As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg slowly began admitting his company's role in the massive breach that allowed Russian operatives to target millions of voters with ads during last year's presidential election, people who were with him at the company's inception are horrified at the "monster" they created.
Ex-Facebook employees who spoke to Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton said many who were with Zuckerberg at the beginning feel guilt for the company's role in injecting Russian propaganda into the American election -- and the election's disastrous consequences.
"Most of the early employees I know are totally overwhelmed by what this thing has become,” one early employee told Vanity Fair. “They look at the role Facebook now plays in society, and how Russia used it during the election to elect Trump, and they have this sort of ‘Oh my God, what have I done’ moment."
"I lay awake at night thinking about all the things we built in the early days and what we could have done to avoid the product being used this way," another ex-employee said.
Those concerns, the ex-employees told Bilton, don't appear to extend to those still working at Facebook -- including Zuckerberg himself, who many accuse of surrounding himself with "sycophants" and remaining out of touch with reality.
Read Bilton's entire report on the monster those employees built via Vanity Fair.