Key Messages
The Dark Side of Facebook: An Examination of the Company’s Unsavory History and Shady Practices
An Ugly Truth takes a revealing look at how one social media empire rose to prominence.
In just a decade, Facebook went from a small campus curiosity to a worldwide system of connection.
But in the last few years, it’s garnered plenty of controversy for its privacy issues, misinformation and alliances with shady political movements.
This book dives into every aspect of the platform’s checkered history, pulling back the curtain to shed light on its scandals and controversies.
By relying on intensive research, this serious account exposes why and how the website has become infamous around the world through such issues as why Zuckerberg abandoned his first project FaceMash to how Facebook destabilized parts of Myanmar and why they employ a “ratcatcher”.
Read An Ugly Truth to find out more about this dark side of one of today’s most powerful forces!
Mark Zuckerberg Valued Engagement Over Ethics from the Start
From the very beginning, Mark Zuckerberg had a clear idea of where he wanted to take Facebook.
He was willing to risk controversy and criticism in the pursuit of greater engagement on the platform.
It all began when Zuckerberg set up his first social network, FaceMash, while attending Harvard in 2003.
Designed to rate classmates’ attractiveness, the blog caused an uproar on campus and it was quickly shut down – but this setback only encouraged him to develop something new – Thefacebook.
Since its launch in 2004, Thefacebook (now known as Facebook) has been a huge success.
People loved connecting with friends online and even more so when they launched the News Feed feature which made sharing posts easier than ever before!
However, this feature angered many users who complained about invasion of privacy.
Still Zuckerberg pushed forward – putting engagement over ethics – and eventually won out: by 2006 Facebook had one million members and Yahoo attempted to purchase them for one billion dollars – which he refused!
It’s no surprise that Mark Zuckerberg chose engagement over ethics from the get-go; there are few people more committed or ambitious than him when it comes to growing a successful business.
From FaceMash to Facebook and beyond, Zuckerberg has defied convention by choosing bold decisions that were focused on what would best improve user experience rather than just avoiding criticism from detractors.
How Sheryl Sandberg Transformed Facebook Into an Advertising Giant
When Sheryl Sandberg joined Facebook as its Chief Operating Officer in March 2008, the company was in desperate need of a business makeover.
While CEO Mark Zuckerberg was focused on the technology and user experience of the site, the profits were an afterthought.
That’s where Sandberg came in.
Sandberg had already made her mark in the tech world through her successful tenure at Google.
She saw potential for Facebook to become an even bigger advertising powerhouse than its predecessors.
The key lay in leveraging users’ data and encouraging them to interact with advertisements and share them with friends.
Sandberg set out to do just that.
First, she introduced the “like” button which allowed users to quickly react to posts and provided a wealth of data for advertisers’ targeting algorithms.
Then she altered Facebook’s privacy settings, creating opaqueness and confusion that allowed users to unwittingly share their information more widely than before.
How Facebook Flopped in Its Attempt to Remain Politically Neutral
Facebook’s foray into the world of political discourse in 2016 was a rollercoaster.
Initially, the company tried its best to remain politically neutral, but ultimately its attempts were unsuccessful.
This led to an incredible amount of backlash and public tension between both sides of the political aisle.
The major issue that caused Facebook to be thrust into this situation was its News Feed algorithm, which favored posts with high engagement – usually inflammatory and sensationalistic content that could easily confirm users’ own biases.
This led them to introduce “Trending Topics,” which they hoped would filter out these toxic posts.
But when Gizmodo published an article alleging that Facebook used this feature to suppress right-wing perspectives, Republicans saw it as proof of their suspicions that the company had a liberal bias.
In order to ease tensions and convince Republicans that Facebook was a politically neutral platform, Mark Zuckerberg met with conservative figures such as Glenn Beck and Arthur Brooks.
However his attempts at appeasing both sides never seemed to work due to continued suspicion from conservatives and resentment from liberals.
Things only got worse when it became obvious Russian hackers were using the site for misinformation about Democratic candidates – leading many of their posts become national news stories.
Ultimately, Facebook tried (and failed) to remain politically neutral despite their best efforts.
No Real Accountability: How Facebook Avoided Taking Responsibility for Election Meddling
The US Elections of 2016 have left a dark stain on the way our democracy works, potentially for years to come.
Facebook’s role in this is a prime example.
In the days following Donald Trump’s unlikely win, Zuckerberg and his team scrambled to adjust to the new reality.
This included hiring Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a consultant, as well as an attempt to distance Facebook from taking responsibility for widespread election meddling.
This investigation was headed by Alex Stamos, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity and dubbed Project P.
His team discovered links between Facebook ads purchased during the election and Russia’s Internet Research Agency, who had used these ads to push extreme positions both left and right and reach 126 million Americans.
When The New York Times reported that Cambridge Analytica had illicitly acquired data on up to 87 million Facebook users and sold it to the Trump campaign for targeted political advertising, it placed further scrutiny on how secure user data was with Facebook – yet even after Congressional hearings about these matters, Mark Zuckerberg avoided any incriminating statements and dodged meaningful action being taken against him or his company.
In fact stock prices soon recovered from their dip which suggested that once again Facebook had managed to avoid taking real responsibility for its actions in an election scandal which continues to haunt America today.
The Unintended Consequences of Facebook’s Expansion: The Rohingya Genocide
Facebook’s failure to properly monitor user content has had some devastating and real-life consequences.
In 2017, Facebook users across Myanmar began posting hateful messages about the Rohingya people, an ethnic Muslim minority group in the country.
The vitriol quickly spilled into violence and resulted in the deaths of more than 24,000 Rohingya and hundreds of thousands exiled from their homes as refugees.
A United Nations fact-finding team concluded that Facebook played a “determining role” in amplifying tensions which led to a full-blown genocide.
This is likely due to the company’s “Next One Billion” project; an initiative aimed at expanding internet access worldwide long before adequate safeguards were established for its platforms.
Activists had been warning Facebook since as early as 2014 about how dangerous hate speech on its platform could become, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.
The failing to accurately regulate user generated content was not exclusive to this single incident; Facebook would later be embroiled in multiple other scandals that, together with this event, showed that Zuckerberg might have bitten off more than he can chew with the Next One Billion initiative.
As a result of these failures, new talent started looking elsewhere as investor confidence started waning and Zuckerberg stepped up as “Wartime CEO” in 2018.
Facebook’s Anticompetitive Practices Cost the Company Friends in Politics
Facebook’s meteoric rise to the top of the tech industry was not accomplished without raising its fair share of enemies.
Throughout its years at the top, Facebook has consistently used anticompetitive practices to stay ahead of the game and eliminate competition.
One strategy Facebook employed was gobbling up smaller companies in an effort to make them irrelevant.
By 2019, Facebook had acquired almost 70 other operations, with some purchases costing below $100 million and some big mergers throwing around billions.
By purchasing these companies, Facebook gained access to an enormous amount of user data that could not be obtained elsewhere.
Another avenue through which Facebook made enemies was blurring service lines between previously independent companies that it had purchased in order to make antitrust action more difficult for officials to carry out.
Despite such tactics, politicians such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders still advocated for regulating Facebook as the 2020 election ramped up.
Facebook’s Failed Attempts to Rebrand Itself as a Champion of Free Speech
In the summer of 2019, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg began to take action in rebranding the company as a bastion of free speech.
To achieve this goal, he reached out to key political figures like Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson and President Trump himself.
Unfortunately, his attempt to solidify such a lofty goal was unsuccessful.
After being applauded by Trump for creating a marvelous social media presence, Twitter erupted with criticism after Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would not be moderating any political content or advertising – leading several politicians and other advocacy groups alike to call out this decision from the tech giant.
Furthermore, an attempt to reframe Facebook’s policies by delivering a speech at Georgetown University proved inefficient.
In it, the CEO deliberately failed to acknowledge companies like WeChat and TikTok as valid competition in order to keep up the ‘bastion of free speech’ rhetoric.
Consequently, both mainstream media and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were perturbed due to its lack of sincerity as well its continual blunders surrounding elections over the years – showing how truly difficult it is for anyone within the company to put that same message successfully into words.
The Uncertain Future of Facebook: When Multiple Crises Make Free Speech a Risky Policy
The state of free speech on Facebook was put to the test in 2020.
President Trump’s suggestion that ingesting household disinfectants could cure COVID-19 was posted on his Facebook page.
The post blatantly violated the site’s policy against medical misinformation and yet, Zuckerberg decided to keep it up – a decision driven by absolutism of promoting open dialogue online.
That same year, multiple crises pushed the company to reevaluate its position on free speech – first with the nationwide protest over George Floyd’s murder, followed by violent mobs storming the Capitol Building later in January 2021.
Twitter even took action labeling one of President Trump’s tweets as dangerous while Facebook remained silent thus agitating many employees and advertisers who had enough with the negative press and staged an all-out boycott of the site.
In time, Facebook updated their policies to include more stringent rules for content usage and even created an independent panel called The Facebook Oversight Board in an attempt to provide more oversight over any future debates about censored speech within their platform.
Ultimately, this unprecedented year showed just how important it is for online platforms like Facebook to evaluate existing policies and make changes when necessary if they want a truly open dialogue world wide web culture.
Wrap Up
The Ugly Truth Book provides a comprehensive overview of Facebook’s tumultuous history since its founding.
Mark Zuckerberg’s emphasis on rapid growth, user-engaging algorithms, and lack of moderation have allowed the platform to become a powerful tool for extremism and political polarization.
Although Facebook has implemented changes to address these issues, much more work needs to be done.
It is still unclear if the social media giant will make further improvements or suffer an eventual decline.
This book wraps up with this message: the future of Facebook remains uncertain, but one thing is for sure – it cannot afford to rest on its past success.
