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Facebook's Nicola Mendelsohn on fighting hate speech and dealing with celeb boycotts

Jody Kingzett
Jody Kingzett

"There is always a lot that goes on with this job,” says Nicola Mendelsohn, in what feels like a colossal understatement. As Facebook’s vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Mendelsohn is the most senior person at the social network outside of Silicon Valley.

In the past month she has faced accusations about election interference at Facebook and “the spread of hate, propaganda and misinformation”, which led to Stop the Hate, where celebrities including Kim Kardashian boycotted the social network for 24 hours last Wednesday. “We want the same thing Stop the Hate is calling for,” she says calmly.

Mendelsohn, 49, is a master of diplomacy, better at deflecting awkward questions than most politicians are. “We are taking down hate speech in the quickest time possible.”

On top of her daunting job, in 2016 Mendelsohn was diagnosed with follicular lymphoma, an incurable blood cancer. She’s speaking to me on Zoom from her home in north London, where she has been shielding since March. When lockdown started, she decided to stop treatment as the risk of her catching Covid at hospital was too high. Treatment is cumulative, so once you’ve stopped, you can’t pick it up again. So she is “watching and waiting” and will make more choices if a tumour returns.

“I’m hoping it will be as long as possible before it comes back,” she says. “I have my moments of anxiety, I am more acutely worried if I get a lump or a bump or I don’t feel well.” Her family have stayed at home with her, putting their lives on hold. She is married to Labour lobbyist Lord Mendelsohn and they have four children aged between 15 and 22. “I keep telling my children I am so proud of them,” she says. “They should be out with their friends but they say, ‘No mum, of course we would stay at home for you’. I don’t take that for granted.”

When Mendelsohn was diagnosed she felt well, except for a lump in her groin, and hadn’t heard of follicular lymphoma. “Had you? I went through a grieving process. Cancer is such a scary word to hear. It is so loaded, you go to the worst place possible. My processing of the news was so physical. I lost weight, there were a lot of tears.”

Telling people at work was “dead emotional”. She called Facebook’s co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. “They were so lovely that I cried. There were a lot of tears. It’s how people treat you when the chips are down that matters.”

Kim Kardashian-West was among the celebrities who boycotted Facebook over issues of hate speech on the platform (Getty Images)
Kim Kardashian-West was among the celebrities who boycotted Facebook over issues of hate speech on the platform (Getty Images)

Mendelsohn worked throughout chemotherapy. “At first, people told me, ‘Shouldn’t you be at home? Just go.’ But I liked the mental stimulation. There is a taboo around talking about incurable diseases, especially at work.” She has ploughed her energy into positive action, founding the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation in 2019 to “help people live well and get well”. She says: “The only thing I want to do is find a cure.”

Her proactive approach is evident at Facebook too. When I bring up how the social network was used by agents hoping to swing the last US election, she counters it by talking about how Facebook hopes to encourage an extra 4 million people to vote and has banned political ads the week before the election. It has also invested billions of dollars in artificial intelligence, working alongside human teams to take down hate speech: “It would be almost impossible for human moderators to do all of this.”

She is ready with stats: they are taking down 95 per cent of hate speech (compared with 24 to 25 per cent three years ago). “Some of these things came as surprises, but once we were aware we invested billions to make the platform a place people want to go.”

Do we have a responsibility to be careful with our data? “We encourage privacy checks and have made them simple. And we’ve made it easier to decide who to share pictures with.” Her job is a balancing act between innovation, which the engineers “always want to do” and remaining responsible. “The company has grown a lot since I joined in 2013 and the journey has not been without its challenges. Mark’s vision remains the same — that people should be connected.” TikTok isn’t a threat: “You always see emergent players.”

Mendelsohn occasionally slips into talking in Facebook jargon but it seems to come from a good place. When I ask about whether there are enough women in tech, she says: “Facebook encourages us to come to work as our true authentic self ... Mark’s vision that four years from now half the company will be from under-represented minorities.” They were one of the first to close their offices and Mendelsohn misses “the connection of the office, there is no one size fits all in terms of working from home or the office”. During lockdown they’ve kept up their Fuel programme, where staff “share what keeps their energy up”.

Facebook’s spirit of connection drew her to it when she was headhunted from advertising agency Karmarama and “unsure about the job”. She’s proud of how Facebook is supporting small businesses through Covid and encourages people to apply for $100 million of grants for small businesses Facebook is offering. It’s a way of the company giving back. “When businesses closed Facebook pages were a lifeline.” They’re sharing wisdom in a new book called Build Brilliant Brands, which features advice from 22 leading marketers and is free to download.

We are interrupted by the doorbell. A neighbour is dropping off honey cakes for Rosh Hashanah. “None of my children have answered the door so I had better go,” she says, returning with a hefty cake. Does Labour have a better handle on anti-Semitism now? “From a Jewish and a personal perspective it has been encouraging to see the steps Starmer has made when it comes to the seriousness with which he is taking it.”

The bell rings again and more cakes arrive, which reminds Mendelsohn of a positive message to end on. “The greeting for Rosh Hashanah is to wish people a happy, healthy and safe new year. If there is ever a time we should be wishing that it is now.”

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