The loneliness of Mark Zuckerberg

The crisis has led to frenetic activity in Facebook’s upper ranks, with its chief marketing liaison Carolyn Everson admitting she had spent more time with Zuckerberg in the first week of June than ever before.

One advertising chief executive, Dave Morgan of Simulmedia, called it “Facebook’s time of reckoning”, saying:  “It may not be immediate or dramatic, but advertisers have given Facebook a lot of passes and now we are hearing they are saying it will be harder to stand back.”

Perhaps worst of all, though, has been the fury of Facebook’s own employees, who arguably have more bargaining power over the company than any individual advertiser. Until recently, the wave of tech worker revolts that began at Google in 2018 appeared not to have affected many Facebookers, who are, as a group, known for their “cult-like” loyalty. The Trump dispute has changed that, prompting a virtual walkout, internal petitions and plenty of leaks. 

Campaigners latched on, buying Facebook ads that targeted employees directly with a call to “take action”. At a particularly fiery edition of Zuckerberg’s weekly Q&As, one employee asked him: “Why are the smartest people in the world focused on contorting or sort of twisting our policies to avoid antagonising Trump instead of driving social issue progress?”

Facebook’s content moderators also spoke out – significant because they have traditionally been an underclass in Facebook’s glittering citadel, hired as arm’s length contractors and subject to aggressive anti-leaking measures. 

“People are scared,” Chris Gray, a British former moderator who is suing Facebook for allegedly giving him PTSD, told the Telegraph recently. “I call it the Facebook Omerta, this vow of silence… it’s really hard to find people who will talk.” Nevertheless, four anonymous current moderators joined Mr Gray in an open letter that said: “We can’t walk out, but we cannot stay silent.”

Zuckerberg’s quasi-presidential role

Part of the problem for Zuckerberg is that he has made himself the indisputable human face of his company’s Trump policy. Previously, he often left political matters to his chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, and policy chief, the veteran Republican operative Joel Kaplan.

Yet in recent years he has unabashedly embraced his quasi-presidential role, giving a speech about human rights in front of an American flag and conducting regular fireside chats about coronavirus while Mr Trump was still telling voters to “relax” and promising they’d be back to work by Easter. 

“Where Google and others take a more subtle approach, Zuck has allowed Facebook to become a visible part of team Trump,” says Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor and one of Zuckerberg’s former mentors, who has criticised the company before for “embracing” Mr Trump.

While he blames the wider situation on Mr Kaplan’s team, which he describes as “tightly aligned” with the White House, he says Zuckerberg “appears to be calling the shots… he’s clearly gotten much better at being a public figure. He gives no indication of discomfort with Facebook’s role as an enabler of disinformation.”