A Kiwi entrepreneur who held senior roles in Facebook says “it’s hard to say” if the social media platform represents a net good in the world.
Leaving Auckland for California, Bowen Pan went on to spearhead the development of Facebook Marketplace from 2014 to 2018.
He then became a product leader for Facebook Gaming from 2018 to 2020.
Q+A asked Pan to reflect on the issues raised by fellow Kiwi Sarah Wynn-Williams in Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, her memoir where she recounts her time as Facebook’s public policy director.
Pan told Q+A: “One thing I will say is my view around Facebook has always been that it’s somewhat of a mirror on society and on people, and that mirror is very complex because sometimes you may like what you see. Sometimes you may not like what you see.”
Wynn-Williams’ book included allegations that Facebook’s management was “deeply unconcerned” about its role in the Rohingya genocide, and that the company had worked closely with the Chinese Communist Party to create censorship tools.
Facebook admitted in 2018 that its social media platform was used to incite violence in Myanmar and that it was making progress to tackle the issue.
Facebook’s owner Meta rejected accusations in the memoir.
“This is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” a Meta spokesperson previously said.
Speaking to Q+A, Pan said there was a “very complex question” about how the social media giant should handle human nature.
“What level of control, and what level of filtering should you have on that mirror? And whose responsibility is that?”
When considering the impact of algorithms on that mirror of society, and whether it led to increased polarisation, Pan said: “I don’t have strong opinions around that.”
Pan said he “deliberately stayed” in areas of Facebook where he saw “more of the frontier-type opportunities”.
He was also asked whether he thought Facebook was a net positive in the world.
“I think that’s probably really hard to say.
“There is certainly a lot of good and a lot of positives Facebook has brought, and a lot of consequences that are really hard to know when you first have the product built.”
Time for a Kiwi tech boom?
Pan moved to the US after working at TradeMe in the early 2010s. At the time, he said there weren’t many other places in New Zealand left for him to grow.
But the tech leader told Q+A that he had returned home to “a different country”.
Pan joined the board of media company NZME last month as an independent director. He was also an advisory board member at Auckland University’s business school.
He said the Kiwi start-up sector was currently “low-key exciting” and reminiscent of “very early-day Silicon Valley”.
“I’ve really noticed the change in trajectory and momentum in the last seven to eight years, in the level of ambition and the type of companies here.
“I think the talent and the hard work has always been there, but it just takes that many [repetitions] for this ecosystem to slowly build.”
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Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air
