From The Wall Street Journal:
Facebook Inc. is bringing on a new top lawyer and a communications boss to handle the mounting regulatory and public-relations issues facing the social-media giant.
The company named Jennifer Newstead as its general counsel on Monday, putting a longtime Washington attorney in charge of its legal affairs at a time when it is increasingly engaged with regulators around the world about how best to police social media.
The company separately named John Pinette, who previously advised Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates among other jobs, to be the new vice president of global communications.
. . . .
The moves help restock Facebook’s leadership in the levels below Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. A number of senior officials and department heads have left Facebook over the past year, an unusual rate of turnover after the executive team was relatively stable for most of its tenure as a public company. (emphasis supplied)
Facebook in October hired former U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to be its global head of policy and communications.
. . . .
Mr. Stretch, who led the company’s legal response to Russian political interference on Facebook’s platform during the 2016 election, stayed on longer amid high-profile questions last year about how the company handled user data.
Before her most recent stint in government, Ms. Newstead was a partner at Davis, Polk & Wardwell LLP handling cross-border regulatory matters. She also previously served as an attorney in the George W. Bush administration and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. She is credited with writing portions of the Patriot Act, which expanded law enforcement’s ability to conduct surveillance in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal
First, Zuckerberg starts spending lots of time in Washington DC, now many of the people most responsible for Facebook’s current online dominance are headed for the door.
PG suggests that sound you hear is the air going out of Facebook’s creative balloon.
When a company lawyers up with establishment types, avoiding mistakes tends to become the company’s primary focus, lots of things slow down and the opportunities for innovative startups to eat the giant’s lunch increase a thousandfold.
UPDATE:
From The Washington Post:
Sri Lanka’s social media shutdown illustrates global discontent with Silicon Valley
The Sri Lankan government’s decision to shutter access to social media sites after Sunday’s deadly bombings may mark a turning point in how countries around the world perceive Silicon Valley — and their willingness to act to stop the spread of falsehoods online.
A decade ago, Facebook, Twitter and their social media peers helped spearhead pro-democracy uprisings that toppled dictators throughout the Middle East, and their services were seen as a way to help in catastrophes, allowing authorities a vehicle to convey crucial information and organize assistance.
Today, though, those same social media sites appear to some as a force that can corrode democracy as much as promote it, spreading disinformation to an audience of millions in a matter of minutes and fueling ethnic violence before authorities can take steps to stop it. That sense is heightened by tech giants’ seeming inability to strike a balance between free expression and protecting the public from harm.
Link to the rest at The Washington Post
I got a balance for you: Load everything on the side of free expression. The public can protect itself.