In Senate hearings in the USA a few weeks ago a rather surprising fact emerged. It seems in August 2021 Sir Nick Clegg messaged Mark Zuckerberg asking for more resources. At the time, Clegg was Vice President of Global Affairs at Facebook, today he is President for Global Affairs at Meta. Specifically, Clegg wanted an additional (minimum) of 45 people (and possibly up to an additional 124) to work on child safety, “including efforts against bullying, harassment and self-harm”.
Other senior people in the company, including Sheryl Sandberg, backed the plan. That year alone Facebook, as it then was, had added more than 13,000 new employees to its payroll, an increase of 23% overall. Clegg’s proposal, at least on the face of it, therefore does not appear to have been excessive or outlandish.
The proposal was turned down. Seemingly the company had “other priorities”. Clegg later submitted a revised and reduced version. This time he asked for only 32 staff pointing out that trust and safety issues affecting children were becoming really hot topics in legislatures around the world.
We don’t know what happened to the reduced version but we do know in 2023 Meta was on track to cut around 21,000 jobs overall from the company. Appearing at a meeting in the British Parliament in January 2024 Arturo Bejar told those present that Meta employees with considerable knowledge and experience in online child protection had been laid off and parts of the in-house units which had been retained to deal with such matters were a shadow of their former selves.
Appearances can be deceiving…
I mention the above because when representatives of children’s organizations meet or talk with people from tech companies, almost invariably the individuals they encounter will be, perhaps like Sir Nick, (a) charming and (b) probably broadly share several of our values. BUT very few will actually call the shots inside their own companies. If even Sir Nick cannot get what he wants in Meta then what chance do other much lower-level staff have whether in Meta or in other online enterprises?
Particularly in Europe the company staff we are likely to have dealings with will, as part of their job, be required to convince us their employer is doing the best that can be done and that “child protection and child welfare” have the highest priority inside their business.
They don’t.
What has the highest priority in a tech business is sustaining or ideally increasing profitability, which generally means acquiring and keeping more customers as well as keeping overhead costs to a minimum.
Typically it is only when the leadership of the business perceives a realistic threat to profitability that we can be reasonably certain things will change. And even then, in order to reassure the public all is well, there should be transparency requirements linked to an independent, trustworthy verification mechanism of some sort which can verify and confirm what is going on.
And in the case of not-for-profits
In the case of not-for-profit organizations (obviously) “profit” as such may not be an issue but sustaining revenues to maintain the programme, pay salaries, overheads and so on will be.
Here the major driver will be the organization’s foundational pinciples. Not-for-profits generally exist to further or protect a particular political perspective or a cause in which the founders and their staff believe. Even if the leadership and staff were not being paid to do the work, and originally I’m guessing a lot weren’t, they would still do it.
The big difference
That is a major difference between a business and a not-for-profit. Businesses will be pragmatic. They exist to make money and, I’m sure within limits, they will do whatever is necessary to carry on trying to do that. Many not-for-profits would rather cease to exist than give up on the ideas or issues that brought them into existence in the first place. For this they deserve respect but it also means they are more likely to hold to positions with greater fervour.
Desiderata 