leaving facebook: a critique of fb’s policies, priorities, and ideologies, ft. hannah arendt

on july 1st, 2020, i posted a “badge video” to FB’s internal “workplace” discussion platform, announcing my departure. this was my version of a “badge post”—a tradition at facebook of posting a photo of your work badge with your parting words before you leave the company. my post was a video essay, in which i share my thoughts on the high-level problems with facebook’s direction and the social harm it causes people. it was intended only for an audience of my coworkers. on july 23rd, buzzfeed news published a feature story about internal dissent at FB. this story included, among other internal info, an audio recording of my video essay, presumably provided by some anonymous internal leaker, unknown to me. that article is here: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/… appropriateness of leaks aside, i think this article is a responsible and faithful portrayal of internal (and external) concerns about facebook’s current policy posture and its development over the years. some of the investigative details—e.g., the equivocating timelines behind several recent high-profile moderation decisions—were also poignant to me. since the audio has already been chucked into the public internet, i’ve decided to share the original video as well. the only change i’ve made to my original post is to cut a segment where i thank some of my colleagues by name, to avoid collateral identification of them. (buzzfeed news made the same editorial choice.) the original video has footnotes, which i’ve shared below in the linked doc. some of the footnotes have been redacted because they shared internal links or similar sensitive information. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a… it goes without saying, i hope, that these views are my own and not those of my former employer. but there, i said it too.

Be careful who you’re working for. The meme below has nothing to do with the statement above, or does it? How would you imagine working at FB would be? I love how more people are standing up and speaking up for what is right. You start dying when you stop dreaming.