Facebook Employee Revolt Shows, Yet Again, That There Are Other Incentives Beyond Section 230

from the incentives-come-in-many-forms dept

One of the most frustrating claims that critics of Section 230 make is that because of Section 230 the big internet companies have no incentive to deal with awful content (abuse, harassment, bigotry, lies, etc.). Yet, over and over again we see why that's not at all true. First of all, there's strong incentive to deal with crap content on your platform because if you don't your users will go elsewhere. So the userbase itself is incentive. Then, as we've discussed, there are incentives from advertisers who don't want their ads showing up next to such junk and can pressure companies to change.

Finally, there are the employees of these companies. While so much of the narrative around internet companies focuses (somewhat ridiculously) on the larger-than-life profiles of their founders/CEOs, the reality is that there are thousands of employees at these companies, many of whom don't want to be doing evil shit or enabling evil shit. And they have influence. Over the past few years, there have been multiple examples of employees revolting and pushing back against company decisions on things like government contracts and surveillance.

And, now they're pushing back on the wider impact of these companies. That's a Buzzfeed article detailing how a bunch of employees inside Facebook are getting fed up with the company's well-documented problems, its failure to change, and its failure to take into account its broader impact.

“This time, our response feels different,” wrote Facebook engineer Dan Abramov in a June 26 post on Workplace, the company’s internal communications platform. “I’ve taken some [paid time off] to refocus, but I can’t shake the feeling that the company leadership has betrayed the trust my colleagues and I have placed in them.”

Messages like those from Wang and Abramov illustrate how Facebook’s handling of the president’s often divisive posts has caused a sea change in its ranks and led to a crisis of confidence in leadership, according to interviews with current and former employees and dozens of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News. The documents — which include company discussion threads, employee survey results, and recordings of Zuckerberg — reveal that the company was slow to take down ads with white nationalist and Nazi content reported by its own employees. They demonstrate how the company’s public declarations about supporting racial justice causes are at odds with policies forbidding Facebookers from using company resources to support political matters. They show Zuckerberg being publicly accused of misleading his employees. Above all, they portray a fracturing company culture.

The examples in the Buzzfeed article may not be representative of how all employees feel, nor is it necessarily indicative that Facebook will definitely change its policies one way or the other. It's just highlighting that pressure to be better, to be responsible, and to build better products comes from all over -- and in Silicon Valley many employees came up with the belief (cynical or not) that they're here to change the world for the better. And when they realize they may not be doing that, many will speak out and push back.

And that is likely to have an impact over time: especially when the big tech companies are fighting over top talent, and desperately trying to hire the best engineers possible. If those engineers speak up and speak out, it can create very strong incentives for companies to change and to improve -- all without needing to take an axe to Section 230, which has little to nothing to do with all of this.

Filed Under: employee revolt, employees, morale, section 230
Companies: facebook

Study After Study Shows The DHS Has An Intense Morale Problem That Can Apparently Only Be Solved By Study After Study

from the 'we've-tried-nothing-and-we're-all-out-of-ideas!' dept

Guess which national agency's feelings hurt the most?

The 2014 Best Places To Work in the Federal Government Survey, published by Stier’s group, ranked DHS dead last among large agencies.

[...]

Many DHS employees have said in the annual government “viewpoint” survey of federal employees that their senior leaders are ineffective; that the department discourages innovation, and that promotions and raises are not based on merit. Others have described in interviews how a stifling bureaucracy and relentless congressional criticism makes DHS an exhausting, even infuriating, place to work.

Beyond the problems listed here, there are a great many reasons why it might suck to work for the DHS. To begin with, the agency is actually a Frankensteinian monstrosity consisting of 22 agencies, all with their own ideas on how to run things and nearly all of them with their own sets of problems.

The DHS is in the (relatively) newly-minted business of securing the homeland against all comers -- mostly terrorists of the foreign and domestic varieties. Whether it's done out of paranoia or just the overwhelming need to look busy every time the national budget nears a vote, the DHS has gone overboard in its assessments of potential threats. The shorter of the two lists it has compiled by this point would be titled "Not Terrorists." Over the years, the DHS has conjectured that terrorists are hiding in food trucks, using hotel side entrances, exercising their First Amendment rights, possibly years away from graduating high school… etc.

The DHS also presides over the TSA, a security agency in name only that seems mostly interested in patting down mastectomy patients, running their brusquely officious hands over pre-teens, dumping breast milk and other "explosives precursors" into nearby garbage cans and feeling completely threatened by words printed in foreign languages.

It also keeps an eye on the CBP, which can't seem to stop shooting unarmed people, follow its own guidelines on vehicle searches, and operates a fleet of shiny, expensive and nearly useless drones.

Then there's ICE (with its own morale problems), the IP-focused Keystone Kops whose antics -- including yanking websites away from owners without a word of explanation and returning them years later without an apology, raiding lingerie shops for dangerously unlicensed panties, and struggling to come up with excuses for denying FOIA fee waiver requests -- are only outpaced by the imaginary rights vendettas of the City of London police.

That would be enough to depress anyone, especially the good employees who started out with ideals and enthusiasm but are now forced to answer question after question after question about why working for the nation's largest group of unhinged conspiracy theorists is a bit of a downer. The DHS has dumped a lot of money into divining the sources of its employees' unhappiness. But it seems more interested in spending money than fixing the problems.

The first study cost about $1 million. When it was finished, it was put in a drawer. The next one cost less but duplicated the first. It also ended up in a drawer.

So last year, still stumped about why the employees charged with safeguarding Americans are so unhappy, the department commissioned two more studies.

Yes, if anything's going to fix morale, it's going to be periodic questioning of employees who know their last several answers went completely ignored. Will the latest studies be titled "NO REALLY GUYS THIS TIME WE'RE LISTENING?"

To hear people like new DHS head Jeh Johnson tell it, the agency has never been more interested in improving morale.

Johnson and Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have “personally committed themselves to improving the morale and workforce satisfaction across the Department of Homeland Security,” said Ginette Magana, a DHS spokeswoman. “They are directly engaging with employees, listening to their concerns, working diligently to improve employee recognition and training, and are focused on strengthening the skills and abilities of every employee. She said the studies “comprise a first step in a comprehensive process dedicated to tangible results.”

Yeah, but what about all the other "first steps" currently tucked away in drawers, presumably still in mint condition? How many "first steps" and empty promises are DHS employees expected to suffer through before they finally wander away from the metaphoric disinterested, lying spouse they call an employer? "No, really. This time will be different, honey. I SWEAR."

As it stands now, DHS employees pretty much have to stick guns in their mouths before someone will start paying attention to their morale issues.

Three years ago, officials in the department’s office of health affairs, which provides expertise on national security medical issues, began to wonder about the health of one of their own programs. In response to low scores on the viewpoint survey, officials had set up a program, DHSTogether, aimed at making DHS “one of the best places to work in the Federal government.”

The DHS spent over a million dollars on yet another study to find out why this study-prompted "Togetherness" wasn't working. The National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine arrived at this alarming conclusion.

The report, released in September 2013, concluded that DHSTogether had been starved of money and support from DHS leaders and devolved into little more than an ineffective suicide prevention program.

The DHS apparently didn't feel like talking anyone down, so it buried the report on the report as well.

And the vicious cycle of studies will continue. On top of the two recently-commissioned studies, the agency plans to add a "follow-up" survey to its annual "viewpoint survey," and plans to follow up government contractor ICF's morale study with yet another study once that one's completed.

Clearly, bureaucracy -- especially the combined bureaucracy of 22 agencies forced by terrorists knee-jerk lawmaking to live together under one superagency's roof -- generates more questions than answers. And clearly, in the DHS's case, the questions are the only part that matters.

Filed Under: dhs, ice, morale, studies

NSA Staff Whining That President Obama Isn't Defending Them Enough

from the perhaps-there's-a-reason-for-that... dept

Foreign Policy magazine has an article highlighting how NSA employees are pissed off that President Obama hasn't been defending the NSA strongly enough these past few months. While many (including us) have been quite critical of President Obama's weak defense of the NSA programs, folks inside Ft. Meade are pissed off that he's not out there defending them more strongly:

Gen. Keith Alexander and his senior leadership team at the National Security Agency are angry and dispirited by what they see as the White House's failure to defend the spy agency against criticism of its surveillance programs, according to four people familiar with the NSA chiefs' thinking. The top brass of the country's biggest spy agency feels they've been left twisting in the wind, abandoned by the White House and left largely to defend themselves in public and in Congress against allegations of unconstitutional spying on Americans.

Former intelligence officials closely aligned with the NSA criticized President Obama for saying little publicly to defend the agency, and for not emphasizing that some leaked or officially disclosed documents arguably show the NSA operating within its legal authorities.

"There has been no support for the agency from the President or his staff or senior administration officials, and this has not gone unnoticed by both senior officials and the rank and file at the Fort," said Joel Brenner, the NSA's one-time inspector general, referring to the agency's headquarters at Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Of course, one response to this is: too bad. Perhaps if the NSA didn't keep pushing the boundaries further and further out, and there were more courageous folks like Ed Snowden willing to speak up and say "what we're doing is wrong," those NSA employees wouldn't be dealing with this mess. And, of course, you'd hope that the NSA would employ grown ups who don't get all mopey because the President has other things to focus on.

While the President has defended the NSA programs a few times (on TV programs such as Charlie Rose and Leno, as well as in that one press conference in August), it is true that most of the defending has come directly from intelligence officials themselves, including Keith Alexander and James Clapper, as well as the NSA's big defenders in Congress. The higher ups within the administration have been fairly quiet. And, apparently what's pissing off many in Ft. Meade is that President Obama had embraced them so closely since he came to office. Despite expressing some skepticism about these kinds of activities while he was running for office, once he got into the White House, Obama's "embrace of the dark world of spycraft has been near-absolute."

Of course, some might argue in response that there's really not much else that the President can do at this moment. He's given a few statements about it, set up the ridiculous weak "review" board, and then has kind of had his hands full with things like Syria and a government shut down -- both of which are, certainly, issues that deserve his attention. The article quotes Brenner again, saying that the President should have gone to Ft. Meade and given them a pep talk. That seems a bit silly to me. If NSA employees need pep talks to keep morale up, it seems like they're in the wrong business.

A former NSA general counsel, Stewart Baker -- last seen here blaming civil libertarians for 9/11, blaming Senator Wyden for encouraging people to reveal NSA excesses and blaming privacy advocates for you having to get groped at airports -- is also quoted in the article whining that:

"The President is uncomfortable defending this. Maybe he spends too much time reading blogs on the left," Baker said. "That's fatal in cases like this. You have to make the case because nobody else will."

Yeah. It's those damn lefty blogs that are the problem (ignoring, of course, how much of the outcry have come from right-leaning and libertarian blogs). Of course, there is the possibility that President Obama is legitimately embarrassed over having the NSA's excesses come out. A couple years ago, we highlighted famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg talking about President Obama's response to whistleblowing (the discussion was about Wikileaks), and he speculated that Obama's incredible devotion to secrecy when it came to civil liberties violations and leaks might be because of pure embarrassment. As he noted, President Bush didn't care much for civil liberties, but he also was fairly upfront about that fact. President Obama, however, acted as if he did care about civil liberties, while behaving in a very different manner. Thus, it's entirely possible, as Ellsberg speculated years ago, President Obama is happy to do all of this so long as it stays secret. The second any of it comes out, he's ashamed by his own actions -- which might explain the less than full-throated support for these actions.

Still, as others point out in the FP article, if the rift is really that big, it's somewhat surprising that the President hasn't yet thrown either Alexander or Clapper under the bus, giving him the opportunity to pretend to blame them alone for the overreach. The President has already made the ridiculous claim that he only finds out what the NSA is doing from the press, so he could easily argue that the agencies have gone "rogue" and get rid of the leaders. But he hasn't done that.

Still, the potential of a growing rift between the White House and the intelligence community is worth watching as new bills are proposed to curb those agencies' excesses.

Filed Under: barack obama, keith alexander, morale, nsa, nsa surveillance, stewart baker, white house

ICE Considered One Of The Worst Places To Work In The Federal Government

from the maybe-if-they-spent-time-not-censoring-the-web dept

Last month, we noted the odd propaganda film from ICE director John Morton, in which he seemed to be trying to pat himself on the back and pump up the morale of ICE agents for their hard work in illegally censoring the internet. Perhaps it's because he knew that ICE agents apparently hate working there. An anonymous person pointed us to the news that in a recent ranking of government agencies, ICE ranked very near the bottom -- 222 out of 240 agencies. It seems that morale isn't particularly high there.

The same person pointed us to the news of a leaked memo from Morton concerning his disappointment about these rankings, and planning some sort of typical bureaucratic response to bad rankings: appointing someone to lead the effort to improve morale, looking at other agencies with happier employees and hosting some townhall meetings. Perhaps he could also try keeping ICE agents focused on issues related to their actual mandate, rather than having them work on seizing domain names and censoring the internet. Just a thought.

Filed Under: ice, john morton, morale, working conditions

TSA Agents Absolutely Hate New Pat Downs, Find Them Disgusting And Morale Breaking

from the this-is-what-you-get-with-security-theater dept

One of the common themes that people keep mentioning in talking about the new TSA pat down procedures is that those involved must "enjoy" the groping they're giving people. But, of course, most TSA agents are normal every day people who don't actually want to grope random people. Chris Tolles points us to a post from BoardingArea.com, who reached out to some TSA agents and found that many TSA agents hate the new rules and find it to be sapping morale to have to grope passengers. Some of it appears to be the verbal abuse they're getting from travelers, but some of it is just the fact that they have to keep touching people they'd rather not touch in that way:

"It is not comfortable to come to work knowing full well that my hands will be feeling another man�s private parts, their butt, their inner thigh. Even worse is having to try and feel inside the flab rolls of obese passengers and we seem to get a lot of obese passengers!"

Of course, it does seem like a lot of the "morale" part comes from everyone accusing them of molesting them. I recognize, they're not the ones making policy, but many of the people being groped do feel violated and it's not surprising that many of them speak out.

"Molester, pervert, disgusting, an embarrassment, creep. These are all words I have heard today at work describing me, said in my presence as I patted passengers down. These comments are painful and demoralizing, one day is bad enough, but I have to come back tomorrow, the next day and the day after that to keep hearing these comments. If something doesn�t change in the next two weeks I don�t know how much longer I can withstand this taunting. I go home and I cry. I am serving my country, I should not have to go home and cry after a day of honorably serving my country."

This is going to be a serious problem for the TSA if it doesn't figure out something quick. So far, the TSA seems to be in near absolute denial that this is actually a problem, but if these TSA responses are indicative of how most TSA agents feel, there are going to be a lot fewer security people at airports very, very soon.

Of course... it could be true that at least some of those actually are enjoying the process. Reader Lance point us to (an admittedly hearsay) story of a pilot traveling with his 18-year old daughter. As they approached the naked image scanner, the pilot overheard a TSA agent say into his radio: "heads up, got a cutie for you." One of the points the TSA has been making is that the folks looking at the images are off in another room somewhere, unable to see the people -- but they are in contact with those at the security checkpoint, and you'd have to imagine this kind of thing happens.

Filed Under: employees, morale, pat downs, tsa