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

In case anyone was confused about the room’s purpose, a paper sign was taped to the door with “War Room” typed in a large font. Inside, an American flag hung on one wall; another displayed digital clocks for Pacific Time, Eastern Time, Greenwich Mean Time, and the hour in Brasília, the capital of Brazil—the latter was of special interest to the group because Facebook was testing its new tools in the country, where elections were under way. Several oversize screens on the back wall displayed information being fed into a centralized dashboard Facebook had built to track the spread of content across the globe. On the fourth wall, television monitors were tuned to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and other cable networks.

In interviews with the press, Zuckerberg had described the fight against election interference as an “arms race” against foreign and domestic bad actors. The company had hired ten thousand new employees to help with security and content moderation, and its security team had dedicated more resources toward identifying foreign influence campaigns. Over the summer, the company announced that it had removed a network16 of Russian accounts aimed at influencing Americans ahead of the midterms, as well as a campaign of hundreds17 of Iranian and Russian accounts and pages engaged in disinformation efforts on behalf of their governments across parts of Europe and the Middle East.

“To see the way that the company has mobilized to make this happen has made me feel very good about what we’re doing here,” Samidh Chakrabarti, head of Facebook’s elections and civic engagement team, said to reporters. “We see this as probably the biggest company-wide reorientation since our shift from desktops to mobile phones.”

Zuckerberg and Sandberg had promised lawmakers that election security was their top priority. Among the ten thousand new employees were some prominent hires with big names in the intelligence and security worlds. They had approached Yaël Eisenstat, a forty-four-year-old veteran CIA officer, to lead the company’s team to combat election interference on the company’s business integrity side. Eisenstat was surprised by Facebook’s overture; she didn’t necessarily see herself as a fit for a private tech company with a dismal track record on election security. She had spent almost twenty years working around the globe for the U.S. government, fighting global terrorism. She had served as a diplomat and as a national security adviser to Vice President Biden and had worked in corporate responsibility for ExxonMobil.

Facebook had made Eisenstat the offer the same day in April that Zuckerberg testified before Congress on Cambridge Analytica. As she watched the hearing, she felt her interest being piqued by his promise that security in the midterms was his top priority, that he would throw Facebook’s full resources behind efforts to ensure the integrity of elections. The lifelong government servant felt duty-bound to bring her skills to the social network to help protect American democracy, and she was promised a leading position in that fight. On her employment contract, her title was “Head of Global Elections Integrity Ops.” She could hire as many people as she needed. She didn’t have a set budget.

In a celebratory message to friends and colleagues, Eisenstat wrote, “Everything about this role speaks to the core of who I am. I spent much of my career and my personal life defending democracy, and now I get to continue that fight on the global stage by helping protect the integrity of elections worldwide. I cannot imagine a more perfect role to combine my public service mindset with the impact and scale of the world’s largest social media platform,” she said.

From the first day Eisenstat entered MPK, on June 10, however, the mismatch was clear. The motivational posters around the buildings and the displays of expensive art were off-putting. She felt she had entered a fog of propaganda. The perks—the free food, transportation, and gadgets—struck her as over the top.

On her second day, she was told that there had been a mistake in her title. She was not “head” of any team, but was instead given the nebulous title of “manager.” Facebook executives had not only failed to tell the company about her new role but they had also taken it away without holding any conversation with Eisenstat. “I was confused. They were the ones that offered me this role. They were the ones who told me how much they wanted and needed me, and how important it was going to be to have someone with my perspective there,” she recalled. “None of it made sense.”

When she asked for details about the team and the efforts she would manage, she received a lecture on Facebook’s values. One of her managers told her that titles didn’t matter and that people moved around teams fluidly. Facebook would send her where she was most needed, the manager implied.

Eisenstat quickly realized that there were two parallel efforts under way at Facebook. She had been hired to work within Sandberg’s team, which included policy and ads. But the elections integrity team, peopled by engineers and senior staff, reported to Zuckerberg’s side of the company. Zuckerberg’s team included Chakrabarti, who was the face of elections integrity work with reporters. Chakrabarti’s team briefed Zuckerberg and other top executives on how they were preparing for the upcoming midterm elections.