Current and former employees at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative say Facebook's crises affect not only how the organization's employees feel, but what they do
Inside the unrest at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. — At an emotional company town hall last week that blew past its hour-long time limit …
VoxTheodore Schleifer
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook's internal turmoil is not new — the New York Times' interviews with more than 50 people in late 2018 already showed how badly Zuckerberg and Sandberg mishandled a string of crises. What this story adds is that the fallout no longer stops at the company boundary: current and former employees of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropy funded by Zuckerberg's fortune, describe an emotional town hall and say Facebook's problems are changing what they do, not just how they feel.
The most concrete change reported is financial: CZI has cut ties with FWD.us, eliminating the immigration-advocacy group's main funding source. Weeks later, BuzzFeed News documented parallel unrest inside Facebook itself, where employees warned the company was "hurting people at scale" — two Zuckerberg-linked workforces now reckoning with the same record.
First-order effects
CZI staff are acting on their discomfort, with the organization severing its relationship with FWD.us and cutting the group's primary funding — a direct consequence for the advocacy group's operations.
Second-order effects
Zuckerberg now faces morale pressure from both sides of his empire at once: the BuzzFeed reporting shows Facebook employees in open dissent while his philanthropy's own staff push back, complicating his ability to present either institution as insulated from the other.
Third-order effects
Philanthropic vehicles tied to a single founder's reputation inherit that founder's corporate crises — and if the pattern holds, donor-side organizations become another arena where platform backlash plays out, alongside the employee-retention struggles Facebook itself was still managing by 2022, when internal surveys showed anxiety among staff even as Zuckerberg took a hard line on keeping them.
The trend: Founder-linked institutions are proving inseparable from the platform that funds them, with Facebook's crises propagating outward into its philanthropy, its grantees, and its workforce.
Another story you have to read from @teddyschleifer if you want to understand the messy world of Silicon Valley people giving their money away. https://www.vox.com/... (h/t @ShiraOvide) https://twitter.com/...
I'm confused. Zuckerberg never hid the fact he would lead his charity and it would be an extension of his values. If folks are no longer comfortable with that, then maybe it's not a good fit for them. Asking him to resign is preposterous. https://twitter.com/...
“Basically anything that we did at CZI was gated by whether it would drastically affect Facebook or not,” claimed a former employee. “I eventually left the company thinking that CZI was Facebook's PR machine.” https://twitter.com/...
You can't support “Equity and Justice” if the foundation CEO is constantly worried about conservative backlash to funding anything that might achieve, ya know, “Equity and Justice.” Good to see current/former CZI employees trying to hold the foundation accountable. https://twitte…
The other remarkable thing about this story is the sudden increase in the number of leaks of FB/CZI internal meetings to the press. https://twitter.com/...
“CZI scrapped a voter data project [due to Cambridge Analytica]. A civil rights nonprofit rejected CZI funding because the group didn't want money it saw as tainted. Others have hesitated to use CZI products due to concerns about Facebook security lapses.” https://www.vox.com/...
This article is wild. But I want to big up @rashadrobinson, money is always tough to turn down, but particularly when it is that much money. But this work can't happen in a way that makes change for our people if we aren't principled. https://twitter.com/...
CZI employee asks Zuck to resign from the philanthropy, or from Facebook. He says no. Then adds: “Quite frankly, the idea that we would resign from CZI is ridiculous.” https://twitter.com/...
One of Mark Zuckerberg's employees gives him three choices in an extraordinary moment: 1. Resign as CEO of Facebook 2. Resign as CEO of CZI 3. Moderate Trump's content That's when Zuckerberg flipped the tables. https://www.vox.com/... https://twitter.com/...
NEW — Last week, one of Mark Zuckerberg's engineers asked him to resign as Facebook CEO. But the engineer didn't even work for Facebook. They work for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, his philanthropy. We go deep on the unrest at Zuckerberg's charity. https://www.vox.com/...
I can def say that while jobs posted by CZI look really interesting & rewarding on the surface, the idea of working for Zuck is so morally objectionable that I didn't bother even applying. It's great to see people within CZI that won't tolerate Facebook's erosion of democracy. ht…
The employee at Mark Zuckerberg's charity offered three choices: Moderate Trump's inflammatory Facebook posts, resign from Facebook, or resign from the charity. “I mean, no. None of those things would make sense,” said Zuckerberg @teddyschleifer https://www.vox.com/...
“Quite frankly, the idea that we would resign from CZI is ridiculous.” — Mark Zuckerberg to an engineer at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative who suggested he resign. https://www.vox.com/...