EXCLUSIVE: How Facebook's powerful policy team, led by Joel Kaplan, repeatedly went against the company's own experts to intervene on changes for fears of conservative backlash buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…
Leaked memos and interviews give new insight into Kaplan and the policy team's influence, especially with CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
One now ex-employee wrote that executives stopped product features, “Out of fears over potential public and policy stakeholder responses."
One now ex-employee wrote that executives stopped product features, “Out of fears over potential public and policy stakeholder responses."
Since the election, at least six Facebook employees have resigned with farewell posts that called out leadership's failures. Four explicitly cited Kaplan's team as a major impediment to their work. buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…
Asked about our reporting, a Facebook spokesperson decried it as “warmed over conspiracy theories” and said the company’s big decisions are made with input from people across different teams. “To suggest otherwise is absurd,” they said. buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…
But inside Facebook, there’s pressure to separate the public policy team and the content policy team. Both groups report to Kaplan, an unusual arrangement among tech platforms. buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma… 
And for one former employee, "fear of antagonizing powerful political actors," was a key policy team reason for foregoing action.
“It appears that interventions have been almost exclusively on behalf of conservative publishers,” they wrote in a memo. buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…
“It appears that interventions have been almost exclusively on behalf of conservative publishers,” they wrote in a memo. buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…
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