Facebook Is Built on Inequality
Internal emails released this week reveal a core dissonance between the company’s goals and its PR
2012 was a big year for Facebook. In April of that year, Facebook announced it would acquire Instagram. In June, it named Sheryl Sandberg to its board of directors. And in October, Facebook announced it had one billion active monthly users.
“Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote then in a public post, announcing the milestone. “I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together we will be able to connect the rest of the world too.” In another post that day, Zuckerberg wrote that he and his colleagues at Facebook “believe that the need to open up and connect is what makes us human. It’s what brings us together. It’s what brings meaning to our lives.”
A trove of internal Facebook emails released by the U.K. Parliament on Wednesday reveals what was happening inside the company at that time. Just weeks after Facebook hit its billionth active monthly user, Zuckerberg typed out an email to colleagues with his thoughts on the data access terms Facebook might want for apps operating on the platform.
