According to their own account, Frenkel and Kang spoke to more than four hundred managers, employees, ex-employees and other people around the company for their book.
(Photo: AP)
Dusseldorf Many people have long been associating Facebook with messages from old and new friends and their vacation photos. But also with stolen data, fake news and manipulation attacks on political elections. With “Inside Facebook. The Ugly Truth ”, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang presented one of the most extensive research on the group by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The research results by Frenkel and Kang are unpleasant. For Facebook – but certainly also for many of their readers. Because they are aware that almost 17,000 employees of the US group were able to read their private messages in September 2015. At least if they were users of the platform at the time. Facebook employees were also able to access their location data at any time.
Frenkel and Kang said they spoke to more than four hundred managers, employees, ex-employees and other people around the company for their book. The result is a kind of psychogram: The authors not only discovered many new details from inside Facebook. They also analyze in detail what causes all of the unwanted side effects of the social network: Facebook’s imperative to grow.
Almost soberly, they describe all the measures Facebook took to increase its power – and the strategies with which they were to be disguised. Stalking attacks on users are just one example: “Everything that prevented employees from misusing their access to private data was their conscience,” write the authors.
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And there was a good reason for that. Facebook has internalized its mantra “Move fast and break things”. Facebook believed that any restriction on the developers could only have been bad for the company’s growth. Better to have too much access to personal data than too little.
Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang: Inside Facebook. The ugly truth.
S. Fischer Verlag
Frankfurt 2021
384 pages
24 euros
ISBN: 978-3-10-000066-8
Many other insights into the Zuckerberg group relate to the political sphere. About the relationship with Donald Trump. The authors can retell how the management of Facebook learned of the Russian manipulation attacks on the presidential elections in 2016 – and initially denied the findings for fear of the whims of the new, unpredictable president. The reporters quoted a person involved in the internal debates as saying that they “did not want to be in the line of fire”.
Three years later, everything was done to improve relations with the US president. The authors also describe a meeting between Trump and Zuckerberg in September 2019 in as much detail as if they were there.
The meeting took place in the White House and was arranged by Facebook investor Peter Thiel and manager Joel Kaplan, who was supposed to protect Facebook’s business model from political interference. “The aim of the interview was to neutralize Trump’s hostility towards Facebook, which is why Zuckerberg brought some kind of gift,” write the authors.
Zuckerberg flattered the president with internal statistics, according to which Donald Trump had “the most interactions of all political leaders” on Facebook. At that time, Trump had 28 million followers. And Zuckerberg’s numbers are said to have visibly brightened his mood.
Only when Trump’s presidency finally came to an end did Facebook risk the relationship: He is currently blocked on the platform because he called for a storm on the Capitol when Biden’s election victory was to be certified. Several people were killed in the process.
These are just two examples out of many. After reading 384 pages, only cynics can actually speak of reading pleasure. Mainly because many readers are likely to continue to be among the almost three billion users of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. And that also means that the authors don’t even have to tell them one thing: that Facebook has been hugely successful with its strategy to this day, despite all its failings.
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