<
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210929/17352047662/facebooks-latest-scandals-banality-hubris-messiness-humanity.shtml>
"In the days since the Facebook Files came out I've been having a few
conversations with people about the write-ups and what it all means. There is
general agreement that none of this makes Facebook look good. And it shouldn't.
There's really nothing in all of this that's good for Facebook. A few of the
discussions, though, jumped to the argument that Facebook's executive team is
"evil." A lesser version of this is that they're totally incompetent. I don't
think either is quite true. Thinking it through, I think Facebook's executive
team (1) is in deeper than they realize, and (2) falsely thinks it has a better
handle on things than it really does.
This is an issue that is all too common, especially in the internet world,
where there's a kind of myth around "visionary" founders. And that's certainly
been applied to pretty much every successful internet founder. Indeed, recent
research throws some cold water on the idea of brilliant founders leading to
big breakthroughs, and suggests more that successful companies are about being
in the right place at the right time with minimally competent leaders to keep
everything from going off the rails.
This is (quite obviously) from the outside looking in, but my impression of
much of Facebook leadership is that they've bought a bit too much into the myth
of their own brilliance, and their own ability to work their way through
challenges — at the size and scale of an operation that isn't just providing a
service to basically a third of the globe, but which is also seeking to get
those people to interact with one another. Nearly all of human history is about
our general failures to get along with one another, and many of the problems
facing Facebook are also of that very nature.
There is something of an open question about which of these problems are merely
revealed or exposed due to Facebook, which are exacerbated by Facebook, and
which are actually decreased by Facebook. It seems likely that all three of
these forces are at play, and there is no one who has a full grasp on how to
deal with the problems that are a part of human nature — or how to try to
minimize humanity's worst impulses across the globe. I don't think Facebook has
the answers, but sometimes I fear that some of the leaders at the company think
that they do — or that they can outthink the world in how they approach these
problems."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
