Google/Linden Lab Exec Who Foresaw Facebook's Rising Power Years Ago Writes Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg

"The Morality of Ads and The End of Zuck" is an important open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, written by former Linden Lab exec Ginsu Yoon, who left Linden to head up advertising policy at Google. His experience with both companies informs the open letter, written at a time when Facebook is being accused of mishandling user data and poorly managing its advertising platform, to the point where outside forces (Cambridge Analytica, Vladimir Putin's troll farm, etc.) are now believed to have corrupted the last US election through the social network. A full eight years ago, Ginsu foresaw Facebook rapidly taking on that level of influence, writing in 2010:

At Second Life, we had a seemingly omnipotent grip on the environment our users needed. In theory, we knew our users intimately, knew who their friends were, knew where they went and what they did. We owned their means of payment and communication, we set policy for their leisure and commercial activities. This is a level of control that Facebook dreams of, not in a virtual world but for the entire Web . . . and it’s scary that they actually seem to be on the path to getting there.

Facebook, as he foresaw, has gotten there. Philip Rosedale and other Linden execs have always been adamant about keeping SL user data private, because company revenue didn't depend on advertising, and because maintaining the community's trust was (and is) the best way to keep that revenue flowing. Facebook, by contrast, has always depended on advertising revenue, but has failed (Ginsu argues) to treat it with the seriousness it deserves, even after hiring Sheryl Sandberg away from Google to become the social network's COO:

In 2010, I was hired to lead Product Management for Ads Policy at Google. This was an odd role: Policy isn’t thought of as a Product problem; it seems more like something that might be addressed by legal or operational or PR functions. But Google recognized that they had a serious problem, and felt that a product approach to this problem was required, in addition to all the other approaches.

By the way, the existence of this problem at Google was partially albeit indirectly your fault. Google had historically implemented Ads Policy through sales ops, which was led by Shery. You lured her away at a critical time, when Google was reaching yet another level of scale and impact, and the leadership vacuum in sales ops resulted in many small cracks in an implicit system of rivers and dams of policy issues...

Ads have advertisers, and the truly important advertisers care about their reputations. They have limited tolerance for being on a platform that hurts those reputations. That tolerance is limited by the fact that their customers are actual people, and almost all of those people have some sense of morality. So even though we may have amoral (i.e. “neutral”) algorithms, even if advertisers themselves might be amoral, ultimately the common morality of people flows up through the advertisers, and through our ads systems, and finally imposes a sense of morality on the people who run the most powerful ads businesses. It is this slow flow of morality that has finally become a deluge upon you.

With advertisers threatening to quit Facebook, in other words, now might be a good time to give Ginsu a good long read.

Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

As some of you know... I'm connected to 'militant black politics'. That's not relevant here... but it DOES explain why a few months back I was reading a curious rant about "all these white people moving into our neighborhoods that leave their window blinds open so all their business is right in our faces... but the don't do it in their own neighborhoods." (The article I read used even less flattering wording, but as I read it I realized it's point was actually universal rather than demographic-specific).

But that article could just as easily been written by anyone from any demographic about people who 'come in and act like colonizers'. And I think that's how Zuckerberg has acted in relation to the world's previous expectations of an online world. He's 'colonized' it.

The thrust of that article is not relevant here except, in my opinion... explaining how Zuckerberg got himself into this mess. He is, to the world, that 'Gentrifier' that comes into the neighborhood and leaves his window blinds open so that at 6pm your kids are watching him be intimate with the maid in his living room... and he's got NO CLUE why this is a problem...

He has a fundamental failure to understand the concept of privacy.

Let alone the need for it for other people.

He just assumes your business and his business should be right out there in the street. And he's up till now never heard all the people saying "shut your dang blinds, and LET ME shut mine!"

It's a cultural phenomena that seems to occur throughout human experience and history... someone with so much power and privilege that they can live far above those around them... starts to see everyone else's private business as no more private than that of the "family dog"... and is also unthinking of doing their own private business in front of "lessers". Basically it's the story of 'Downton Abbey'. A class of people are running 'social media' that have no concept of keeping private conduct private.

And as long as he's "colonizing" the rest of us... this isn't going to change.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Guy makes a great case for why I'm not in Second Life any longer. Aside from skirting financial laws with virtual currency and taking away my legal rights with arbitration clauses, etc.

[Clara Seller]

Dear Tiny Little People:

All of this was predictable. They give us doorways and we blindly walk through them. We have got to stop sacrificing ourselves at the alter of megalomaniacs.

Let's not bother looking to Google for solutions to Facebook. It's about as productive as looking to Hillary Clinton for solutions to Donald Trump.

It's probably never been more imperative for the survival of the human race that we tiny little people start using the power of our individual minds and start taking control of our destiny. It's a daunting task and a lonely road, but any ezpass doorways provided by the likes of this group running the show are guaranteed to lead straight to the meat grinder. It's all they know and who they are. Our willingness to be little manifested these monsters.

[jiff]

Oh cmon. everybody knows Ebbe and LL have been secretly selling user info for years.

Wake up.

[irihapeti]

"... even if advertisers themselves might be amoral, ultimately the common morality of people flows up through the advertisers, and through our ads systems, and finally imposes a sense of morality ..."

+1 Ginsu Yoon

in recent days Chance the Rapper and Taylor Swift were each moved to call BS on moral matters that affect their people/audiences.

[Adeon Writer]

I say this every few years, and I'm always universally scoffed, but I've been saying it for over a decade now and I'm going to say it again.

Second Life was here before Facebook was a thing.

And Second Life will still be here when Facebook is no longer a thing.

People will still roll their eyes, but there's always less each time.