The Empress of Facebook: My Befuddling Dinner With Sheryl Sandberg; Wired, December 7, 2018

Virginia Heffernan, Wired; The Empress of Facebook: My Befuddling Dinner With Sheryl Sandberg

"When you’re making money hand over fist, and your company seems to be on the right side of history, it’s natural to think you’re a very moral and whole person, who has made some lovely decisions, and who has a lot to teach other women about work and families. But what about … when the company founders?...

“You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable,” Doris Lessing once said. “And it just disappeared, like all the other empires.”

Empires vanish. The memes that kept them glued together for a short time—from "Dieu et mon droit" to "Bring the world closer together"—are exposed as fictions of state. And the leaders are, surprise, mortals with Napoleon complexes."

Without data-targeted ads, Facebook would look like a pay service, Sandberg says; NBC, April 5, 2018

Alex Johnson and Erik Ortiz, NBC; Without data-targeted ads, Facebook would look like a pay service, Sandberg says

"The data of users is the lifeblood of Facebook, and if people want to opt out of all of the platform's data-driven advertising, they would have to pay for it, Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer, told NBC News in an interview that aired Friday.

In an interview with "Today" co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, Sandberg again acknowledged that the company mishandled the breach that allowed Cambridge Analytica, the data analysis firm that worked with Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, to harvest information from as many as 87 million Facebook users."

Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg On Data Privacy Fail: 'We Were Way Too Idealistic'; NPR, April 5, 2018

Vanessa Romo, NPR; Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg On Data Privacy Fail: 'We Were Way Too Idealistic'

[Kip Currier: Interesting Public Relations strategy that Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg tested out with NPR.
What do you think--was it "idealistic" naivete, careless indifference, an intentional component of Facebook's business model and strategic planning, willful blindness, negligence, and/or something else?]

""We really believed in social experiences. We really believed in protecting privacy. But we were way too idealistic. We did not think enough about the abuse cases," [Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg] said.

Facebook, the world's largest social media company, is in the middle of a reputational crisis and faces questions from lawmakers and regulatory agencies after the political research firm Cambridge Analytica collected information on as many as 87 million people without their permission. Previous estimates had put the number of users affected at 50 million.

Now the company, which has lost about $100 billion in stock value since February, is reviewing its data policies — and changing some of them — to find better methods of protecting user data.

And its leaders are apologizing.

"We know that we did not do enough to protect people's data," Sandberg said. "I'm really sorry for that. Mark [Zuckerberg] is really sorry for that, and what we're doing now is taking really firm action."

The Federal Trade Commission is looking into whether Facebook violated a 2011 consent decree by allowing third parties to have unrestricted access to user data without users' permission and contrary to user preferences and expectations.

The penalties for violating the order would be devastating, even for Facebook. At $40,000 per violation, the total cost could theoretically run into the billions."

Where's Zuck? Facebook CEO silent as data harvesting scandal unfolds; Guardian, March 19, 2018

Julia Carrie Wong, Guardian; Where's Zuck? Facebook CEO silent as data harvesting scandal unfolds

[Kip Currier: Scott Galloway, clinical professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business, made some strong statements about the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal on MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle show yesterday.

Regarding Facebook's handling of the revelations to date:

"This is a textbook example of how not to handle a crisis."

He referred to Facebook's leadership as "tone-deaf management" that initially denied a breach had occurred, and then subsequently deleted Tweets saying that it was wrong to call what had occurred a breach.

Galloway also said that "Facebook has embraced celebrity but refused to embrace its responsibilities". He contrasted Facebook's ineffectual current crisis management to how Johnson & Johnson demonstrated decisive leadership and accountability during the "tampered Tylenol bottles" crisis the latter faced in the 1980's.]

"The chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has remained silent over the more than 48 hours since the Observer revealed the harvesting of 50 million users’ personal data, even as his company is buffeted by mounting calls for investigation and regulation, falling stock prices, and a social media campaign to #DeleteFacebook...

Also on Monday, the New York Times reported that Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, would be leaving the company following disagreements with other executives over the handling of the investigation into the Russian influence operation...

Stamos is one of a small handful of Facebook executives who addressed the data harvesting scandal on Twitter over the weekend while Zuckerberg and Facebook’s chief operating officer, Shery Sandberg, said nothing."

'Just Show Up': Sheryl Sandberg On How To Help Someone Who's Grieving; NPR, April 25, 2017

Ari Shapiro, NPR; 

'Just Show Up': Sheryl Sandberg On How To Help Someone Who's Grieving

"On the best way to be there [sic] someone who's going through a hard time

I used to say, when someone was going through something hard, "Is there anything I can do?" And I meant it, I meant it kindly. But the problem is ... that kind of shifts the burden to the person you're offering the help to to figure out what they need. And when I was on the other side of that question, I didn't know how to answer it. Is there anything you can do? Well, can you make Father's Day go away so I don't have to live through it every year? No.

Rather than offer to do something, it's often better to do anything. Just do something specific. My wonderful friends ... tragically lost a son and they spent many months in a hospital before that. And one of his friends texted him and said, "What do you not want on a burger?" Not, "Do you want dinner?" Another friend texted and said, "I'm in the lobby of your hospital for an hour for a hug whether you come down or not." Just show up.

Now, there's no one way to grieve and not everyone will want the same thing. So the best approach is really ask people. Say, "I know you're going through something terrible. I'm coming over with dinner tonight. Is that OK?""