When Mark Zuckerberg told his top execs to ‘learn’ how Apple, Google and Snap are not doing right on social issues and still ‘getting away’
An old, confidential internal communication sent by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to the company’s top leadership has surfaced online. In the email, sent on September 15, 2021, the Meta CEO questioned whether the company should overhaul its strategy on internal safety research, arguing that industry rivals like Apple, Google’s YouTube and Snap (parent company of Snapchat) conduct far less investigation into societal harm and escape harsh public fallout as a result. The message, sent under the subject line “Social issue research and analytics – privileged and confidential”, shows Zuckerberg privately evaluating whether Meta’s aggressive self-examination was actively backfiring against the business.
Mark Zuckerberg called out Apple’s hands-off moderation
Zuckerberg singled out Apple as a prime example of a competitor benefiting from doing the bare minimum when policing communications. He noted that, to his knowledge, Apple does not study these societal issues, employs nobody to review or moderate user content, and lacks even a basic user reporting flow within iMessage.Zuckerberg pointed out that this hands-off approach worked remarkably well for the Cupertino company. Rather than being condemned for failing to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in the past, Meta ended up taking more public heat simply because its aggressive detection and reporting made it appear that abusive behavior was more widespread on its own apps.
Mark Zuckerberg on how YouTube, Twitter and Snap stay out of crosshairs
Turning to other digital platforms, Zuckerberg observed that competitors follow a similar hands-off blueprint, though to varying extents. The Meta CEO observed that YouTube deliberately keeps its head down to avoid becoming a primary target for public criticism. For platforms like Twitter and Snap, Zuckerberg suggested that smaller balance sheets and limited operational budgets might simply prevent them from conducting exhaustive internal research.
Read full email Mark Zuckerberg sent to executives here:
From: Mark ZuckerbergSent: September 15, 2021 9:31 AMSubject: Social issue research and analytics – privileged and confidentialRecent events have made me consider whether we should change our approach to research and analytics around social issues.Apple, for example, doesn’t seem to study any of this stuff. As far as I understand, they don’t have anyone reviewing or moderating content and don’t even have a report flow in iMessage. They’ve taken the approach that it is people’s own responsibility what they do on the platform, and by Apple not taking that responsibility upon themselves, they haven’t created a staff or plethora of studies examining the tradeoffs in their approach. This has worked surprisingly well for them. Instead of being harshly criticized for not doing anything to fight CSAM historically, we have faced more criticism because the fact that we report more material makes it seem like there’s more of that behavior on our platforms. Interestingly, when Apple did try to do something about SAM, they were roundly criticized for it, which may encourage them to double down on their original approach.YouTube, Twitter and Snap take a similar approach, to lesser degrees. YouTube seems to intentionally bury its head in the sand to stay below the radar and not be the center of attention. Twitter and Snap may just not have the resources to do this kind of research.I think we should be commended for the work we do to study, understand, and improve social issues on our platforms.Unfortunately, the media is more likely to use any research or recommendations produced to say we’re not doing everything we can (implying for craven purposes) rather than that we’re taking these issues more seriously than anyone else in our industry by studying them and looking for solutions, not all of which are reasonable to implement because everything has tradeoffs.Leaks undermine our ability to do this work in a way that isn’t incredibly destructive. This may be part of why the rest of the industry has chosen a different approach towards these issues.Further, when we’ve tried to enable independent academic research — way beyond anything the rest of the industry is attempting — it is questionable whether execution errors undermine our efforts and destroy more value than is created by the research we’re enabling.Given these realities, I’m interested in recommendations for how we might adjust our research and analytics programs going forward.
