In The Whistleblower Era No Company Is Safe

Michael Hedges October 25, 2021 Follow on Twitter

Embarrassing moments have long plagued companies. The very large have secured their borders, so to speak, with legions of public relations experts, not to forget lawyers, bolstered with copious amounts of money. Medici Bank was one of the first, arguably, to succumb to out of control managers. That was in 1494. Medici Bank disappeared as King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy.

Technology, business and media watchers are anticipating - with bated breath - the coming week. The roasting of social media/technology company Facebook that burned brightly at the end of September is expected to become a broiling. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), principally controlled by the Murdoch family, published a week-long series based on leaked Facebook documents. The picture the reports painted were, effectively, confirmation of widely suspected obfuscation regarding the company’s behavior toward just about everything and everybody. 'We created the machine and we can't control the machine,” said a Facebook employee at a “company leadership meeting” earlier in the summer.

Within a few days whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, was testifying before the United States Senate (October 5). She led the American senators through trolls, algorithms and profits. Facebook’s social media platforms “harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy,” she intoned. There were full-length interviews on TV news programs. Last week (October 21) she gave testimony to the Australian parliament. Next she will share with the UK Parliament (October 25), then the European Parliament (November 8).

With certain urgency the Facebook PR team mounted a robust defense. “We understand the concerns of some that we need to press pause, listen to experts, explain our intentions and so on,” said global affairs and communication VP Nick Clegg, formerly a UK deputy prime minister, in a round of interviews on US TV news programs (October 10). “Where (a teenager) is looking at the same content over and over again, and its content which may not be conducive so their well-being, we’ll nudge them to look at other content.” On Saturday, Mr. Clegg warned employees “to steel ourselves for more bad headlines in the coming days, I’m afraid,” in a note to staff, quoted by Axios (October 24).

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg also headed to the optimism door. Repeating a theme from earlier in the year, he said the “metaverse” is the company’s future. The company will be hiring, always a shoutout to politicians, 10,000 folks in the European Union over the next five years, he said in a statement, quoted by Business Insider (October 18). Metaverse has something to do with virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI) and, of course, bitcoin. The term came into cult usage in the early 1990s found in the dystopian science fiction novel “Snow Crash.”

A large part of this morphing into the metaverse is a company name change, reported The Verge (October 19). It could come this week as Mr. Zuckerberg addresses virtually assembled multitudes for the annual Connect product launch show (October 28). The new name would be for an umbrella company housing Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and such, much along the same thinking as Google’s name change to Alphabet in 2015. The new name remains a secret. Enron is still available.

As with all good whistleblower stories both collaboration among and competition between news organizations became a sidebar at the end of the week. Some documents uncovered by Ms Haugen were provided shortly after the US Senate appearance to a “consortium” consisting of Associated Press, Bloomberg, CBC News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox Business, Le Monde, NBC News, New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, Politico, USA Today, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Atlantic, The Washington Post and Wired. The leaked documents
Axios.

The Wall Street Journal, not privy to these files, perhaps, blew the deadline by publishing another episode in their own Facebook Files (October 22). That story concentrated on Facebook’s role in the extremist attack on the US Capital Building last January, itself significant revelations of interest to US politicians. This release led to the New York Times running its story Friday afternoon, others following. Hence, there was, a day later, Mr. Clegg’s “I’m afraid” note.

At a different end of the aisle, Facebook will report Q3 earnings Monday (October 25), after markets close. Financial watchers at Zachs (October 21) are expecting good news; Q3 revenues at US$29.55 billion, up 37.7% year on year, and monthly average users worldwide at 2.923 billion, up 6.7%.

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