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Facebook confirms informal company meeting

Facebook spokesman says company is merely offering employees a forum to ask executives questions. We have a vision of how that might go.

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
Elinor Mills
2 min read
 
Google/CNET

A lot of people are wondering what's going to happen at the reported all-hands company meeting Facebook execs have scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

Well, it will probably be like any internal pow-wow held by a company dealing with widespread customer backlash over a series of privacy policy and other missteps that have baffled Facebook users and led Congress to ask the FCC to question the social-networking site.

A Facebook spokesman confirmed that a meeting was scheduled, but declined to elaborate. Meanwhile, CNET has learned that the meeting is not mandatory for all employees.

"We have an open culture and it should come as no surprise that we're providing a forum for employees to ask questions on a topic that has received a lot of outside interest," the spokesperson said in an e-mail. "We don't comment on the specifics of internal meetings, though."

It's unlikely the company will announce any major policy shift immediately, but maybe the employees who are getting hassled by their friends can have an impact. Maybe.

Here's our vision of one possible scenario:

Employee: I used to get e-mails from friends and acquaintances asking about jobs here. Now, they ping me to find out how to change their privacy settings.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg: We're trying to revolutionize the way people interact on the Web. Often pioneers are misunderstood. If we give them time, they'll see how much better the site is now and how much richer their experience with each other is.

Employee: But what should we tell people who are so angry they are actually migrating back to Tribe?

Zuckerberg: What's Tribe?

Meanwhile, it must have seemed like a good day for Facebook to announce some new security features. The site is now trying to block suspicious log-ins by asking people a question to verify their identity. Another new feature allows people to specify devices they commonly use to log in and to be notified when the account is accessed from an unapproved device.

CNET's Caroline McCarthy contributed to this post.