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

Schrage had been one of her first hires. He stood out in Facebook’s freewheeling youth culture. He was twenty-four years older than Zuckerberg, and his idea of casual dress was unfastening the top button of his crisp dress shirts. He was an intimidating figure; with his piercing eyes; rectangular glasses; dark, curly hair; and low, gravelly voice, he bore a striking resemblance to film director Sydney Pollack.

Sandberg and Schrage, a Chicago native with a Harvard Law degree and a wry sense of humor, had bonded at Google. They were non-techies in an industry that looked down on MBAs and lawyers. For them, Davos, not TechCrunch Disrupt or the Wall Street Journal’s D conference, was the highlight of their year. And both voraciously kept up with the who’s-up-who’s-down rhythm of national politics.

In public, Schrage presented a friendly and earnest demeanor, though he was tough with reporters and known to quibble over details in stories, sometimes barking on the phone with editors about word choices in headlines. In May 2010, a glitch in Facebook’s systems allowed some users to peer into the private chat messages of other users. Schrage agreed to take questions from readers in Bits, a blog for the New York Times. He fielded roughly three hundred angry questions about the growing number of data abuses. “Reading the questions was a painful but productive exercise,” he said. “Part of that pain comes from empathy. Nobody at Facebook wants to make our users’ lives more difficult. We want to make our users’ lives better.”15

But behind the scenes, as witnessed by his performance in Senator Schumer’s office in 2009, Schrage executed a different part of the company’s public relations strategy. He employed more aggressive tactics to fight off the threat of regulations, some members of the communications and policy staff said. He saw it differently: “I felt the team needed to move beyond its historic roots in product communications and become more professional, better equipped to understand and address the privacy, regulatory, competitive, financial and other policy issues confronting Facebook,” Schrage said.

He also operated as a cudgel against critics who were complaining not only about what Facebook took away from users (data) but also about what users put onto the platform. As the platform grew, so, too, did the level of toxic content, which seemed particularly out of control among younger users.

In late January 2012, Bill Price, chairman of the board for the nonprofit child advocacy group Common Sense Media, described a meeting with Sandberg at Facebook’s new offices at One Hacker Way, in Menlo Park. The cofounder of San Francisco–based TPG Capital, one of the largest private equity companies in the nation, Price moved in the same circles of wealthy and politically connected Bay Area business leaders as Sandberg, serving alongside tech executives on the boards of organizations like the California Academy of Sciences.

But Common Sense Media was a real public relations problem for Facebook. The organization was a vociferous critic and part of a rising tide of protest from consumer, child advocacy, and privacy protection groups that were scrutinizing how Facebook was affecting young people and what it was doing with private data. Founder Jim Steyer, a former civil rights attorney and professor at Stanford, blasted the company in news articles and had just completed a book called Talking Back to Facebook, a critique of social media with regard to the social and emotional well-being of youth.

Since opening the platform to high school students in 2005, Facebook had faced concerns about youth safety and mental health.16 When not compulsively checking their posts for comments and likes, young users competed over who had the most friends. Reports of cyberbullying multiplied. Facebook ignored its own rule prohibiting children under the age of thirteen from holding accounts. In May 2011, Consumer Reports estimated that 7.5 million underage users were on the platform.17

As a condition for the meeting, according to Price, Sandberg had insisted that Steyer not participate. Price agreed, but not without issuing his own veto: Schrage. Yet, when Sandberg greeted Price with an embrace and a warm smile, he saw that Schrage was right behind her. Firmly, but without raising his voice, Price looked at Sandberg and asked, “What’s Elliot doing here?”

Schrage was in charge of policy, Sandberg reminded Price, and therefore the best person to speak for Facebook on youth-related issues. Price was visibly irritated, but he moved on. He had an important message to deliver and wanted their help, he told Sandberg. After he sat down, Sandberg slid into a leather chair next to Price, kicked off her shoes, and folded her legs under her. On the other side of the conference table, Schrage sat alone and played bad cop, folding his arms across his chest and glaring.