Ah, the myth of meritocracy. And the promise of diversity and inclusion. I don't see big tech ever getting there, but there is a road map for companies and organizations who want to do better and are stymied by the work:
https://greenleafbookgroup.com/titles/women-minorities-and-other-extraordinary-people
1
"But numerous studies have also proven that a heterogeneous staff — including differences in age, gender, race and background — is the best thing for businesses in the long term. Does it happen? It does not."
When people talk of "diversity", I rarely read "differences in age", so I appreciate reading this. It seems something very wrong with the mentality of many in Silicon Valley. This even extends to venture capital. This article in the old New Republic paints Stamos (the one who was yelled at and basically demoted at Facebook) at his best https://newrepublic.com/article/117088/silicons-valleys-brutal-ageism
As this NYT article pointed out, empathy is what makes the best team. Older people are often more experienced and more likely to have developed or gained many of these important traits years of experience and maybe even being confronted with the "teenager".
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html
2
As a descendant of Welsh quarrymen, I cannot help but marvel at how Silicon Valley has become like a Welsh mining community. Data-miner and app-quarrying employees work 80 hrs/wk, live in cramped conditions, are now breathing unhealthy air coming off the Bay, traveling to/fro work in the quarry/colliery buses. How did this happen? There's no collective wisdom at these companies - there's no historic memory of what did/can/and could go wrong with past innovations. And there's no wisdom at these companies since the hiring profile skews young. Silicon Valley also has an ageism problem that marginalizes senior wisdom to promote youthful energy.
80
@Steve Williams and it gets worse: Facebook and other companies are buying up land near their offices to build housing for their employees because the housing market is so tight. So not only do you have company buses, you're soon to have company towns. Next, they'll be printing scrip that's only usable at company stores.
25
However you feel about tech, this is a new low to connect tech to the horrific fires that have killed people, destroyed a community, and are blanketing the area in smoke. How exactly are the two related? Do you see it as some sort of divine retribution? Why would you put these two issues in the same article? The lack of empathy involved to conflate these two separate issues is astoundingly insensitive.
1
When you all get through having your hissy fit and the current trend of bashing Facebook subsides, remember it is the Internet and not just Facebook that is to blame. The Internet was the enabler. Let's all just give up the Internet and go back to phone calls and snail mail. Let me remind you that before Facebook, social media was MySpace which was owned by non-other than Rupert Murdock himself. What if social media was controlled by the founder of Fox News?... think about that for awhile. The sad fact is that the Republicans and in particular the rightest wing of the Republicans are very adept in propaganda, and they fully embrace social media in all it's forms. This is JMHO so I could be completely wrong on this... but I don't think I am.
1
In future, do not use deadly fires as a metaphor for troubles in Silicon Valley. It's tin-eared and inappropriate. Also, if you are going to criticize tech culture, do not use bullet points in your article. It just seems like more PowerPoint. We've had enough of that.
3
For tech titans to be our saviors, they can shift their skills and expertise from increasing pleasure to reducing suffering and focus on human needs instead of human wants.
Instead of another new iPhone, the Apple engineers can develop a ‘smart grid’ for electricity generation & distribution, so that all the renewable energy can be incorporated & integrated to speed up & maximize its deployment & efficiency.
Instead of fine-tuning their search engine algorithm to draw more online ad revenue, the Google engineers can develop the technology to capture excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere & to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from every single source on Earth, so that we can hopefully stall if not prevent the climate tipping point.
Instead of providing a digital water cooler for spreading all the fake & useless news & clickbaits that lead to misinformation & waste of productive time & resources, the Facebook engineers can develop a more efficient platform with better tools for brainstorming, idea-sharing, delivering critical information & connecting people with different skill sets to solve social problems.
Instead of peddling an endless array of want-based goods & products, the Amazon engineers can reconfigure the marketplace & improve the logistics & analytics to efficiently, effectively & timely facilitate the production, exchange, distribution, delivery & deployment of essential & critical materials & products for the need-based economic sectors around the world.
22
This article is the prose version of that famous New Yorker cartoon that shows a map of the US where Manhattan is 90% of the image. The NYT plublishes so many chicken little stories about California it comes across as jealousy. Every article I read about California is about how it all going to fall apart tomorrow. Wishful thinking? Yes we have problems, fires being a big one right now, but we will recover. The tech industry has all the same problems as any other industry. Could not every one of this article’s pieces of advice apply to NY’s major industry of finance? The NYT is trying to be a national paper, we appreciate it, but clearly your first language is not Californian.
7
Retired a few years ago after nearly 20 years in software testing. I am grateful for work that allowed me to support my family.
However, I threw in the towel when I realized dealing with the sexism in the industry was literally making me sick.
With three years under my retirement belt, I realize it was worse than I even thought it was at the time. I could write paragraphs on how this affected not just my work but the success of the projects I worked on, but that would be fruitless at this point. What I will do is point the finger directly at management who consistently chooses to ignore the extra challenges women STILL face in workforce because of course, women are not men.
3
The fact that Facebook began as a juvenile male effort to rate women says it all. I never took the bait. Although it’s taken a good chunk of time for the reality of Zuckerberg’s broken promises to surface I’m heartened to see common sense suggestions articulated by Kara Swisher. If we had all learned how to create and maintain a server in our own homes that featured end to end encryption we wouldn’t be in this pickle today. Wake up America, nothing is free.
6
Zuckerberg's moral compass is broken when, instead of setting company values in advance of bad stuff happening, he just reacts to it after it happens. The problem with a company like Facebook that has so much worldwide influence is that when bad stuff happens it's really bad! Facebook needs to be policed if Zuckerberg refuses to do it himself.
6
I love Kara Swisher. Go on being you, sister!
9
Mr. Kaplan, the Facebook executive, sat behind Mr. Kavanaugh during the hearings as his chief cheerleader? Facebook has run head-on into Trump's border wall at 100 mph.
2
I am not defending Facebook but we the people as a nation have become lazy and don't check our sources. Look in the mirror the problem is in front of you.
5
Kara, would you please be more specific when you denounce the lack of "diversity?" Do you not see all of the female Chinese and Indian women? Do you not notice the openness and quantity of the transgendered?
You only see the white leadership, and then make wildly inaccurate statements. Not impressive journalism. And yes, Recode isn't diverse.
1
What can be expected in the way of ethics for Mark Zuckerberg, who not only "created" Facebook to publicly drag a woman through the slime because she'd rejected him, but stole the original model from the Harvard classmates who'd come up with the idea in the first place.
4
The tech platform for VC's and techies is largely about eyeballs, scale and how fast do we get to big profits, the rest be damned.
The platitudes of do no harm, unite the world, save the world are but poorly thought through very thin icing on the the internet cake.
2
I, too, just returned from a trip to San Francisco over the weekend and was so incredibly grateful I don't live there any more. The tech companies have ruined my previously favorite city in the country. The smoke armageddon that was there this weekend is an excellent metaphor for the state of tech these days. But Ms. Swisher misses the driving force behind Facebook and the rest of Silicon Valley's ills. It is the exclusive embrace of the ethos of obscene greed as the driving force behind all of these companies that cause them to act in morally bankrupt ways. Having read and listened to Zuckerberg and Sandberg's lies, lies and more lies and having looked at their vacuous expressions, they both remind me of Donald Trump. They are greedy, self-serving, soul robbing people who don't care in the least the way their company behaves as long as the bottom line and their own personal wealth grows. Regulate Facebook and the other tech companies and tax their obscene profits heavily and use the money to help the 99% of Americans who struggle every day to make ends meet. At the national, state and local level, these high tech companies are ripping all of us off, with threats that if they don't get what they want they will move to China. We should call their bluffs and tell them all to leave and never come back. Let them all breathe the smoke in Beijing every day of their lives.
11
This views here are pedestrian. True, but hardly novel or insightful. And using the all-to-convenient smoke and fire metaphor when dozens are dead and hundreds of thousands have been displaced is shameful.
1
There is no adult in the room at Facebook who has good judgment and authority. Zuckerberg alone determines who is on his Board, with his separate class of super-voting stock and voting agreements to ensure he retains control. This is a colossal corporate governance failure, with zero accountability. He can simply remove any director who becomes an obstacle. Dictators are bad things, and especially when they are creepily compiling information about 2 billion people, if not more.
3
Yes, Facebook megapower should have been better managed, but tech cannot and will not save humanity from itself, I find it weird that this is the expectation
I've never had a Facebook account, and when people have asked my why, I tell them I never wanted the exposure. I feel vindicated, somewhat, in that more people see there is so little to gain in your well being, by being so publicly exposed. You can email recipes and photos, why do you feel the need to show this to everyone? News from social media? Seems like a oxymoron to expect reliable news from a forum as public as social media. Where's the peer-reviews?
The internet as a whole is becoming more and more pathetic, with ads, pop-ups, and videos that start without being prompted by the user. The intrusion of this when you just want to read the news paper or find sports scores is rude. For this reason i try limiting my on line experiences to just the fundamentals, NYT, Bank, Sports. If I need to purchase something, I'll check out my local downtown stores first, hopefully someone has what I need. If not, I can wait until I have to visit a larger market, bit of a drive, or find something on line. The last resort for me.
4
I suppose that I post this at some risk given the documented history of Facebook attacking their detractors.
As I understand it, the Zuckerberg and Sandberg position is that they were/are either ignorant (we didn't know what was going on) or irresponsible (we did know, but our response was reprehensible). Great management and leadership? Sandberg was supposed to be the adult supervision, but her response to Stamos's transparency showed that she just "leaned in" to the money. At least Facebook didn't have to backtrack on the "do no evil" mantra; that's another tech company's problem.
2
"As seen in the Facebook mess.the biggest error of all is the slow dribbling out, and outright covering up, of bad news."
Funny, because that's how Facebook has also disrupted relationships. Being a fake with a distorted false-positive Facebook is the only way to fly on there. We have become a nation of braggart Trump clones.
Thanks, tech geniuses.
4
After the Cambridge Analytica data breech, I deleted my Facebook account. Everyone that has concerns about Facebook should do the same. The most effective vote we have is with our pocket book, or in this case, our personal data.
3
The problem isn't helped by the fact that the type of brain that could come up with a Facebook is usually the type of brain that has problems with emotions.
3
@myasara So True, my thoughts exactly!
1
To become a tech genius takes more than genetics. It requires years of intense and isolated hard work, association with like-minded and similarly brilliant people, and a lot of luck. What it does not require is a talent for social interaction, a sense of community, or an informed moral responsibility. It is unrealistic and unfair to expect these lucky, gifted children to shoulder the burden of responsible adulthood. When, like Gates and Allen, they do, it's a wonderful thing. But the real responsibility falls to those who counsel these children and make the law that regulate their firms.
4
Drawing an analogy of the smoke and acrid air from ongoing devastation and death to the troubles of Silicon Valley culture is a poor start to an otherwise well reported and relevant story. Keep these events distinct and untangled when flying out of SF.
4
@Nick Markitant
You are right on point. The story is really not relevant to the headline.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg, what did we expect from these two? Or what are we expecting from tech executives in general? I don't know but we got is the usual capitalism gone amok. Maybe we wanted them to be moral leaders or, at the very least, intelligent about the integrity of their brands. Instead, they are another generation fried by the old corporate model or doing almost anything including selling their souls. Well, we still have elder Bill Gates who could teach them personal philanthropy and probably a lot more.
8
@Bea Dillon The Gates' philanthropy came well toward the end of their corporate ride at Microsoft. Plenty of startups back in the 80s and 90s happened to "notice" that what THEY'd invented was suddenly copied by the giant corporation and sold as their own.
Let's reward philanthropy AND business ethics. Would be inspiring and such a delightful change, wouldn't it?
3
@m. k. jaks Corporate Responsibility and Business Ethics sounds great, but in reality will not happen, the competition is cut-throat.
1
Unfortunately, no amount of transparency, self-reflection, diversity or individual accountability would touch what is fundamentally wrong at Facebook or Google. The problem is the business model itself - using the lure of a superficially free service to expose people to a level of surveillance they would never openly agree to if they really knew how far it would reach.
The Europeans seem to think this can be mitigated by giving users some kind of control over how their information may be used, but this is naive. You just can't imagine who might be able to take advantage of what information, and once it has been released there is no getting it back.
The only real answer is to guarantee that such information is never made available in any form to third parties, at which point the business plan of such companies evaporates into thin air.
Needless to say, Facebook and Alphabet will not be coming to this conclusion on their own, but the rest of us need to decide how long to let superficial play-acting at social responsibility obscure the underlying ethical abuse that makes them profitable.
26
As long as there is megabillions to be made with the winner take all philosophy/mentality; Silicon Valley and Wall Street as prime examples; there'll be no change.
10
Social media has become the opiate AND the religion of the masses. Get off your devices, people, and start communicating and relating to other people face to face and voice to voice. We have gotten to the point where people who are not on social media do not exist to those who are. Lift your heads and look at the sky, go for a walk, read a book. This is not healthy for our society.
31
Last week when I went to vote I had been removed from the list, so they sent me to town hall. Town hall had a letter from the registrar in another town that DMV informed them that I lived in this other town, so our town had de-registered me.
The next day I went to the town police over what appeared to be a theft of my identity. The detectives, to their credit figured out that the woman who lived at the address that DMV had provided, has a drivers license number just one digit off from mine.
The woman had, after receiving all this junk mail for me, filed a complaint with her local police.
I went to DMV and they straightened it out. A DMV keypunch error had digitally intertwined my identity with that of this woman in another town, and assigned her address to me. Two years ago.
Based on the inconsistencies created by the DMV error background checks turn up the credit reports that have me all confused with this other person whose license number is one digit from mine. And every job application that has run a background check on me has basically failed me for providing the wrong address.
Computers hold our profiles, talk to each other and replicate mistakes, and if things don't jive? You get blackballed. Without even knowing it.
More than Facebook we need to revamp our privacy laws to make things like credit tracking an opt-in choice.
I may have opted in to Facebook at one time. Not so the credit agencies. They sell your ID and background with no effort to verify accuracy.
20
To me the saddest thing about the "Tech" culture is the it's no longer really about tech. Two of the three richest people alive control nothing but glorified websites. Facebook and Amazon create nothing, and contribute nothing to our culture. Yes, we can buy things with 'free' postage, and keep track of our families 'for free' too. Except, of course, it's not free. You don't get rich giving stuff away. What it is is snake oil, and they're right in line with the occupant of the White House, only they're better at it.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were "Tech". Bezos and Zuckerberg are just old fashioned hustlers.
20
@Sera
Did we not "keep track of our families", stay in touch with them, before Facebook?
3
Facebook suffers a conceit based on having too much money in the bank. When it faces a challenge, it hires lots of shiny objects - big money lobby lists, consultants and PR firms to try and swing the tide. You cannot fix the rot in a building by only changing the facade.
My advice to the billionaires at Facebook is simple. Stop hacking. Stop trying to break things. Dig into the problem and solve with your employees and consultants who are NOT billing you thousands of dollars an hour each.
The expensive folks can only deflect, they cannot fix the problem. You (Zuckerberg and Sandberg) need to dig in, stand up and take the heat you so well deserve.
7
There’s a word for groupthink by those at the top: hubris.
9
OMG, you mean Facebook is, like, an actual company that wants to sell adds and make money and it's purpose isn't really to save the whales and make beautiful rainbows. I am so disillusioned!
The lesson of Facebook is: Never have a holier than-thou social justice brand. You can't ever be holy enough for SJWs and they will eventually turn on you.
Just honestly state that your mission is to make a profit and leave the virtue signalling to people who don't have to put their money where their mouth is. Be like Exxon. No one is running an "expose" about how Exxon isn't saving the world. And they make more money in a week than Facebook makes all year.
4
@Robert The Bruce
Cut out the foolish "SJW" and "virtue signalling" lingo .
You know full well that no-one can "save the world ".
But there are many of us who feel a strong duty as human beings to contribute to its betterment.
Facebook is NOT contributing to the well- being of society.
It should be regulated, as should Twitter.
3
Greed. Greed is the sickness affecting Facebook. Greed is the illness corrupting our country. We need a different narrative to guide us: service, selflessness, kindness. We must return to these higher callings. Young people can earn $140K at entry level, are you kidding me? This is grotesque and inherently corrupting. Delete your fb account, go for a hike, pick some blueberries, talk to your actual friends face to face, return to the human race.
11
Hands down, Kara Swisher is the best thinker and writer on this page these days. Keep doing what you’re doing. Bravo! (David Brooks and Bret Stephens, Swisher keeps upping the game....So keep your great columns coming as well.)
10
How do you know if you are talking to an extrovert technologist? They look at your shoes then they say "“I don’t know, that’s a … that’s the most productive stance.”"
3
Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain. Niccolo Machiavelli
3
I put Sandberg and Zuckerberg in an unholy pantheon with Trump: shallow people with too much power and only one thing on their mind: $. Sandberg and Zuckerberg differ from Trump primarily in that they try harder to present as decent, but I haven’t bought it for awhile.
14
Interesting metaphor, but there is no simple ‘find and fix’ solution to the fires; California burns, has always burned, will always burn. A hundred years of building profitable subdivisions won’t change that, even as the people who buy those houses ignore the reality around them, of living in a land of fire, dreaming that they are in some safe wonderland of eternal midwestern spring. ‘Tech’ promoters also are dreaming, ignoring the fires around them. And there is no simple solution there, either.
7
I'm afraid you're missing the forest for the trees here. None of these companies was built to last. It was the last thought on the minds of the founders and early employees. Some will, of course, given their immense user base. But a big user base doesn't mean great products as any Microsoft user can tell you.
But the driver for most companies was a combination of the desire for raw power (mostly the founders such as Zuckerberg) or the desire to get in early and cash out (the rest of the employees). Decisions were made time and again based on "what's in it for me?" with the main goal being accumulating fantastic wealth. It was all a fun game, decisions being predicated on the short-term with someone else left to pick up the pieces later.
Not that any of this is new. As the Wall Street traders said in emails and on the phone when discussing a lousy deal for the customer, IBGYBG -- I'll be gone, you'll be gone. Same in tech...
22
The point she left out is important:
* Stop hiring foreign cheap labor H-1B scabs
Big tech now is hiring very few American workers. Instead, they hire digital serfs, who will work for peanuts under the illusion that they will get a green card. Few do, but the illusion keeps them going working 100 hours/week, living 4 to a room in high-tech slums.
It's not just the H-1B. L-1, J-1, OPT, O-1, B-1, B-2, TN-1, on and on and on. Millions of foreign workers taking jobs from Americans. And what do we get for it? Disasters like the MS patch that does not work, over and over and over and over again - I have had 1803 fail about 12 times now.
18
I wonder if you realize how offensive your language is? I live in a Silicon Valley suburb, and those are my friends and neighbors you're calling "scab." None of them are living in the poverty you describe. They are all making a contribution to our local, state and national economies. Most are raising families here, and diligently seeing to the education of their children, who will some day contribute to American greatness in their turn. If I were in your shoes I would do everything I could to compete and to raise my children to be competitive on this playing field. And let go of the frustration, because this particular rising tide will be lifting all boats if we let it.
And if anyone wants to know, my grandparents were Scottish, German and Irish, and I was raised in this very city. And, in many ways I consider myself a conservative.
15
@GeorgePTyrebyter
I completely agree. Companies think they save money by hiring foreign workers but in the end we all up paying a huge societal cost. No other western democracy is so unwillingly to invest in its own workers to the long-term detriment of our collective future.
8
@Lisa
The H1, L1 and others are actually not a burden since they come with college education subsidized by the foreign government. But your point about unwillingness to support American workers is fair. In the 50s and 60s American companies invested in training and retaining their workers. But since the 80s the training has moved to China and elsewhere and Americans are blabbing about free market as some magical panacea and voting in billionaire owned politicians.
13
Hey New York Times--At least 56 people have died and 300 are still missing in the Camp Fire. California mourns the loss of so many people who died in such horrific conditions. Our children have to stay home from school inside because of the dangerous air quality. Please refrain from calling this unfolding human tragedy as an "apt metaphor" for yet another rehashed Silicon Valley bashing from back east. There is a time and a place for everything and a basic sense of decency ought to tell you not to use this tragedy for a cheap, not clever, headline.
33
@Michael A. Santoro
The big corporation needing to be held accountable is PG&E Corporation, formerly Pacific Gas & Electric.
It is diabolical that California's legislature has agreed to let PG&E bill ratepayers for their legal costs of last year's devastating fires in Napa and Sonoma counties. That PG&E got away with exploding an entire subdivision in San Bruno (a suburb between San Francisco and Silicon Valley) is appalling.
There is more: Billions of dollars in monthly ratepayer fees assessed over and above utility usage charges that were to be used for undergrounding electric utilities vaporized when PG&E filed bankruptcy after dancing with Enron.
8
Those five recommendations are nothing new are they?
They always come up when a company or instutions screws up
when they should have been there all along as guidelines.
3
Honestly, trying to get Silicon Valley to do better is much like trying to get Wall St. to do better: they talk a good game, and then as soon as no one is looking, they're back to their old, less-than-ethical tricks.
But you're onto something: the "mirrortocracy" starts at the same schools: Stanford, MIT, Cal Berkeley, Harvard, and maybe a couple of others, all of which--aside from Berkeley--have small class sizes and an even more insular professional network. So why aren't these schools using their considerable endowments to drive more change? To accept more students from low income backgrounds? To start their own venture capital investment incubation systems that give more financing to entrepreneurs who are not white, Asian, and male? I guarantee you that if more women and POC had the same access to capital as their white male counterparts, a lot of the normalization of bro culture would go away.
All that said, this doesn't excuse Facebook, nor does it excuse Sheryl Sandberg, in particular. Ms. Lean In herself shouldn't be preaching recipes for leadership success if they involve ethics violations and back door Washington political dealing. Nor should responsibility for the chaos Facebook has wrought be fobbed off to their crisis PR team. How about some integrity? In another time, both she and Zuckerberg would have handed in their resignations. I don't see that happening unless they are forced out, which they won't be as long as they're printing money.
19
Perhaps someone can enlighten me. I seem to be missing something. Ms. Swisher references "payoffs to alleged sexual harassers all over the system".
The obvious current case is Andy Rubin who was paid some $90 million by Google for his efforts in developing the Android platform and also left the company amid sexual harassment allegations.
Simple questions: Why would the compensation of Mr. Rubin be interpreted as being tolerant of sexual harassment? What does one thing have to do with the other?
It seems to me to be an invalid linkage.
4
This is the result when you drop out of college and don’t have a well rounded education. Philosophy, Civics anyone? There’s no empathy for other people nor is there a sense of responsibility to society beyond slapping your name on some hospital, museum or arena and believing you can run a charitable foundation better than the professionals. So tired of the hubris.
56
@Gaiter
There are enough college educated charlatans out there. Dirty Kavanaugh comes to mind, plus Trump family, Sessions, Kellyanne, Whitaker, etc
Good values and compassion cannot be taught in college. Oh Ted Cruz.
9
But.. it's the American way! MAGA!?
This condemnation of Facebook, and other technology companies, regarding the spread of fake news, lies, etc. is totally misplaced. All that these technology platforms do is allow the faster spread of this information. We, the consumer, are to blame in two ways. First, we accept the information as true. Second, we spread the information to others.
Rather than blame technology companies, we should look inward and ask why we accept information that we should know is false. Conservatives lie, liberals lie, Russians lie, anyone with an interest in politics and money will likely lie. I believe it is entirely up to us to learn the truth and then make decisions.
5
If your statement... "And that is on Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief executive and chief operating officer, as well as a panoply of top executives." ...holds any water with you, then why do you and other pundits lazily continue to rely on the "tech bro" trope you trot out later in the article... "That man in the mirror is typically a man, and a young, white, privileged one, whose capacity for self-reflection is about as big as Donald Trump’s ability to stop hate-tweeting."
No, it's not. It's all sorts of people including the apparently untouchable Sheryl Sandberg, who is obviously just as culpable as the clueless Zuckerberg.
Lean in, Kara, and "avoid the Groupthink" that you and others perpetuate by lazily demonizing "white men" to the exclusion of East Asians, South Asians, Middle Easterners, Africans and countless other stand-ins for "diversity" in Silicon Valley who have done just as much damage, in your view, to our societies as their autocratic governments have.
12
The Chinese have infiltrated at the highest levels, and the motives are not good. From Facebook go Google to Seagate to all our data aggregators, they're infiltrating from below and above when possible.
We're about to go down.
2
Thank you, Kara, for a sobering assessment of leadership failures at Facebook. This column should be required reading in every leadership course at Harvard, Wharton, etc.
16
Spot on, Kara. In the "Value Diversity" bucket, I'd add, invest in "Wisdom"; make recruitment of older employees with rich life experience a strategic priority.
Wisdom alone would not have entirely prevented the sorry mess. But it certainly would have mitigated some of the jaw-dropping naivete that prevailed and continues to prevail at FB.
19
Every breach in security and the corresponding data and individuals whose information was mishandled and compromised, is known to Facebook. How about holding them accountable by requiring them to pay a penalty, mandated by law, to each individual injured by the lapse in security which they were responsible for? While I don't see anyone in politics with the spine to put forward and fight to get approved such legislation, that type of penalty is just the sort that would grab the attention of these ivory-towered megalomaniacs who might think twice before mishandling their next breach of security and subsequent cover up which, after all, is only a matter of time before happening yet again.
10
@ManhattanWilliam I left Facebook in March post-CA. While your suggestion of a penalty is good, I would appreciate them just contacting me to tell me the damage they have done. It is not like they have no clue where to find me. I know - a very low bar.
2
I do not share Swisher's optimism about the tech industry. Even with the five fixes she suggests they will continue to make products that consumers do not need, disrupt the human social interactions necessary to a decent way of life and violate personal privacy. Tech is an industry build on unnecessary products that addict consumers while the planned obsolescence of the product is accelerated. The tech industry has erroded personal relationships and accelerated the balkanazation of America. The New Yorker reports this week that electronic records in your doctors office consumes time doctors should spend with patient and provides inefficient and ineffective data to health works. After this close examination of healthy care let's examine the fallout to our other institutions.
22
Absolutely correct! People used to live just fine before and without Facebook. It should be relegated back to cat and baby picture swaps.
2
Perhaps truly revealing that young(er) white men are actually not much different than old(er) white men. Once they grab the reins of power their once lofty mottos morph into ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Sad.
13
Hey Google, make it rain...
Till that happens every techie is nothing but a self proclaimed "Stable Genius"
18
Facebook is a tech cult built around a one-trick pony who's indifferent to the real world.
All Zuckerberg can muster in the way of a worldview or purpose is no deeper than a Pepsi jingle “the world more open and connected.” (After several banana peel slips -- like helping elect Trump -- there's a new slogan: "To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.") A cynic might note that their new slogan accurately reflects the effect of Trump's election.
Of course the real meaning based on what facebook actually does is "To give advertisers all the personal data they need to precisely identify and target likely customers without their permission." In other words, connecting sellers with buyers who don't know they're being sold.
It says a lot that Zuckerberg confuses an aggregation of on-line like-mindeds with genuine community. It's like thinking Soylent, a "meal substitute"popular with technistas that tastes like liquid concrete, is actually food.
That Soylent is real food and facebook is real community betrays the basic alienation of technistas from the real world. Authenticity is nothing more than a branded product versus a generic one.
The NYTimes reported that Zuckerberg approached a GOP Rep during a hearing break to say Democrats were gunning for facebook. The GOP rep was stunned that Zuckerberg's takeaway wasn't that facebook has a problem but that Democrats are the enemy.
Wonder where he got that idea from?
75
We used to have a simple and effective way to handle basic information, and opinions by and through media outlets. It was called the Fairness Doctrine. Reagan dismantled it, as he did many other media restrictions we had in place for decades, such as the old 7 and 7 rule, which restricted ownership of tv, and radio stations , as well as newspapers in a given market. The concept is simple, offer an opposing point of view from a credible source. The problem today is we have millions of ad hoc sources, most just repeating someone else's story, and few fact checkers because they are expensive, but oh so worth it. That's why I actually am pleased to pay my subscription to the NYT and WaPo. Good journalism gets to the truth, and we are lost without it. Sadly Facebook, despite all its tech, cannot tell what is true and what is not. It still takes a human to do that.
43
Ms. Swisher, This was one of your best. You're on fire!
Thank you for saying what needs to be said here. The boy emperor needs to be called out by your words, as you did when he was dripping with sweat in an interview that was on Frontline. You said you actually felt sorry for him and that you were like a mother making him feel badly. Bring it on Mom!
27
The work culture of Silicon Valley is more that even Hollywood, based around an approved immaturity. It was no different in the beginning when Apple dominated it decades ago.
The people who now call the shots in the Valley AND in San Francisco tend to be young, rolling in money no one has ever seen the like of, and deep inside tend to be more libertarian than anything else. Good luck. They have backed themselves into a playpen they will easily flee, leaving the rest of us wondering why they refused to grow up. The hippies when compared were the paragon of responsibility.
76
There's no free lunch, Facebook users. Wake up.
10
@Robin - Too true - and if it's free, you are the product.
7
Nontechie writing you from San Francisco
The fire haze is thick, babies have had to spend over a week indoors. But more so our hearts break for the camp fire victims. Climate change is absolutely a contributing factor.
As for the culture of tech, there’s harm in the unreflective mirrortocracy and self minded ness. It’s a lack of seeing one’s influence on others. Hey our hospitals are better due to Benihof and Zuck. And childhood diseases are fought hard by Chan Zuckerberg. So I disagree with the business practices, but don’t condemn. Especially Sandberg. Rather this is a call to awareness and care..that can get us further Kara.
5
@ModerateNewMom The hospitals are better thanks to Benihof & Zuck??? Um - no. My daughter almost died due to the lack of adequate care she received at Zuck's wonderful hospital. Why? Lack of adequate insurance. Jonas Salk fought childhood diseases - Chan Zuckerberg is just using childhood diseases for self-glorification. You want "awareness and care"? Promote Medicare For All. Promote increasing taxes on greedy tech billionaires to provide access to housing, childcare, and education for poor families. These blood suckers are killing people with their greed. They are criminals and need to be held accountable for their crimes.
14
@ModerateNewMom In some ways, Sandberg is the bigger diappointment for me as she is the Operating Officer (adult in the room) and has "leaned in" to the money over integrity.
Facebook has created this generation's "war machine," with the battlefield being social media, freedom and democracy. So the question I have for you is this: if a company sold weapons to authoritarian regimes around the world, and then wanted to put their name on SF General, would you be for or against?
1
Mark Zuckerberg (sugar mountain) is in essence no different than Donald Trump though he might be horrified at the suggestion. Obviously the growth of his co. comes before all else. Democracy included. sound familiar? The damage FB has done is far beyond any benefits bestowed upon the planet by his highness. It is not a stretch to equate Donny and Marky.
They both have sold there souls . Greed. Never enough is a sickness . Unfortunately, the people of the planet suffer from these 2 meglomaniacs..
15
I'm done with Facebook and closed my account. I will miss following family and friends but the irresponsible, unethical behavior of Facebook's violations of private information is beyond the pale. Never again. Goodbye Facebook and other social media; it's not worth it.
71
@Kelli Hoover Same here. I also quit Twitter. Quitting both those dreadful sites greatly improved my mood.
10
Add one more. Help our leaders to develop intelligent and effective laws to regulate the problems we now see.
Over twenty years ago I told an audience of internet executives that people do not want their privacy taken without consent. The response was that people don’t care. They accept the bargain. To which I replied just wait till they find out what you’ve been doing. Twenty years later we see what people really think. Hope it’s not too late.
20
There is a small group of facebook profiteers & another group, billions strong, of facebook suckers.
16
Reading through some of the comments it is surprising to find views that "tech" makes the world better, end of story, stop complaining. Success and money bring overreaching of which Google and Facebook have wheelbarrows full. Regulation seems in order.
11
The solution has always been relatively simple, even if it is not politically achievable.
Because they operate over public airwaves and bandwidth, the Internet and social media are public utilities, no different than electricity, water, sewer and landline telephones, and therefore they should be regulated as such.
As with any public utility, in exchange for their monopoly right to own and profit from the public airwaves, they should be regulated and required to show how their business practices promote the public interest.
Over 100 years ago, the social philosopher John Dewey warned that, without effective public oversight and guidance, the control and direction of technology would simply default to the owners of the technology, resulting in short-sighted concerns based on private profits rather than the public interest.
Clearly that is what happened in the case of Facebook, Apple and Amazon. They are using their monopoly powers to thwart the public interest and, as this article documents, they refuse to accept any legitimate public oversight over their business activities, despite the large impact that those activities have on the general public.
49
@John M
Indeed! Where is the "Fairness Doctrine" when we need it most?
1
@John M First Amazon and Facebook are not public utilities. Not in the same way that the power and water companies are. You wouldn't last very long in Portland, Maine if I turned off your water and electricity. Don't use them if you don't like them ...simple. They are a luxury. There is no such entity as “the public,” since the public is merely a number of individuals. Do Trump supporters and HRC supporters have the same interests? They don't. Since the concept is undefinable, it's an easy slogan for wanna be fascists.
4
Groupthink is rife in California, and not just in the tech companies . Just look at the plan to close Diablo Canyon Nuclear power plant - the largest source of clean electricity in the state.
Would Facebook Google ( or even Musk ) stand up to prevent this ? Not a hope - these companies have to fit in and be on the side of the current fashionable ideology ,I,e that we can make a serious inroad into emissions with low-density and dilute renewable technologies
4
KS, great article, thanks for your talented insight. Possibly MZ hasn't grown up yet, and no doubt he had great simple ideas about the creation of his platform, but we need to accept the fact he was basically over, over, naive. And he was over his head, too. And he didn't trust people, otherwise he would have talked it out. The tech age has created monsters of people. Success and money, all comes too quickly, and easily. So many times I have warned my boys of the pitfalls of the social platforms. I am not a winner, guess just a complainer.
9
What is this Facebook, Twitter and Google of which you speak. My life has done nothing but improve and I have none of these things in my life.
If you get sucked into a scam you have to admit that you are at least partially at fault.
10
@Chris
You've never used a search engine? Seriously?
Social media is one highly unnecessary thing, but the internet and the various search engines, most notably Google, that enable us to access information easily have become indispensable.
Whatever search engine you use, be aware that they collect information on everything you look at unless you invoke their "private browsing" option.
3
Suggestion #6: Stop equating money with superiority. They're not the same thing.
Yes, many rich people do a lot of good with their money - Zuckerberg could build 100,000 affordable houses with his $60 billion (which is rapidly declining). But they still operate as if their extreme wealth is entirely justified; they have the tendency to think they're rich because they're superior and they're superior because they're rich. This arrogance is a centuries-old failing of the rich - in the past they convinced themselves that God favored them above all others, and their wealth was ironclad proof.
God doesn't play such a central role in Silicon Valley - instead they claim to worship intelligence and creativity, but the thinking is just as circular: They're rich because they're smarter than most people, and if they weren't smart they wouldn't be rich. Case closed. Humility goes out with the trash, and they feel entitled to dismiss as not-too-bright any critic who isn't as rich as they are.
The fact is that they're delusional: They don't worship intelligence and creativity. Their god is money, the same god the rich have always venerated. They've allowed wealth to blind them to reality, and that makes them as dim as the rich as a class have always been. Dim enough to create hardship and death for millions, too dim to see that their hubris can never end well, and in the end dumbfounded at seeing the heads of their fellow billionaires on pikes at the city gates.
114
@William LeGro Zuckerberg could maybe build 100,000 affordable houses with his 60 billion dollars but not in California where it's most needed. State, county, & municipal legislators have made it impossible for new housing to be built.This is a Democratic controlled state from top to bottom. Affordable housing has always been one of the cornerstones of our party. This state should be a showcase on how well we can execute this policy. Instead, it's yet another example of our complete intellectually bankruptcy. It's symptomatic of a much bigger problem. The growing divide between some Democrats who want to practice what they preach & fanatical progressives who want to strangle everything. Environmentalists will go to the barricades to stop any housing projects from being built here. Mind you we are talking about affordable housing for working class families. Thanks to their efforts the gateway to middle-class security, has been pushed beyond their reach. The ease with which environmentalists can stop housing developments is a direct result of the numerous local & state laws that favor environmental concerns over affordable homes. The result: millions of people are without access to high-quality low cost housing. Do we really need people in the party who are subverting core American values? If we can't fix affordable housing here then we are a joke. All of us have a stake in solving California’s (and soon,the nation’s) housing-affordability crisis.
3
@Bill Brown
Whether those houses could actually be built is not the point. I could have said he has enough to buy a Prius for every man, woman and child in Santa Clara County and still have $10 billion left over. The point is that Zuckerberg et al. have made enormously excessive amounts of money in very sleazy ways while marketing themselves as geniuses, smarter than everybody else, with answers to all the problems of the world, progressives who donate tons of money for the good of all mankind. In reality, they are people who don't understand that the ends don't justify the means - in fact the means change the ends, at not in good ways.
10
@William LeGro
Nice description of the inevitable path that Calvinist/Social Darwinist beliefs take there, William.
It's 'I me mine--I deserve it because I have it, and I have it because I deserve it".
It's circular reasoning of the roundest type.
8
Gotta love tech bashing. Let’s just paint the entire industry as self absorbed white guys and complain that it isn’t really making the world a better place.
Technology isn’t going to solve our social problems and it frequently amplifies them by putting more power in our hands. A hateful murderer with a gun will do a lot more damage than a hateful murderer with a stick. A demagogue can reach far more people with a Twitter account or a Facebook page than he can without. The cotton gin is more famous for making slavery worse than it is for its actual purpose. Automated factories reduce our need for workers but not our workers’ need for the money that work provides.
The inability to solve social problems is not a failing of the technology industry, it’s a failing of society as a whole.
The internal culture at many tech companies does need significant improvement and doing so will improve the lives of their employees, but it’s not going to stop people from using the products maliciously. For example, Facebook will still be a social network even if it does everything you listed here and the Russians will still find ways to leverage that network to sow extremism and chaos in rival countries. The problem we really need to fix is how people react to disinformation.
11
I am mystified when we expect tech companies to make any behavioral change when the rest of Corporate America does not. At least until they are forced to do so by their customers, shareholders or the Government.
There is no sustained opposition to FB or other major tech company policy by any of the three groups. On the other hand the over the top slobbery behavior by Cuomo and De Blasio on the Amazon giveaway was a sight to behold.
We can complain here but no one in power is listening. Use any of these technologies only when you have to, as I do. Most of the time it is inactive on my browsers with tracking and adblocking technologies always on or deleted from my phones.
In fact I have unopened boxes of their "smart" speakers. Until I am assured they are not listening in or using other data to model my behavior and buying patterns I will be using maximum security available to block all of them and this is a moving target.
5
I'll offer a thought on diversity. I'm retired now but I worked for one of the big computer companies throught the 80s and into the 90s, before changing industries.
Diversity it exactly what made it work back then. The computer industrty was a fast growing, first generation business. It drew people for wherever it could find them. We had people with all sorts of different industry and academic backgrounds and lots of different nationalities. Women filled quite a few management roles.
(We lost quite a number of those women to companies that "needed" to appoint a senior woman somewhere. Unfortunately, some went from a real role to being the token woman hired purely as window dressing).
Over time though the situtation changed. IT is now the big established business and that dynamic of hiring from all over the place has gone. The business is the worse for it.
6
Here are five better suggestions:
1. Throw them in jail
2. Fine them, big. Billions of dollars.
3. Tax them
4. Regulate them
5. Enforce the regulations (see #1)
39
I did not grow-up in the Facebook world, but I have observed how it consumes your life once you establish an account. From then on, the company takes over by picking your friends to providing a page to showcase the life that you want to have but probably don't. The company manipulates every element of your existence while gleaning as much data as possible to sell to advertisers. Bringing the world together is not the real goal. Making the most money is the real one. And the world? Every ugly mess worldwide is Facebook inspired, including the US where our current President was elected with much help from, once again, Facebook.
11
@James Allen: This is quite the exaggeration.
Facebook doesn't pick your friends. You do. It does make suggestions based on who is already friends with friends you already have, but you're not obligated to pick them. You CAN go looking for friends on your own. Nothing on your page (aside from some possible ads) gets posted unless you put it there or allow friends to post. If you don't click on other ads or play games or use FB to log into other sites, it actually collects very little information on you.
I use it, and I'm appalled (though not too surprised) by what is comping to light about the company's behavior. But using scare tactics is not the way to educate people about the level of control they have over their accounts.
4
When the VC's are investing in more social media startups-- as if we need anymore pointless chat/dating apps, or platforms for more self promoting celebrities doing what they do best, which is usually nothing, it doesn't surprise me that the tech industry has reached this much needed gut check. To me, technology should be used first and foremost to solve problems, and move the species forward, and some tech giants are heavily investing in this, which is potentially good. But the public trust with these companies is tenuous at best.
It seems though, that things in the tech industry are upside down. We're top heavy with the social media stuff, and the more important uses technology can provide are on the bottom. I have no problem with social media per se, but lets keep it in perspective.
4
@John
While Steve Jobs’ family has my sympathy for the loss of a young father, I wondered if he ever regretted spending his life convincing people that everyone needs Apple products instead of working on really useful things like medical products and cures.
2
As someone who will be wearing a N95 respirator mask to the grocery store today, may I say: Let's not conflate fire, California, end times and Facebook.
This fire -- the one causing all the smoke here and in the Bay Area -- is burning in a forest that is an entire culture removed from Silicon Valley. The closest connection I have seen is that some fire victims left San Francisco when tech money made housing too expensive for them to stay. Many of those killed have been relatively older and/or poorer and/or less connected to or less able to heed warning systems, which probably did not work as well as they should have. The fire is not a metaphor for the need to regulate tech and using it as such does nothing to address the very real problems that are currently causing death and destruction in California.
Having said that, however, if someone in Silicon Valley, Stanford, Berkeley, Cal Tech, or any of the UC's or CSU's or elsewhere could come up with new technology to address the causes or results of fire(s), I'd be happy and happy for them to make the millions or billions they would deserve.
33
@JT Smith; "Having said that, however, if someone in Silicon Valley, Stanford, Berkeley, Cal Tech, or any of the UC's or CSU's or elsewhere could come up with new technology to address the causes or results of fire(s), I'd be happy and happy for them to make the millions or billions they would deserve. "
The answer lies with PG&E and other utility companies putting their equipment underground where windy weather and equipment malfunctions can't cause the surrounding landscape to ignite.
That would be expensive, but the costs from these fires is even more expensive, considering the loss of life and community, to say nothing of the emergency personnel who risk their lives fighting the fires.
We have a new governor comping in. Maybe Mr. Newsom needs to make it a priority.
12
@MJ
Decades of ratepayer undergrounding fees (in the Billions) assessed on top of utility bills vaporized when PG&E declared bankruptcy after dancing with Enron.
2
I wonder what the writers of the Declaration of Independence would say if pressed to answer how they feel about all the rebels that have arisen when inspired by the Declaration's words.
Words inspire actions. To blame Facebook for the dissemination of words is as silly as blaming publishers for the content of books. Yes, an argument can be made, but isn't the responsibility with those who incite violence with their words and those who respond to the written word with violence?
Mark Zuckerberg is not responsible for deaths in India and Myanmar.
6
@Janet The responsibility for hate-sparked violence is not only with those who spew to hate, but with those who pay attention to it & allow their actions to be guided by it.
4
@Janet
But we do judge publishers by the content of their books. And if we dislike the content, we don’t buy the books.
Charging customers for Facebook might curtail use of objectionable content, and at a minimum the source of content and ads should be published on FB.
There is no reason to trust Zuckerbeg or his minions. People who use FB will learn that they can live very well without it or Instagram.
There can be no trust on the Internet if we depend upon third parties such as those arrogant and unaccountable people at FB. Until and unless there is a peer-to-peer means for those of like interests to communicate with each other there can be no trusted Internet site.
Maybe blockchain offers a solution, but until a robust, open source, non-proprietary application is available, blockchain remains a promise. Perhaps we are at a stage of prospective peer-to-peer exchanges not unlike where we were when that guy started selling books on the Internet 20 or so years ago. Amazon has thrived because it meets needs people's needs. Yes, Amazon has sharp elbows and is far from perfect, but it solves problems that people did not know that they had before Amazon introduced it. It delivers tangible value, and does not do harm of which I am aware. Very much unlike FB.
2
As an LA resident, I'm curious why the NYT would title this article "Can California be Saved" on the main Opinions page (vs "Facebook and the Fires" at the top of the article itself). Is the haze really so thick that NYers are unable to distinguish SF/Silicon Valley's problems from those (and there are many, but different ones) facing Southern California?
5
This is such first world spoiled non-sense. The tech revolution has enabled huge progress in our world society in terms of communication and connection. It has made it impossible for many communist regimes (China) to defeat the eventual democratization brought about by citizens access to the internet. It allows rural people in India to access banking and the web via cell phones. We should declare the tech revolution a disaster because some people believe everything they read on Facebook? Or, some people are too stupid to take the cell phones away from their kids? This is the wrong soap box for Ms. Swisher to be on.
10
@NYT reader Heard of the Great Fire Wall? Or, the Chinese surveillance state? How about the million Uighurs held in detention? With the help of tech, the CCP can hold democracy at bay forever.
And, Google, FB, Apple, want nothing more than to cater to the Reds.
6
Good list to which I'd add and place first: do something truly useful. Not just cool or convenient but things that make life actually better for ordinary people. The app economy is a joke. We can all live with out knowing exactly how many steps we took or how exciting our orgasms were. Help fix health care, the climate and housing-- big stuff like that. If not at least drop the arrogant posturing and smug tone.
11
California will survive and remain a center of technical development and enterprise. The investment and devotion to public high education is persisting and cranking out huge numbers of highly educated people who will continue to make it a great center of innovation.
The forests may all burn down, though, and the incredible diversity of living species vastly diminished.
Consider Texas, if it was not for the Federal government it’s technology would be limited to petroleum, agriculture, and health care services. The state has decided to teach it’s kids that science is just another belief system like Buddhism, that the Bible is the only real source of truth. The respect for human knowledge and enterprise is what makes California so much different from Texas.
8
If diversity as the 'right thing' is insufficient to change these companies, I suggest we try cold-blooded capitalism: diverse teams produce better results as a result of bringing multiple perspectives to an otherwise effective collaborative process. Divergent thinking that informs convergent action always wins.
I'd rather see purer forms of motivation, but as long as we see progress let's not be too critical of alternative pathways to achieve it.
3
You people are hysterical. You get upset about all the wrong things and there is plenty to be upset about.
A hint: It is all about the health of Economy, both short term and long term.
4
With all due respect to the worthy work on Silicon Valley done by The New York Times, I wish the Times would cast an equally critical and relentless eye on the business empires in its own home town. That would be Wall Street. The Times' attention was missing in action prior to the Great Recession. And it still looks as though you are giving a pass to the hometown team. If you don't want your work on Silicon Valley to be seen as schadenfreude, apply the same standard and vigor to your reporting on the financial industry.
144
Facebook != California. Nor does Silicon Valley. So please stop trying to hard to apply a fire metaphor, stemming from an event where people are dying, to some techno rant.
10
The bad decision-making at FB and Google would not be so devastating if they did not have near monopolistic power. And Amazon, while more nimble footed, is now getting some blow back from their phony "competition " for selecting HQ2. Monopolies are not only dangerous to consumer choice and pricing. They may pose an even greater threat to democracy and a pluralistic open society.
The NYT investigation of FB response to the manipulation of our elections is chilling. Don't expect weak-kneed politicians to tackle this problem without the voters turning up the heat and keeping the pressure on. Thanks to Kara for shining a light on the downsides of big tech on society.
4
These tech platforms today are only ghosts of what they could be and are built like the straw hut in the Three Pigs fable. They are merely masking the skeletons underneath- data mining and advertising structures- which are the real brick houses. I believe a major problem with online platforms and social media publishing outlets as built and operating today is that the builders see free speech with a myopic focus- free speech meaning simply the ability to say anything and everything with no filter. It’s an opinion that many hold up as the basis of all other freedoms, the bedrock of our constitution, but is actually a precarious structure to build a community on.
Did our founders really see absolute value in all speech and call for every word uttered by anyone to be held sacred? Hardly. Should the powerful have the absolute right to lie to the masses and spread the falsehood through the media? Should the powerful platforms and publishers defend those lies as a right to an opinion- even when it’s an obvious lie? Should the line of censorship be drawn only at the point of incitement to violence, when the buildup of lies is obviously leading toward violence and oppression?
These questions might have been asked first but the underlying motivation and the most effort put forth was in structuring the money making potential from the veneer of community and communication that were the asserted purpose of these sites. Those assertions were lies and we’re paying the price now.
6
The problem with this kind of writing is that it's nothing more than a series of assertions, with only the sketchiest of anecdotal evidence, and next to no analytical thinking. Here's one example: the writer hammers "Silicon Valley" for it's lack of diversity, but exactly what does she mean by this term? Because I live smack dab in the middle of what you might call "Greater Sillicon Valley," and I'm here to tell you that 90% of the houses sold in my neighborhood in the past six years have been purchased by Indian or Chinese immiigrants who've moved here to work in tech. Many of my neighbors, friends and acquaintances have founded their own companies as a matter of fact. Likelwise, taken together, these ethnicities constitute a large majority of students in the local district.
When the New York Times turns it's 10000 watt eye on a topic it's only natural for an echo chamber to spring forth complete with its own fully elaborated received wisdom, and I suspect that's going on here. Doesn't the title of the one work the writer cites here reveal a little something of her prior biases? It's becoming the fashion to see high tech industries as producing a lot of social evil, and maybe they are. But staying safely and righteously in pre-established lanes of thought does not further understanding.
It's ironic that the writer tut-tuts about avoiding group think. I'd say: Look in the mirror sister.
16
Silicon Valley's enterprise is business as usual for capitalism. They are not in it to cure the world but to make money. Why are so many naive social critics upset that they've done just that? What product is not marketed by its power to change your life? What company does not trade on a false narrative in order to reward stockholders? Who expects Silicon Valley to "solve homelessness"? Hire with diversity, YES, but cure malignant social ills? Come on. Grow up. If FB is marketing one's personhood, this is an alarming dysfunction, but it does not imply license to personify it. If it's that thoroughly integrated it into one's life then fix that. It's not a living thing. It is not a person. No matter what the supreme court says. Solving homelessness, traffic gridlock, and fascist leadership is the job of human beings. We are not FB. FB is not us.
4
Silicon Valley is a cess pool of egoism and bad behavior. California, writ large, is not. The only thing California needs "saving" from is arrogant and self-righteous New Yorkers.
6
Maybe Mr. Zuckerberg can forget his hard-core capitalist principals for a while and use his financial clout to encourage Congress to attack climate change and save his state.
3
Tech is all about automation, and automation is all about improving our quality of life and the human condition (even if it doesn't seem like it, sometimes). Think of the progress we have made, in every aspect of life, from farming to building to communications. Science is the basis, technology is the driver, and automation is the realization that has the best chance of improving our quality of life. The more one person can produce, the more society as a whole benefits.
But automation can't police human ingenuity. That is a basic problem. For a company like facebook... try to imagine the number of postings made every day and the literal impossibility of being able to actually review them all. Google faces a similar problem with YouTube. Twitter, and all other services face similar problems. There is not magic trick that solves this problem. There are a lot of nasty people out there, and a lot of bot-driven interests that oppose having an enlightened society.
And technology also doesn't solve inequity in societies... inequity can only be solved by laws and government... and human beings, in general (and I hate to say it)... are really not sufficiently forward-looking to enact the kind of laws or have the kind of government that enables an equitable society to be built. The U.S. is sitting up to its elbows in this muck.
-Matt
2
@MattZN
We used to have such people--one was Lyndon Johnson who believed in a Great Society. He also championed civil rights. He believed in a government that provided services to its citizens.
Technology may not solve inequity, but those companies really ought to consider paying a few dollars in taxes so the government can do what it should do instead of fighting every local tax initiative tooth and nail.
Oh, and there's this magic trick called "A.I." Plenty of surveillance of questionable postings can be performed with that new-fangled A.I. thing.
2
Sorry. The desire to rewrite history to cover one's tracks is understandable, as tech implodes.
But nobody with a significant platform was "hard on tech". Nobody.
The Silicon Valley wildfire has been raging out of control for more than a decade.
The tech media stood by and watched it happen, fawning all over those innovative "disrupters" the whole time.
It was yet another "watchdog" of democracy that failed to bark, much like the financial and business "journalists" in the decade leading up to the financial cataclysm of 2008.
The consequences of the gross negligence of the business media were and continue to be profound.
The consequences of that of the tech media may very well be an order of magnitude worse when all is said and done.
And the extraordinary promise of new technologies like AI is at risk, because Silicon Valley has squandered our trust, perhaps irretrievably.
Silicon Valley is at a crossroads. The way it responds to the series of crises it is becoming engulfed in will determine whether the decade of the 2020's will be the best in the history of humanity, or the worst.
Unfortunately, we are currently on a trajectory for the latter.
The former will require Silly Valley to pull off the most important and difficult "pivot" in history; a "moonshot", if you will.
2
I have one more modest proposal. Return to the formerly hallowed concept that all college students should be exposed to the liberal arts, including philosophy, and especially ethics. These are not outdated, but rather timeless principles which can guide us all in our ethical decision making and personal development. The deterioration in the overall quality of our culture can reasonably be tied, at least in part, to the failure to support a liberal education, arguably especially for scientists and engineers, who are often exempted from these core subjects.
64
@simon
There's an awful lot of philosophy that is outdated and damaging. It was painful to slog through in my own liberal arts education, though explained how various parts of history fit together. And there are at least three schools of ethics, which sometimes run into each other and sometimes conflict in thorny situations. It's great to have that kind of grounding, but critical thinking skills, empathy for others, and the imagination to create in a rapidly changing world are just as -- perhaps more -- important.
1
Diversity is not a problem - it's simply a choice. There is no constitutional mandate for diversity and plenty of monumental achievements in history were conducted by relatively homogenous groups.
6
I'm curious as to what research the author thinks shows a business case for ethnic/gender diversity. My understanding is that there is none but for some correlation work, which seems likely to just reflect the fact that successful highly profitable companies can afford to spend money on the latest social fad. Another is replacing assigned desks /offices with large areas of unassigned "seats" for use a few hours at a time.
1
Give me a break. Compare Silicon Valley to Wall Street or Hollywood. You have the same type of problems. It's money and concentration of power and markets that create this behavior. It has nothing to do with California. California is fine.
Silicon Valley has its issues and needs much more regulation, which the tech companies will resist.
34
@skinny and happy
what those techies lack is :
basic ethics,
basic morality,
basic responsibility for their actions,
basic self- reflection skills
don 't forget : BEFORE any new drug, invention which is intended for the public, the FDA checks it out and approves/ flunks it. why not these companies ? their product(s) are aimed for mass distribution. the potential adverse effects of these are obvious.
and our Government not only does nothing about it - trump wants to cut down / eliminate regulation even further.
what do you think will be the results if, for example, manufacturers of new surgical devices, or drugs, or giant cranes used to build high rises would not have to pass approval !? you guessed it.
someone here mentioned Libertarianism : those advocate back to the Wild West - to say the very least.
good luck to the crumble of the Empire.n maybe not tomorrow or next week, but eventually. that's the nature of things.
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Every time one reads one of these articles it is helpful to remember that much of the institutional press is still holding a huge grudge against Silicon Valley not only for destroying their business model but also their monopoly on information and widely shared opinions. The issues that are pointed out in this article are hardly confined to the tech sector and are characteristic of most of capitalism, including (and occasionally especially) the press. The reason that the press is on the warpath against Silicon Valley specifically are:
1) Silicon Valley has threatened and diminished the profits, power, and prestige of the institutional press (as mentioned above) AND
2) Unlike most institutions and businesses in our society, in Silicon Valley one can become rich without going to the "right" schools, schmoozing with politically or socially influential people, and holding (or convincingly pretending to hold) the "right" opinions. This leads to figures like Peter Thiel, who don't have any need at all to conform to social pressures abetted by the press and can bring them to heel on occasion.
So take all articles like this with a huge grain of salt.
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WE individuals have responsibility. WE have the ability to recognize nonsense, we have the ability to walk away from electronic devices, we have the ability to decide what is true and what is not. This blaming the industry for ridiculous information that influence us is not what we need. We need to wake up the intellectually deficient, un curious, mentally lazy. 50% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, 70% believe in the creationist theory of creation. 70% do not know what the Mueller investigation is. This is not Silicon Valley's fault. Millions watch FOX lies each hour.
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@RichardHead Massive intervention into cults while desirable seems somewhat unattainable. It's likely easier to regulate the people who actually have some grasp of reality, like corporate leaders and corporations. They are not oblivious to what it is that they are doing. I do not believe that is the case with the ignorant majority you reference. So, really, it is Silicon Valleys fault because they intentionally take advantage of the weak minded. Much like any religion.
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We few are not the problem. It is the billions that think Facebook comes from cows.
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Nice going on the column, Frontline, and Times investigation. It is complicated but keep doing it.
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Reading this article has given me a much greater understanding of the Luddites.
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Speaking of the fires raging in California, the cause for it, so say the POTUS, is that "forest management is so poor" and there has been "gross mismanagement of the forests."
Since we have at the helm an omniscient boy-king who knows it all and is never ever wrong, the remedy is clear: "no more Fed payments!"
Stop these payments and the fires will dissipate!!
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Regulation.
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AT 2.448 trillion, California is the world's fifth largest economy. At 1.103 trillion, New York has a puny economy compared to California. Maybe you should write about how Amazon is going to help rescue New York.
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Right. When I saw the head-line, I thought I was going to read something of substance, maybe arguing that high taxes, or the high cost of living were going to undermine competitiveness. This is nothing but a bunch of group-think driven by a currently hot media meme.
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Of course the tech geeks are never held accountable. They learned from the masters---the empty suits in finance.
The only thing that matters in America is money. More money than anyone could ever spend. Just ask the business dweebs---like Bezos. The richest man in the world was just handed five billion taxpayer funded dollars for the promise of hiring up to 50,000 people in the next ten years to work for him. And make him even more money. The disease of greed extends well beyond Silicon Valley.
If "the toxic smoke is a bleak backdrop and an apt metaphor for where Silicon Valley now finds itself", it is also an apt metaphor for where America finds itself.
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@Concernicus Max Boot, (now Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations) said in an interview on Firing Line last week, that corporate success is our national security. This is taking the notion of 'What's good for GM is good for America' to soaring heights of importance including the excuse to make wars to protect profits. (GM's CEO was made Secretary of Defense by Eisenhower).
The lives of ordinary Americans seem to have lost their significance as anything other than servants to corporate success.
Our Constitutional protections have morphed from protecting the liberty of individuals to protections for corporations as in Citizens United protecting the First Amendment rights of corporations where corporate funding of elections and their backing of sympathetic politicians vies with citizens trying to eke out a living for their families.
We have a lot of work to do to rein in runaway corporate power and bend it back into serving society.
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All good suggestions for humans in general. I'm really disappointed in FB. It's worrisome that it's become such an integral part of all our lives that we can't put it down.
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@RCJCHC
You can put it down. You can turn it off.
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Thank you for this well written informative article, I appreciate this opinion vantage. Technology companies have responsibility and a great opportunity to help solve California’s droughts and current wildfire issues. First, can Silicon Valley please create a fire fighting drone, one of the size of a motorcycle that can carry a reasonable amount of fire retardant, afaik the latest drones can carry 25 times their own weight, startup opportunity? Cal fire are amazing, think about what could be achieved with better tools. Second, PG&E please use drones to inspect and manage your transmission grid, much cheaper than lawsuits, loss of property and lives, besides your market capitalization declines. Third, please have our new Governor in Sacramento make a priority of drought management, specifically working with his Technology Silicon Valley peers to fund and prioritize desalination plants technology and usage instead of waterways diversions. Technology can help solve these issues if we can focus on goals instead of debating politics.
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Given the vivid analogy to the devastating wild fires along with the eerie cover photo, I was hopeful that I would find something interesting in here, perhaps even some novel criticisms of the tech industry. But mostly I found all of the familiar NYT talking points about white privilege and diversity. It felt like a bait and switch.
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There is nothing wrong with hammering the fact that diversity is important, and those in power should be accountable for the ramifications caused by what they have control over.
@Maria. Diversity is only important to a small cadre of progressives. The vast majority of humans on this planet do not think about, worry about or complain about lack of diversity.
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I suppose this is simplistic. But it echoes in my head:
People can quit Facebook, like they do smoking, or eating too much cheese. And they can put their phone down, too.
They can move out of California if the costs and problems soar too high. This country is huge—huuuuge. California really is not worth the costs for everyone who's there. It'd be nice to fix California's problems—so it depends on how invested people are in the place. I was born and raised there, but got the heck out. It was the best decision of my life.
In our 'choice-saturated' digital market, people seem to have forgotten that they have choices about where to live, and what products they use.
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What does this have to do with California?
Climate change and technology impacts (odd to lump these together in the same article) are worldwide problems that need to be addressed by governments at all levels.
California is irrelevant in this discussion.
Corrupt ineffective politicians worldwide are the problem.
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California is important. I think what Kara is trying to point out, is that instead of VC money being poured into a scooter start-up, or a gaming app, maybe they should focus on more poignant problems.
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I have a sixth item to add to the list: please give some of that money back. The average tech worker makes a six figure salary, and gives none of it to charity. Tech companies organized against Prop C in SF, which makes companies making over $50M (!) give back to the community. The homeless can't afford the face masks that the wealthy are wearing to their cocktail bars and intramural dodgeball games, they're just going to have to accept the lung cancer that's the inevitable future of California on fire.
If you care about your community, participate in it. Say "hola" to your neighbors, attend board of supervisors meetings, and for God's sake, donate a little of that filthy lucre to charity.
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@Just some guy
If it is important to tax companies to provide funding for some social cause then it is reasonable that all companies should be taxed.
These cowardly proposals that are written so that they tax two or three successful companies because they have 'tons of money' are dishonest and shameful tax grabs and a main reason why everyone hates tax and spend liberals.
Dream on! The scions of silicon live in a bubble they protect fiercely. When you live in a disembodied island of wealth and power, issues of accountability, transparency and diversity cease to exist, as do qualities like imagination and empathy. They just become more and more like the robots they so admire. None of that messy, human stuff to distract from the fun.
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"...the brilliant digital minds who told us they were changing the world for the better might have miscalculated."
How about lied outright to turn a quick buck? Much of the Valley, where I live and work, is little more than a get rich quick scheme, while they are even worse than most of corporate America in regards to sexism, racism and abusing labor. All those gig workers: what about them? No health insure, no FICA, no 401k ... zero. Judging by the likes of Facebook, nothing more than a marketing scam.
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@Dev
Silicon Valley has produced software that reads MRI's more accurately, can predict parts failures in airliners and is leading the way in autonomous cars that will save millions from useless automotive deaths.
You overstate what they do it for and understate what they accomplish
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Lots of double standard here. Who is holding gun makers responsble for the fact that people use their products to kill each other? Meaningful regulation of these companies has to come from outside, not within, and a stern look at their business models. Society, not the companies, needs to decide if they can continue to exist as they presently operate.
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The internet and all of it’s potential is being undermined by people who are determined to monetize every scrap of content even as they data mine your activity to sell to others who have no reason to gave such knowledge in the first place.
I do not buy the whole screen addiction thing- that is just bad parenting and lack of self control. I was walking in a busy shopping center earlier this morning and every last person had their head buried in their cell phone- that includes customers and those supposedly working. I wonder what the loss of productivity related to such behavior has on the economy. I work for a hospital that has a strict policy regarding the use of such devices- if you can be seen by patients, family or visitors you do not use your personal devices. Use of company devices is strictly monitored for personal use as well. Every day I see people with earbuds in staring down at a cell phone while driving. This is not addiction- it is irresponsible behavior by people who apparently have no self control. They can help the,selves- they just don’t want to.
Diversity should not be pushed just for the sake of some quota. Many people self-filter themselves out of technology by not taking the degrees in demand. Go to any University’s College of Engineering. It will be very male and mostly a handful of types- not the rainbow pushed by the diversity police. There are already programs in place to encourage and mentor women and minorities in Engineering.
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If you've ever done any serious coding, you'll notice there's an inherent flaw to the process. By doing your job correctly, you've automated yourself out of the job. The perfect software doesn't require any maintenance. You've translated a certain task into binary. Time to move on.
Move on to what though? This is the core dilemma the tech industry faces. Tech can't ultimately function as an agent for change when tech is primary focused on remaining relevant. They always need the next project. Otherwise, they are intentionally engineering bad software to generate revenue. There's not a lot of grey area between the two poles.
Facebook appears to have placed itself in the "bad software" category. I agree the leadership needs to be held accountable.
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@Andy
If you actually code then you know that the least important part of the process is the code - the most important part is the idea and ideas are not automated
The entire upper-middle-class has discarded morality and religion, in favor of maintaining their privileged status at any cost. They may mouth pious platitudes about saving the planet and eliminating sexism and racism, but they are in it for the money and the power.
But don't worry - they're against Trump!
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@Jonathan best comments I've read in a long time
How about developing a government that would tax all corporations at consistent, progressive rates, and actually regulate their behavior?
A tax code that is able to be gamed, will be gamed. A less ethical path that leads to higher profits will always be taken by someone, as long as it is "legal". Do not vote corporate shills into Congress.
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Another thing that could help the "tech" community to become better stewards of capital, is to eliminate the prudent man clause which limits a VC's fund to 10 years. One reason VCs invest in so much tech garbage is because they are effectively legally barred from having patient capital to support investment in impactful technologies with long technical risk reduction timelines i.e. technologies based in physical and biological sciences. The prudent man clause is not relevant in today's environment where LPs are typically massively wealthy corporations, endowments, and foreign sovereign wealth funds.
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@chris - Interesting observation. I know what "VC" means (though I wouldn't assume all readers do) but what is an "LP", please? Thanks.
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@Joanne Limited Partnerships
Thank you for this excellent article. It is high time we hold these tech moguls responsible for their malfeasance. They have the means, and if they have neither the backbone nor the integrity, the time for a lesson in humility and responsibility to society is now - and long overdue.
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Money ( or profit if you will ) is going to find a way down to the lowest common denominator, like water finding cracks in the sidewalk.
If, you as a tech innovator live in a white sterile box, come up with some new thing, send it out into the world, and then wait for the profits to roll in, there usually is no room or concern about the consequences.
You are just counting the decimal points and zeroes in the bank account, and if they are large enough, then all else does not matter.
If what comes rolling back in is massive outcry (or government oversight) that affects those zeroes and decimal points, then there will be an adjustment made. - not before.
It is worked into the equation, so we have to change it.
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The soulless corporate culture of materialism and efficiency and winning at all costs is hardly specific to tech -- it has infected every sector of society, from education's obsession with assessment to the constant escalation of political hardball to the brink of fascism. The American elite bought into a phony narrative about capitalism and opportunity, and it serves that elite's purpose to target tech instead of looking at the broader economic forces -- including a pro-profit (as opposed to a pro-functioning market) ideology -- pushing social trends.
Silicon Valley idealism is not dead, but it was never all that people made it out to be in the first place. Perhaps we should be more wary of meta/narrative journalism in the first place.
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