I found his answer fascinating to the question on what employees can do to improve the current negative perception of the company. He didn't list any concrete actions the company is making or make suggestions on what the employees can do at work, but answered it by essentially telling them to talk up how much they like their job to friends/family:
"And I think it’s tough to break down these perceptions and build trust until you get to a place where people know that you have their best interests at heart. So that’s one thing that you all will be well-suited to do as ambassadors, if you choose to be, having spent time here, as I think you know the heart of this place at this point. And you don’t know every single technical project, but you have a sense of what we care about and what people here think about and what the conversations are on a day-to-day basis. And in the conversations that I have, even with some of our biggest critics, I just find that sitting down and talking to people and having them know that you care about the problems and acknowledge that there are issues and that you’re working through them ... I think it just makes a big difference."
The problem is that if somebody has a negative perception of your company already, this exact type of response sounds disingenuous.
Maybe this kind of speech works in a mass setting. But when you just hear or read it by yourself and you look at every penny they make is by selling your private data, you know it’s all just talk.
It's not disingenuous, it's just ineffective. Zuck and can believe 100% that they are doing good. Very few people are moustache twirling self-awarely evil. But if you disagree with Zuck's values, you're never going to come to a meeting of the minds.
The person who controls the world's largest information distribution channel openly admits that electing a specific candidate is a threath to its business.
Facebook can vanish this threath before it becomes a reality. If they get caught after the elections, they'll probably just get fined.
Mark Zuckerberg is fully prepared to sue the federal government if someone like Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren tries to break up Facebook into smaller companies, according to this audio recordings and that is scary
Under classical antitrust, yes. FB doesn't fall under Warren's proposal for 'platform utilities'; pushing DOJ to unwind the Whatsapp and Instagram mergers would be the only way for her administration to accomplish the stated goal.
His question about what employees should say to friends or family is completely tone deaf. The problem is nobody believes him. Now he's just telling his employees to lie, too. You can talk all you want how you are solving the problems with Facebook as he suggests, but Facebook has shown by its actions that it will prioritize short term engagement metrics above anything else barring regulation.
"And I think it’s tough to break down these perceptions and build trust until you get to a place where people know that you have their best interests at heart. So that’s one thing that you all will be well-suited to do as ambassadors, if you choose to be, having spent time here, as I think you know the heart of this place at this point. And you don’t know every single technical project, but you have a sense of what we care about and what people here think about and what the conversations are on a day-to-day basis. And in the conversations that I have, even with some of our biggest critics, I just find that sitting down and talking to people and having them know that you care about the problems and acknowledge that there are issues and that you’re working through them ... I think it just makes a big difference."
The problem is that if somebody has a negative perception of your company already, this exact type of response sounds disingenuous.