An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination [calibre 4.99.5]

In May 2015, her husband, Dave Goldberg, had succumbed to cardiac arrhythmia while the couple was in Mexico for a friend’s fiftieth birthday celebration. The loss was devastating for Sandberg. Zuckerberg proved to be a source of great support; he helped arrange Goldberg’s memorial service and encouraged Sandberg in moments of doubt about her ability to lead again as she returned to work. She had begun to write Option B as a way of processing her grief while still overseeing the day-to-day operations of the company. In it, she recounted her rocky transition back to work and Zuckerberg’s full support following her loss. The two executives had never been closer, but to Sandberg’s team, she appeared distracted and short-tempered at times. Employees were walking on eggshells, wary of upsetting her.

In June 2016, there had been a particularly unpleasant incident that highlighted the pressure Sandberg was under as she dealt with her loss. She was in Washington, DC, on one of her quarterly visits to rub elbows with government officials and the press. Facebook’s lobbyists had set up a room in the Capitol Building as a pop-up for the company to showcase demonstrations of its new products, including the Oculus VR headset. The room was reserved for two cocktail hours, the first for members of Congress and the second for journalists. Sandberg was the guest of honor at both. She was coming off two days of back-to-back meetings with lawmakers and a speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute to try to defuse concerns of bias raised from the Trending Topics controversy. The cocktail hours were her last obligations before she could return home.

When she arrived at the Capitol, she was annoyed when she learned she wouldn’t have a chance to meet with Facebook’s employees from the Washington office before the event began. Also, she had asked to take a quick rest somewhere quiet, but it emerged that the lobbyists and Sandberg’s chief aide had neglected to prepare a private greenroom for her between the events.

“How could you forget? I can’t believe it!” she yelled at the aide in the hallway outside the room, in full view of several Washington-based employees. She then turned to a new employee, who was in training to replace her chief aide, and shouted that it was a gross oversight that couldn’t be repeated. “It was a full dressing-down,” one Washington-based employee recalled. Minutes later, the two young women could be heard crying in the bathroom. Greg Mauer, who had worked for former House Speaker John Boehner, asked his former colleagues to find a room in the building for Sandberg. The problem was solved, but the episode sent a sobering message. The COO had become easily angered and impatient after Goldberg’s death; staff were afraid of upsetting her. It had become a management problem, one former employee recalled: “No one wanted to speak up after that.”

When it came to the sticky question of how to handle their conservative critics, Sandberg turned, as was often the case, to Joel Kaplan for advice. He assured her that he could handle the controversy by convening a meeting of top conservative media executives, think tank leaders, and pundits in Menlo Park. It was critical, however, that Zuckerberg agree to play a prominent role in the event.

On May 18, sixteen prominent conservative media personalities and thought leaders—including Glenn Beck of Blaze TV, Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, and Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots—flew to Menlo Park for the afternoon gathering to air their concerns of political bias. Only Republican Facebook staff were allowed in the room, a former Facebook official said. That meant Peter Thiel, the company’s vocal pro-Trump board member, and a smattering of Washington staff, including Joel Kaplan. Zuckerberg, who over the years had made a point of never publicly declaring his political affiliation, led the ninety-minute meeting over cheese, fruit, and coffee. The guests politely aired their grievances. Some attendees urged Zuckerberg to hire more conservatives. Brooks of AEI warned that the platform should remain neutral on political content; Zuckerberg shouldn’t allow it to become a “monoculture” of a particular political or religious bent.7

Zuckerberg was effusive in his embrace of all political speech and promised that the company did not intend to stifle conservative views. He assured his guests that giving voice to all political viewpoints was good for the mission and the business.

Having an audience with the company’s CEO appeared to help. After the meeting, the group went on a tour of the campus and sat through a demonstration of the Oculus headset. Beck later wrote on his blog that Zuckerberg “really impressed me with his manner, his ability to manage the room, his thoughtfulness, his directness, and what seemed to be his earnest desire to ‘connect the world.’”8