By Emily Glazer, Deepa Seetharaman and Jeff Horwitz
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (December 18, 2019).
Facebook Inc.'s senior leadership is increasingly divided over
how to address criticism of the company's effect on U.S. politics,
with board member and billionaire investor Peter Thiel serving as
an influential voice advising CEO Mark Zuckerberg not to bow to
public pressure, according to people familiar with the matter.
One flashpoint of late: political advertisements. Mr. Thiel has
argued that Facebook should stick to its controversial decision,
announced in September, to continue accepting them and to not
fact-check those from politicians, the people said. However, some
directors and executives are pushing for changes to the policy,
including possibly banning political ads altogether, they said.
Mr. Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives have said publicly
that the company continues to consider potential changes related to
political ads.
"Many of the decisions we're making at Facebook come with
difficult trade-offs and we're approaching them with careful rigor
at all levels of the company, from the board of directors down," a
Facebook spokesman said. "We're fortunate to have a board with
diverse experiences and perspectives so we can ensure debate that
reflects a cross section of views."
Mr. Thiel declined to comment.
The reaction to Facebook's decision on political ads, presented
in October by Mr. Zuckerberg as a commitment to free speech,
largely broke along party lines. Most Republicans, including
members of the Trump reelection campaign, praised the decision,
while many Democrats argued the company should do more to
potentially limit the spread of misinformation. In the 2016
election, political actors used tech platforms to spread misleading
or false information to specific groups of people.
The tensions within Facebook's leadership are emerging as the
social-media giant grapples with mounting political challenges less
than a year before the 2020 election. Facebook is the subject of
several federal and state regulatory investigations, including by
the Justice Department, over antitrust concerns and alleged privacy
violations. Lawmakers from both parties have criticized the company
for what they see as transgressions related to how it polices the
site.
Facebook officials, including Mr. Zuckerberg, have vowed to fix
the litany of problems confronting the company, but there is
"pretty vigorous disagreement" among the leadership over how to
tackle its political issues, one person familiar with the
discussions said.
Some of Mr. Thiel's views are shared by others within Facebook,
including on political ads, with many current and former executives
advising Mr. Zuckerberg that the company shouldn't be in the
position of deciding what claims are accurate, people familiar with
the matter said. Others, including many rank-and-file employees,
argue that Facebook's decision cuts against its yearslong fight to
combat misinformation, they said.
Some close to the company say Mr. Thiel is extending his
influence while the company's board and senior ranks are in flux.
Over the past two years, more than a dozen senior executives have
left or announced plans to leave Facebook.
This year alone, three longtime board members left, including
lead independent director Sue Desmond-Hellmann. In April, Facebook
said Netflix Inc. CEO Reed Hastings and former White House chief of
staff Erskine Bowles wouldn't stand for re-election. Both men
periodically had tensions with Mr. Thiel over politics, people
familiar with the relationships said. Facebook hasn't yet named a
new lead independent director.
Mr. Thiel's outspoken conservative and libertarian views have
put him out of step with the largely liberal community of Silicon
Valley. Mr. Zuckerberg has long valued Mr. Thiel's advice. Some
people close to both men described their current relationship as an
alliance, based in part on their long history together.
Mr. Thiel, 52 years old, was the first outside investor in
Facebook, and ultimately made more than $1 billion on his stake.
Early on, Mr. Thiel advised Mr. Zuckerberg, now 35, to focus on
growing the Facebook platform's user base rather than on making
money, contrarian advice at the time that laid the groundwork for
Facebook's riches today. Mr. Thiel and his funds have since sold
off most of their Facebook shares.
More recently, Mr. Thiel, a Republican who backed Donald Trump
in his 2016 presidential campaign, has been helping Mr. Zuckerberg
understand the dynamics within the Trump White House, people
familiar with their relationship said. Ahead of the Facebook
co-founder's October trip to Washington, D.C., the two met and
talked privately to discuss strategy, one of the people said. On
that trip, Mr. Zuckerberg spoke about the political-ads issue at
Georgetown University and testified on Capitol Hill. Messrs.
Zuckerberg and Thiel also had a private dinner at the White House
with Mr. Trump in October. NBC News previously reported the
dinner.
Mr. Thiel has sat on Facebook's board since April 2005 and is
currently chair of Facebook's compensation, nominating and
governance committee, which oversees succession planning and
director nominations.
Mr. Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg have
said repeatedly that they value ideological diversity on the board,
although that view isn't shared by all of the company's
workforce.
"Mark is friends with Peter Thiel and a lot of Republicans,"
said a former Facebook employee who worked in its political group.
"It's a reality people aren't willing to accept."
Last year, after it was disclosed that the data of 87 million
users improperly wound up with Cambridge Analytica, Facebook
directors scrambled to address the political fallout from the
revelation, partly because the British political consulting firm
had worked for the Trump campaign. Some Facebook directors wanted
to create an outside advisory group that would analyze a range of
problems confronting Facebook and offer potential solutions to the
board, people familiar with the matter said. The group would have
been small and included at least one conservative, the people
said.
Mr. Thiel was strongly against the idea, the people said. The
board never convened the group.
Mr. Thiel's status as the founder and chairman of Palantir
Technologies Inc., a firm specializing in custom database creation
and analysis, on at least one occasion raised internal worries at
Facebook, a person familiar with the matter said. Christopher
Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica employee whose allegations of
data misuse kicked off the controversy, told U.K. officials in a
hearing last year that "senior Palantir employees" had worked with
the wrongfully obtained Facebook data.
Palantir denied having done so, but Facebook staff were asked to
look not just at Palantir's potential role in the scandal but also
Mr. Thiel's, according to a person familiar with the review.
Facebook feared that his status as a prominent Trump supporter and
a board member at both companies would make any violation
discovered especially damaging, the person said.
"Mark Z. and Sheryl have specifically asked for investigations
team to look into Palantir," according to contemporaneous notes
taken by a person briefed on the review. Among Facebook's options,
the notes say, was to "potentially leverage relationship with Thiel
to force Palantir to have conversation with FB regarding data
abuse."
Palantir said it doesn't offer social-media data gathering to
any client and only works with data obtained lawfully, adding that
it had no knowledge of or involvement in Facebook's review.
Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com, Deepa Seetharaman
at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com and Jeff Horwitz at
Jeff.Horwitz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 18, 2019 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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