Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg with CEO Mark Zuckerberg in July 2021. According to a New York Times report published that month, the pair's close working relationship fractured over Facebook's handling of the Capitol Hill riot. Photo / Getty Images
Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg with CEO Mark Zuckerberg in July 2021. According to a New York Times report published that month, the pair's close working relationship fractured over Facebook's handling of the Capitol Hill riot. Photo / Getty Images
The surprise resignation of chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg from Meta is one of a number of high profile departures that includes director and Kiwi citizen Peter Thiel and New Zealander Mark D'Arcy, the social network's chief creative officer.
Sandberg, 52, has been telling people that she feels burned outand that she has become a punching bag for the company's problems, according to a Wall Street Journal report this morning.
And despite being CEO Mark Zuckerberg's top lieutenant since she joined the company at 23, Sandberg fell out with the founder over the firm's handling of the January Capitol Hill riots, according to a New York Times report, and has become increasingly isolated. The Journal says Sandberg felt excluded from Zuckerberg's multi-billion "Metaverse" initiative - which reimagines social media with 3D avatars in virtual reality.
The executive exits come amid a turbulent period for the company, which includes Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram in its stable.
The social network shocked investors on February 3 when it reported the first drop in daily active users in its 18-year history and fell short of its earnings forecast. Its stock fell 26 per cent the following day.
Analysts said the key problems were younger social media users spending more time on fast-growing rival TikTok, new privacy protections introduced by Apple (and soon to be followed by Google) that made it harder to sell targeted ads, and costs associated with co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "Metaverse" plans.
Meta's fortunes rebounded somewhat with the first quarter of its new financial year, but its market cap which was at US$1.07 trillion in September, has now halved to US$510 billion. It fell another 2.6 per cent today on news of Sandberg's exit.
Relationship fractured
Sandberg did not outline her reasons for quitting the company. She said she was "not entirely sure what the future will bring" but she wished to focus more on her philanthropic endeavours.
But her resignation follows an apparent fracture in her formerly close relationship with Zuckerberg.
For close to 14 years, the pair formed a spectacularly effective team, with Zuckerberg serving as the tech visionary and Sandberg monetising his ideas.
But their working relationship broke down, and Sandberg became increasingly isolated, following controversy over Facebook's handling of the January 2021 Capitol Hill riot, according to a New York Times investigation, published in July last year.
Sandberg was said to have become uncomfortable that Zuckerberg had taken the lead in efforts to convince regulators that Facebook had become too close to outgoing President Donald Trump.
Meta denied the Times' report. "The fault lines that the authors depict between Mark and Sheryl and the people who work with them do not exist," a spokeswoman said.
From Lean In to leaned on
Zuckerberg's longtime lieutenant first gained global profile through the 2013 publication of her book Lean In, which she pitched as both her own story of overcoming gender bias in the workplace and a rallying cry "for us to work together to create a more equal world".
But as the decade wore on, she became more and more associated with a series of controversies, including the 2018 revelation that a political consulting firm has used Facebook quizzes between 2013 and 2015 to harvest personal details about voters without their knowledge; the livestream of the Christchurch Mosque massacres in March 2019 - and Meta's limited response; inflammatory content posted in the build-up to the Capitol Hill riots in January 2021 (as well as during the riots); and persistent Covid misinformation, despite a series of efforts by Meta to crack down, up to and including the Parliament lawn occupation earlier this year.
Falling the Christchurch shootings, Sandberg did write an open letter to those affected by the tragedy, saying "We have heard feedback that we must do more – and we agree."
Meta has since taken numerous hate and misinformation groups offline, introduced a new policy that can see someone banned from livestreaming if they violated its community guidelines, and beefed up content screening.
Yet the social network has also resisted major structural change, such as the ban Google-owned YouTube imposed on mobile livestreaming.
And despite Sandberg's pledge to do better, relatives of those murdered in Christchurch can still come across copies of the gunman's clip.
As earlier reported by the Herald, hate speech researcher Eric Feinberg has continually found multiple copies of the Christchurch shooter's video still circulating on Facebook and other platforms three years after the event. Last month, the New York Times, over 24 hours, found more than 50 copies of the gunman's first-person clip - which is banned in New Zealand - online, including one copy with 7000 views and 22 comments including some asking for it to be deleted. May also saw Uvalde shooter Salvador Ramos share multiple on messages on Facebook about his plans to attack a local school.
In her Harvard address last week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called out social media companies for not being more responsible.
"But there was very little reference to what the Government could or should do," said Internet NZ interim chief executive Andrew Cushen.
"Amid the call for social media to do more and for users to not be keyboard warriors, what was missing was the commitment to Government action from our Prime Minister."
Even as comments after Ardern's Facebook livestream repeated misinformation, Government agencies have remained big spenders on the social network, and Meta is one of the NZ Super Fund's largest investments, with a stake worth $375 million as of an October 2021 disclosure (the fund says it has used its stake to push for change).
Meanwhile Sandberg's "Lean In" advocacy has had only a limited impact on Meta, where she will be replaced on its senior leadership team by chief growth officer Javier Olivan, which will mean its management team will shift from a 5-3 male-female split to 6 men and 2 women.
Peter Thiel at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami in April. Photo / Getty Images
Sandberg (a minor shareholder) will stay on Meta's board, meaning it will maintain its 5 men, 4 women balance. Early investor and longtime shareholder Peter Thiel quit as a Meta director in February.
Thiel, who controversially gained a New Zealand passport in 2011 after spending just 12 days here, gave no reason for his decision to leave Meta's board.
But the New York Times, quoting a person "familiar with his thinking" said Thiel - a longtime Trump supporter - wanted to concentrate on efforts to influence the mid-term Congressional election scheduled for later this year.
Mark D'Arcy on a visit to Auckland in 2015. Photo / Nick Reed
AUT graduate D'Arcy immigrated to the US in the 2000s, where he landed a series of increasingly senior roles with Time Warner in New York before being put in charge of Facebook's "Creative Shop" in 2011. From 2018 to his resignation in September last year, he served as vice-president global business marketing and chief creative officer - essentially, the public face of Meta's ad operation.
US trade publication Ad Age said the Kiwi had been instrumental in teaching major global brands how to use social media advertising.
Today, one of D'Arcy's key recent hires remains in place: Nicky Bell, a fellow Kiwi expat, heads Meta's creative unit.
D'Arcy declined interviews as he departed, and did not give any detailed reason for his resignation.
"I've decided the time has come for me to leave the company," he said in a Facebook post.
"It's hard to easily sum up the last 10 years other than to say I am immensely proud of the teams I've been fortunate to be part of and the business we worked to build."
Today, D'Arcy's LinkedIn profile puts him still in New York, with his profession listed as "student/self-employed".
