75. What Questions Would You Ask If You Were on the Facebook Board?

What this episode covers

Following Frances Haugen‘s incredible and awful revelations about Facebook‘s internal research, imagine you were on the Facebook board.  What questions would you ask?  What future would you help to build for the organization? SCRIPT: In October 2021 a former Facebook employee named Frances Haugen released a massive quantity of the company’s internal research that showed, in her words, “Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy,” and that “The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people. Congressional action is needed. They won’t solve this crisis without your help.” Seriously, if you haven’t seen the coverage of her statements and the substance of the documents themselves, it is really worth an hour of your time. It goes without saying that we have no insight into the effectiveness of Facebook’s board, and it certainly is a MASSSIVE and complex organization. So let’s offer their directors a generous helping of the benefit of the doubt and assume that they have embodied perfection up until now. And let’s also imagine that you’ve been appointed to their board and are about to begin your onboarding process, meeting executives, meeting directors, attending meetings. What questions would you ask? What answers would you find acceptable? Facebook isn’t a controlled company, so no single shareholder has the votes to veto big corporate changes. Given the privilege of having a voice at the table, what future could you envision for this extraordinary corporation - with all it’s talent, data, and influence - where instead of profiting from anger, hostility, and division, it did something…delightful?