Inside the Bubble at Facebook
"When everyone has a printing press, the ones with the best ideas are the ones people listen to." - Facebook's The Little Red Book (2012)
In March 2018, BuzzFeed published a leaked Facebook memo about their “growth at all costs” mentality, igniting a firestorm about Facebook’s long-standing attitude towards challenges like fake news, filter bubbles, and state actors.
As in any media frenzy, unfair criticisms were voiced — but at the core of the debate was a truth that has had Facebook employees thinking more deeply than ever before about the implications of their company's products.
This wake-up call has been nearly a decade in the making. For the last several years, I’ve tried to understand why certain Facebook executives have been mistaken for so long about the negative impacts of their product and how the truth distortion field at any large company can overtly — and more often, subtly — distort how employees think.1
To begin, put yourself in the shoes of a typical Facebook employee in the early/mid 2010s thumbing through their Facebook News Feed — composed (unsurprisingly) of posts from many fellow Facebook employees.
