact that you suffer of it, on many levels; and your hatred is not rational. If you realise that, and you want to change, try to ask people who defend Facebook, including pretty much every employee. Don’t tell them that they are wrong. Ask what they are doing. They won’t because the company takes confidentiality very seriously but you’ll be able to tell that they are doing it to defend something bigger than themselves, something that they know is incredibly positive.

There’s not much I can do about your anger, other than to point at it, and tell you: I’m more than familiar with legitimate criticism of that company. The recent scandal is not it. If you want to address real issues, start by making sense of what they are trying to do, what they bring, why they are so successful and influential. Why people expect to find reliable political information there -- and why they expect others to find it too.

That should help you understand what many in the company are still missing: lack of international sensitivity, how to behaviourally engage users to care, lack of clear communication; and what they certainly are not over-looking but still need to do a lot more of: fighting spammers, abuse and government over-reach.