Inside Mark Zuckerberg's surprise interview with top publishers at the Rosewood hotel, where he told them everything was about to change
- Mark Zuckerberg gave a surprise interview to two dozen editors and executives Tuesday, which Business Insider attended.
- He said Facebook will spend billions and hire thousands of people to fight fake news, illegal campaign ads, hate speech and polarizing media.
- Zuckerberg acknowledged this would hurt profitability but felt it was the right thing to do.
- Facebook wants news organizations to help it create "common ground" for a "coherent debate."
- He said media executives should get used to an unpredictable relationship with a Facebook.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a surprise interview Tuesday to a bunch of editors and executives from publications across the country.
The media executives - from Business Insider, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Time Inc, CNN, Buzzfeed and more - were gathered at the Rosewood hotel in Silicon Valley for a conference called OTR.
"OTR" stands for "off the record," and we were all told that's what yesterday's meeting with Zuckerberg was supposed to be.
But then, just after 4:00 PM local time, the world's most powerful 33-year-old walked into a sunny conference room, shook everyone's hand, sat down and announced our conversation would be on the record.
From there, Zuckerberg hit most of the talking points he and the company have been trumpeting since a few months ago when they realized how angry the world is at them.
I've been reporting on Zuckerberg's career since the beginning. He used to look extremely uncomfortable in situations like these. One time years ago he soaked a hoodie with sweat on a conference stage.
No longer.
Zuckerberg nailed eye contact and made jokes. He looked comfortable in his own silence as he contemplated answers to hard questions.
The gist of the group interview was: For its first ten years, Facebook believed it was enough to set up tools for expression, then let the world use them essentially unchecked.
This was great for connecting the world (and growing Facebook to 2 billion users) but it led to fake news that polarized the electorate, a media industry that's done the same, and hate speech that creates real-world violence. Also it allowed foreign powers to influence a presidential campaign with illegal ads.
Oops!
Now Zuckerberg knows better.
And, as he said before Congress a couple weeks ago, Facebook is committed to doing better.
That means hiring 20,000 people (and then more) to review viral user posts for hate speech. It means hiring another 3,000 to 4,000 people who will verify every campaign ad on the platform. Zuckerberg said Facebook will develop artificial intelligence to help deal with both issues too.
The initiatives will cost "billions of dollars" and hurt Facebook's bottom line. The company will "essentially lose money" taking political ads at all.
But Zuckerberg says he's already warned shareholders and that "it's the right thing to do."
(He can make that kind of decision almost unilaterally because of his hold on Facebook's voting shares. Given Facebook's influence on the daily lives of billions of people, some call Zuckerberg the world's most powerful person without a nuclear arsenal.)
Zuckerberg also told the editors and media executives around the table that Facebook's newfound sense of responsibility meant changing how his company works with theirs.
The first change has been to algorithms that sort what Facebook users see in their News Feed. It increasingly features news from "trustworthy" outlets.
Zuckerberg repeated a stat media organizations have heard for a quarter now: that because of this change, their traffic from Facebook would decline about 20% - going from 5% of what appears in a user's news feed down to 4%.
But he said Facebook also believes it has a responsibility to help users find "common ground" and a shared set of facts about the world. That way we can have a "coherent debate" about politics and more.
To achieve that, Facebook will present users looking at a news stories related articles from across the political spectrum.
This kind of algorithmic scoring of a publications's political ideology freaked out a few people out in the room - particularly Joe Kahn from the New York Times.
He and others argued that their publications aren't on a political spectrum. He said they are institutions designed to report the truth.
Zuckerberg said that may be how news media organizations view themselves, but Facebook and its users believe opinion has gotten mixed in with news.
(Many of the editors later complained that this exchange indicated Zuckerberg doesn't understand what they do. This was surprising to me, as it seems like normal people view "objective" reporting from almost all publications as being characterized through some particular lens on the world, political or otherwise.)
Finally, Zuckerberg said that the company plans to invest millions of dollars to create news programs for its video tab, Watch, that can help users find "common ground."
Facebook has funded lots of journalism and media experiments over the past couple years, including from Business Insider.
The problem for media companies can be that these experiments - and the funding behind them - is not permanent and it can be hard to tell how long the revenue stream will last.
Sometimes, Facebook will toss a publisher millions of dollars to try something only to shut the project down a year or so later.
(Remember all those Facebook Live videos you used to see? They are gone because Facebook's funding for them disappeared late last year.)
This kind of unpredictability can make it hard for media executives to staff their companies properly.
One example: After betting big on short form video for Facebook's News Feed in 2016 and 2017, Vox Media laid off dozens of staffers from that team in early 2018.
Zuckerberg did not apologize for the instability.
Instead, he said Facebook plans to iterate and that partners should be forewarned.
Whatever way Facebook and its media partners work together now, said Zuckerberg, "I can guarantee it will change."
He took a couple more questions. He ignored one about whether Facebook is a media company.
Then, almost exactly an hour after he sat down, Zuckerberg stood up, said a friendly goodbye, and left.