After finding himself and his company on the wrong side of history for most of a week which had fairly reeked of historical import, Mark Zuckerberg has finally had a moment of clarity. As reported by HuffPost:
It turns out protests work.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday that the company will conduct a review of the policy he cited when allowing President Donald Trump’s violence-inciting post to remain up on the site.
“We’re going to review our policies allowing discussion and threats of state use of force to see if there are any amendments we should adopt,” Zuckerberg wrote in a lengthy statement days after his employees staged a virtual walkout in protest of his response to Trump’s post.
Huzzah! It only took his own employees walking out on him, and a flurry of high-profile resignations at Facebook, for Zuckerberg to see the light see the need to adopt a more conciliatory tone.
Zuckerberg's full original post actually starts quite well:
Not bad, you might say. I'm pretty thoroughly sick of corporate CEOs saying, "We hear you," in the hope that it will make the story go away, but Zuckerberg doesn't rely solely on that old chestnut. In fact, he does something that corporate CEOs almost never do; he acknowledges that something he did caused other pain. He goes on to acknowledge that continuing to engage with someone who's hurting you is hard, and to thank people for doing it anyway. That's good stuff, and definitely a cut above the normal for these sorts of statements.
A longer passage (worth reading, actually) ensues, with Zuckerberg spelling out the areas which they're going to review in more detail. No actual reforms are committed to, naturally, and he frequently mentions how good Facebook's existing efforts have been, and how much confidence he has in them, which maybe doesn't bode well for the outcome of that review process, but it's literally most of a very long post, and there are even some specific hypothetical scenarios given.
To members of our Black community: I stand with you. Your lives matter. Black lives matter.
We have so far to go to overcome racial injustice in America and around the world, and we all have a responsibility and opportunity to change that. I believe our platforms will play a positive role in this, but we have work to do to make sure our role is as positive as possible. These ideas are a starting point and I'm sure we'll find more to do as we continue on this journey. [...] Thanks for all your input so far, and I'm looking forward to making progress together over the coming weeks and months.
Actually saying, "I stand with you," and that, "Black lives matter?" Check. Acknowledging that racial injustice is something that America needs to work on, and that he can actually help? Check. Committing to making progress over, "the coming weeks and months," and not making vague promises of progress... sometime, or maybe years from now? Check. All good stuff.
So why am I skeptical?
Well, it might have something to do with Facebook's history of internal reform. This is not the first time that Zuckerberg has been forced to apologize for some awful behaviour that he or his firm have engaged in. It's not the first time he's promised to change to the better. So far, however, Facebook's pattern has not been one of meaningful change in response.
Maybe this time is different. This week has certainly felt different than any other week I can remember seeing, at any time, in the last fifty years (and, yes, I am old enough to say things like that). Maybe Zuckerberg can feel it, too; maybe he really will change this time. But neither Facebook, nor Mark Zuckerberg himself, have earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to this stuff. Zuckerberg and Facebook have proved remarkably, stubbornly, resistant to reform ever since Zuckerberg first founded the company. They're going to have to actually change before I'll believe they're capable of change.
That said, though, there's no denying that the internal revolt at Facebook did force the firm to publicly speak of course-correcting, something that hasn't happened before. Facebookies have tasted the same power and sweet success as Googlers have when they forced their employers to walk away from the JEDI contract bid process, or when they forced their employers to stop the use of forced arbitration for employee disputes. Facebookies have dipped a toe in the waters of ethical tech, and tasted success on their very first try. That could be enough to embolden them, encouraging them to continue calling out the company for their other failings; it could encourage them to hold Zuckerberg publicly accountable, should his publicly-announced review process fail to actually produce meaningful reform.
In short, Facebookies are collectively able to do the one thing that nobody else has ever done: they could force Facebook to actually change, in exactly the sort of way that the company has stubbornly refused to. If Zuck's promises of transparent decision-making prove hollow, Facebookies can respond with another wave of protests, walk-outs, and resignations, possibly shaming the company into course-correcting. They have, after all, already done that once, to visible effect.
Baby steps, people, baby steps.