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Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, appeared alongside Twitter general manager Jack Dorsey at a Senate hearing on Wednesday to discuss foreign interference and misinformation.
The myriad of critical and serious issues facing social media is a concern. But I'm not here to talk about freedom of expression, hate speech, or the ability of foreign agents to influence elections.
Instead, discuss the gap between the expectations of female and male executives, as well illustrated by Sandberg and Dorsey.
She: posed, charming, polite, impeccably neat and armed with points of discussion.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
He: crumpled, bearded, surrounded by nose, sewn, missing the usual tie and sporting what is called a "vampire collar".
Dorsey even admitted to the Intelligence Committee that he was "shy." Regardless, he runs a multi-billion dollar business that contributes to massive changes in democracy and politics that may be impossible to disentangle.
But Dorsey was dressed in the costume of a "brilliant" technician, in the style of so many other men who have climbed the ladder in Silicon Valley. There was Steve Jobs of Apple and his turtlenecks and his naked aggression. Then, of course, the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and his famous gray T-shirts and hoodies and, at least initially, his arrogance of something.
These days, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his raging F tweets and bombs carry the torch of the former technician.
Sandberg, meanwhile, has apparently never appeared in public without a complete eruption and, of course, he does not swear on journalists by e-mail (as Musk did recently).
"Sheryl Sandberg looks, speaks and acts more like a competent CEO than any of the CEOs of the big tech companies," commented tech columnist Slate Will Oremus on Twitter.
It's worth noting that it's Sandberg that has been exploited by Facebook to clean up the various social network issues – you know, among other things, the things that have probably made Donald Trump elected.
This should not surprise. It is often a woman or a colored frame that is chosen to repair the damage of male executives. I think of Meg Whitman coming to eBay in the early days of the company. Or more recently, Yahoo released Marissa Mayer to repair the endangered portal, and then expelled it because it was not really repairable.
Surely, Sandberg is COO of Facebook and bears responsibility for the company's situation.
Still, the Wall Street Journal reports that while the social network is trying to recover from its latest mistakes, it will be the public face of recovery efforts.
If Facebook stumbles, it could be Sandberg falling from this hard glass cliff.
Yahoo is now owned by Oath, the parent company of HuffPost.
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