A former Facebook executive is the latest to call on regulators to look hard at Facebook.
Facebook parent Meta Platforms (FB) – Get Meta Platforms Inc. Class A Report continues to struggle.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has made a number of strategic moves, including last year’s dramatic rebranding to establishing an oversight board in 2018 to ensure accountability of its enforcement systems.
But critics say its content-moderation policies remain weaker than they should be and the social-media giant still hasn’t fully explained how it will deal with problematic content.
Whistleblowers have leveled allegations about Facebook’s work culture and that of related divisions, including photo- and video-sharing app Instagram.
Meta Platforms’ stock has dropped 28% since Oct. 28, when the company announced the fundamental change to its identity in hopes that building a metaverse could give it a fresh start.
Now, a former Facebook employee has added fuel to the critics’ fire.
‘PR Tactics’ Instead of Direct Repairs
Brian Boland, who worked at the Menlo Park, Calif., company for 11 years as vice president for partnerships, said that Meta resorted to “PR tactics” when it dealt with its problems.
Boland, who quit Facebook in 2020, recently tweeted that “Meta handles problems through PR [public relations] tactics rather than focusing on studying and fixing the broken parts that cause real world harm and undermine societies and communities. Time to regulate. Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok.”
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Boland tweeted in response to new documents showing that Meta paid a political strategy firm to run a smear campaign against rival TikTok.
The Washington Post first reported the details of this operation, which used misleading op-eds in regional media outlets meant to turn the public against TikTok.
Competition From TikTok
TikTok, the four-year-old Chinese short-video app, has been giving Facebook a run for its money.
Zuckerberg had said competition from TikTok was having an impact on Meta’s business. “People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly. And this is why our focus on Reels is so important over the long-term,” Zuckerberg said during Meta’s fourth-quarter-earnings call in February.
The company is now using resources like its news feed and other sharply profitable features to boost Reels.
“TikTok is so big as a competitor already and also continues to grow at quite a fast rate off of a very large base,” Zuckerberg said in February.
“Is there anything that’s going to make it so that we [Meta]– it takes us longer to kind of get to where we want on this [Reels], is that even though we’re compounding extremely quickly, that’s — we also have a competitor that is compounding at a pretty quick rate, too,” he added.
Last September, ByteDance, TikTok’s parent, said that more than 1 billion people use the video app every month. Media observers say TikTok has benefited from the coronavirus pandemic partly because viewers found its humorous and quirky mix of content helped offset the stress of the crisis.
Facebook’s paid campaign to hurt TikTok’s brand identity did not surprise most people. “Leopard, spots, don’t change…this is textbook Meta,” The New York Times tech journalist Kara Swisher tweeted.
Drew Angerer/Getty
Not the First Call to Regulate Facebook
Boland’s call is not the first time someone has suggested that regulators address Facebook.
In December, the Hill and other outlets reported, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) called on federal agencies to investigate whether Facebook misled advertisers by misrepresenting the reach of ads.
In 2019, Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes said it was time to break up the company, citing the threat of the platform’s power and that of Zuckerberg’s. In an op-ed in The New York Times, Hughes wrote:
“For too long, lawmakers have marveled at Facebook’s explosive growth and overlooked their responsibility to ensure Americans are protected and markets are competitive.”
And last year former Facebook executive Boland told CNN that he left over similar concerns and lack of transparency at Facebook.
“With transparency come hard conversations and it’s important to welcome those. But I haven’t seen that, the willingness seems to be more about let’s avoid the story and control the narrative,” said Boland.
Meta is currently hiring for roles like “Escalations Specialists” and “Strategic Response Writers” to respond to real-time crises and create “compelling narratives” for the company.
