As a new year begins, I have come to the view that this is the right time for me to move on from my role as President, Global Affairs at Meta. It truly has been an adventure of a lifetime! I am proud of the work I have been able to do leading and supporting teams across the company to ensure innovation can go hand in hand with increased transparency and accountability, and with new forms of governance. 1/4


My time at the company coincided with a significant resetting of the relationship between “big tech” and the societal pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and norms affecting the sector. I hope I have played some role in seeking to bridge the very different worlds of tech and politics – worlds that will continue to interact in unpredictable ways across the globe. 2/4

1/ For the country’s sake I hope Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves succeed in restoring growth to the British economy. But ruling out even the option of joining the EU’s Customs Union, on the basis that “low growth, which has been at the heart of the economic problem in this country for 14 years, started well before Brexit”, is a peculiar rewriting of recent history. theguardian.com/politics/artic… 2/ The truth is the UK economy – pandemic aside – suffered two massive shocks in recent times: the 2008 financial crisis, in which the economy shrunk by a whopping 6%, on Labour’s watch; and Brexit, which will reduce long term GDP by around 4%, caused by the Conservatives. The Coalition Government of 2010-15 did an impressive job steadying the ship between these two calamitous events, and by 2012 the UK was the fastest growing G7 economy

The war in Ukraine is devastating and our teams at Meta are taking a number of steps in response, detailed here: about.fb.com/news/2022/02/m… We have been in contact with the Government of Ukraine, and at their request we have also restricted access to several accounts in Ukraine, including those belonging to some Russian state media organizations.

Last week’s move by Facebook to stop sharing news in Australia left many people rightly asking: what on Earth was all that about?

At the heart of it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between Facebook and news publishers. 🧵

about.fb.com/?p=27749&share… Publishers themselves share their stories on social media, or make them available to be shared by others, because they get value from it. Last year, Facebook generated approximately 5.1B free referrals to Australian publishers worth an estimated AU$407M to the news industry.