An Ugly Truth summary

Zuckerberg was never a big fan of small talk. Yet, in December 2007, he still worked up the gumption to attend a Christmas party thrown by a colleague from Yahoo. But Zuckerberg didn’t attend for the holiday cheer. No, there was someone there he wanted to meet – a woman named Sheryl Sandberg.

Sandberg already had a sterling reputation as a shrewd businesswoman. Her impressive résumé boasted degrees from Harvard and a stint at the World Bank. At the time, she was working as a VP at Google, perhaps Silicon Valley’s premiere start-up.

Officially, Sonya Ahuja was an engineer. But, unofficially, she was “the ratcatcher.” Her role at Facebook was simple – whenever an embarrassing story about the company appeared in the press, she had to identify and fire whoever leaked the info.

For the ratcatcher, 2016 was a busy year. Gizmodo, a popular tech blog, was publishing a string of incriminating articles on Facebook’s internal strife. The reporting alleged that as the American election heated up, users’ News Feeds increasingly featured false stories and incendiary hate speech. According to Gizmodo, Facebook employees wanted to curb this disturbing trend.

Donald Trump's unlikely electoral victory took much of the country by surprise – and Facebook was no exception. In the days following the election, Zuckerberg and his team scrambled to come to terms with the new reality.

For one, the company had to grapple with the new, possibly hostile, administration. So, in a bid to secure ties with the new president, the company hired Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, as a consultant.

It’s August 2017. Sai Sitt Thway Aung, a soldier from the 99th Light Infantry Division of the Burmese military, switches on his phone and logs onto Facebook. Carefully, he types out a new post. It describes his anger at Muslims and his desire to drive them from his country.

Aung isn’t alone, either. All across Myanmar, people are posting and sharing negative messages about the Rohingya, the country’s Muslim minority. Soon, the hate spills over into violence. In the following months, more than 24,000 Rohingya are killed and hundreds of thousands more flee to Bangladesh as refugees.

By May 2019, Zuckerberg had become accustomed to negative press coverage. But, despite his thick skin, a new op-ed in the New York Times felt like a stab in the back. It was penned by Chris Hughes, one of Facebook’s early cofounders. The title: “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook.”

Hughes had left Facebook a decade earlier and gone on to found the Economic Security Project, a progressive think tank. In his article, he argued that Facebook had grown too big, too fast. He claimed the company crushed competition, played it fast and loose with user data, and in general acted as a dangerous monopoly.

Summer 2019 was a busy time for Zuckerberg. At the behest of Joel Kaplan, Nick Clegg, and Facebook's other public policy experts, the CEO spent months rubbing elbows with political insiders. He met with Republican senator Lindsay Graham, right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson, and finally, President Trump himself.

The meeting with Trump, held in the Oval Office over Diet Cokes, went smoothly. Zuckerberg complimented Trump on his marvelous social media presence. In turn, Trump warmed up to Zuckerberg. Afterward, he even posted a Tweet celebrating the occasion.

President Trump is at it again – he’s standing at the podium blustering his way through another press conference. Only this time, it’s April 2020 and COVID-19 is surging around the world. The president, in a signature digression, suggests ingesting household disinfectants could cure the virus.

Of course, within minutes the clip appears on Trump’s Facebook page. Technically, the post violates the site’s dictum against medical misinformation. Since the start of the pandemic, the company has been more vigilant about suppressing dangerous rumors. Yet, how should it handle this one? Should it delete the President’s post?