A couple weeks ago, an opinion pieceOpens a new window written by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and published in The New York Times set the internet – and those interested in the future of it – ablaze.
In the piece, Hughes argued for breaking up the social media giant in the style of major government-driven, anti-trust initiatives of the past. He worried that Facebook has become too powerful for its own good or the good of democratic society.
“I’m angry that [Mark Zuckerberg’s] focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks,†Hughes wrote. “I’m disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders. And I’m worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them.â€
He wrote that the government should reverse its approvals for Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and Whatsapp and Congress should beef up its efforts to regulate the Facebook empire and other social media sites by creating a special agency.
Zuckerberg struck back in an interview, sayingOpens a new window  that “if what you care about is democracy and elections, then you want a company like us to be able to invest billions of dollars per year like we are in building up really advanced tools to fight election interference.â€
The existential argument aside, as concernOpens a new window over Facebook’s influence continues to grow, the company’s reputation as a great place to work has started to reflect the slip in public goodwill toward the social media giant.
Its standing on Glassdoor has fallenOpens a new window as scandals over Russian influence in the 2016 election, privacy violations, hate speech in Myanmar and the Cambridge Analytica data breach continue to plague the company.
A report by CNBCOpens a new window documented claims by more than a dozen former employees of the company, who asked to remain anonymous, that the work atmosphere at Facebook put an unnaturally high pressure on remaining upbeat and positive.
They said that their participation in off-hours events generated so many expectations that it almost seemed mandatory, and that there was a pervasive culture of maintaining a bubbly veneer.
Additionally, the employees claimed that the company puts a premium on developments on the social media platform that privilege user engagement over anything else – including some of the concerns Hughes flagged such as privacy and veracity.
Performance reviews that relied on peers and imposing extreme pressure to bond with colleagues were also detailed in the accounts of the former employees.
Little information has emerged about the conditions of working at Facebook, in part thanks to arbitration agreementsOpens a new window that have become commonplace in the tech industry.
At the same time, the tightly-controlled employee experience is a hallmark of a company under stress. It makes sense that glimpses of dissent and growing unhappiness in the internal workplace of the social media company have grown at the same time that Facebook faces increased external pressure.
In a way, the problems that Facebook is dealing with externally seem to be unraveling in mirror image within the company: overreliance on executive decisions, emphasis on engagement metrics that are divorced from the civic context of any content, lack of transparency and a sense of us-versus-them about company culture.
The Hughes editorial was accompanied by photos of the Facebook founders together in college, fresh-faced and awkward. They’ve grown up, along with their site.
But in the necessary process of maturing, the company seems to have forgotten the foundation that ought to be its guiding ethos both externally and internally: Facebook is a social media company. It should try to remember what it means to be social for its employees as well as its users – and society at large.