Facebook employees claimed tactics were 'hostile', 'disrespectful' toward users, document shows

Though former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower Frances Haugen sounded the alarm earlier this month with allegations that the social media giant prioritizes profit by exploiting their users' safety, a new document shared and reviewed by FOX Business and a media consortium of 16 other U.S. news outlets suggests that the same concerns were raised by many other Facebook employees back in 2018. 

"It's not a secret we've often resorted to aggressive tactics in the name of growth and we've been pretty unapologetic about it," an unidentified Facebook employee wrote in an internal group known as "Let's Fix Facebook." "Many employees have called out these tactics as hostile and disrespectful to our users, and the response has generally been, that our care metrics weren't moved [in other words we could get away with them]. Today, the light has changed and all these tactics are being subject to the highest level of scrutiny fueling the narrative that Facebook seeks profits by exploiting its users."

"It's not a secret we've often resorted to aggressive tactics in the name of growth and we've been pretty unapologetic about it. Many employees have called out these tactics as hostile and disrespectful to our users, and the response has generally been, that are care metrics weren't [in other words we could get away with them]. Today, the light has changed and all these tactics are being subject to the highest level of scrutiny fueling the narrative that Facebook seeks profits by exploiting its users."

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The internal blog post, dated March 19, 2018, appears to make reference to Alex Stamos, Facebook's former chief security officer, who resigned in 2016 over "disagreements with the leadership" about the company's handling of the threat of misinformation, as reported by The New York Times. 

The employees claimed in the comment section of the internal blog post that the company's leadership, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, were remaining silent about allegations raised in the Times article, with one employee arguing that "blog posts and spin don't work at scale" and that Zuckerberg needed to "step up."

However, another employee came to Zuckerberg's defense, writing "it's so easy to feel emotionally charged and demand answers from our leaders immediately. Mark, or any executives, doesn't have the answers to everything. Especially in such times when anything can be misinterpreted, whether intentionally or not, it's even more important for leaders to be careful with what they say."

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In addition, two employees appear to argue in the comment section over what one refers to as Facebook's "laissez faire approach" to handling user privacy data. While Facebook does tell users that it shares privacy data with some third-party apps, employees in the comment section note that language regarding how to opt out is "invisible to most users."  

"If our users choose to hand over their data to sketchy third party apps, that's their decision. I don't believe we're the bad guys per se, but rather there's an open and ongoing disagreement on where our responsibility for user data privacy begins and ends," one employee writes, adding that executives "have a fiduciary duty to protect the stock price not our core values".

"What people choose to put in their lungs is their decision, too, but that didn't prevent public outrage from driving the government to impose heavy regulations on tobacco companies," the second employee replied. "Doesn't this fiduciary duty include protecting the company from threats of long-term survival? Isn't that why we are trying so hard to prove that we can be trusted to self regulate?"

The first employee responded: "The company has enjoyed years of surging stock prices and value despite maintaining a ridiculously nebulous policy on user data privacy. Either way, shareholders can be quite shortsighted. If we all stopped focusing on growth metrics and instead worked to fix the company's privacy issues, I wouldn't expect a positive reception from the market even if it was necessary for the long-term longevity of the company." 

The second fired back, writing: "We're selling a product that's just been reported to have caused a population-scale second-hand privacy violation, and you don't see how hiding behind users' decision to share their own and their friends' data is not enough to shield our company from the fallout?" 

Facebook, in a statement to FOX Business, said:

"At the heart of these stories is a premise which is false. Yes, we're a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of people's safety or wellbeing misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie. The truth is we’ve invested $13 billion and have over 40,000 people to do one job: keep people safe on Facebook."  

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The trove of redacted documents, now known as The Facebook Papers, were given to media outlets from Haugen through a congressional source. Some of the documents included have been previously reported on by the Wall Street Journal, which has published its own series of reports, dubbed the Facebook Files.

Stamos, who is at the Stanford Internet Observatory, commented on the release of the documents via Twitter and has called for them to be made available to the public. He did not immediately return FOX Business' request for comment. 

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Facebook is set to release quarterly earnings after the close of trading Monday. So far, the stock has advanced 19% this year, slightly trailing the S&P 500's 21% gain.