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Employees keep dumping Facebook’s free bikes in surrounding neighborhoods, and police are hassling local kids who try to ride them

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook's fleet of free bikes it provides its employees is causing tensions in the community.

The baby-blue bikes, which are supposed to be used to get around Facebook's sprawling campus in Menlo Park, California, are turning up in nearby Bay Area neighborhoods like East Palo Alto. But residents say that they can be stopped by the police when they use them, and that the bikes are sometimes discarded like litter in dangerous locations.

"Bikes are often abandoned by restaurants, bus stops, the train, and dumped in the San Francisquito Creek or the Baylands, also random street corners," one resident told Business Insider.

Photos posted in a private East Palo Alto community Facebook group showed bikes, stripped of parts, left on street corners.

The incidents highlight the headaches that tech giants like Facebook can cause for their Bay Area neighbors, who are already struggling with soaring house prices and gentrification fueled by the tech sector. And it's another example of how Facebook's well-intentioned efforts can have concerning, albeit unintended, consequences.

A Facebook representative, Anthony Harrison, told Business Insider in an email that the company was "exploring a variety of ways to collaborate with local organizations so that we are able to support access, safety, and repairs for bike use in the community, but nothing is finalized yet."

He said about 60 of Facebook's bikes go missing a month, though many are subsequently recovered (20% of the fleet is GPS-tracked).

Residents said some of the bikes were being dumped around town by Facebook employees who have finished using them, while others suggested some were stolen from Facebook's campus. The bikes are not locked up, and anyone can walk onto parts of the campus.

However the bikes make their way off the campus, once they're in the city, anyone can use them — and that's where the issues begin.

Facebook's employee bikes on its campus in Menlo Park, California. Rob Price/Business Insider

There are concerns that children are being criminalized

Locals, including kids, sometimes use the discarded Facebook bikes to get around the city for free — but reports have circulated that they've been pulled over by the police for it.

In December, residents tried to raise funds to buy bikes for local children, saying that they had been stopped by the police for riding the Facebook bikes and that this could be disproportionately affecting nonwhite kids.

"Children in East Palo Alto and Menlo Park are getting pulled over by the police and harassed by community members for riding the Facebook Bikes. Neighbors are encouraging other neighbors to call the police enforcement on kids riding the Facebook bikes and this needs to come to an end," the fundraiser's page said.

"African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32% of the US population, however they comprised 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015 ... As a community lets not criminalize our already marginalized youth!"

Photos on social media have purported to show people being stopped for riding the bikes.

Facebook has told residents that it never asked law enforcement to stop people riding the bikes, and it's not clear how many people have been stopped for using the bikes or arrested. The Menlo Park and East Palo Alto police departments did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

The Almanac, a local news outlet, described the Menlo Park police chief, Dave Bertini, as saying at a community forum in February about the issue that officers "treat people found riding Google bikes the same way they have approached people on Facebook bikes: They ask riders if they are employees, and if they are not, detain them and confiscate the bikes."

The bikes are littering streets

There are also concerns that the dumped bikes are littering streets.

One local told Business Insider they had seen "bikes dumped around town three or four times a week" for the past couple of years, adding that it "used to be Google bikes, now it's FB."

"My assumption is that, in general, FB employees take the bikes to get places and leave them once they have no further use," the local said.

Another said it seemed there were fewer bikes around recently.

"Their blue bikes were at one point all over East Palo Alto, similar to what you'd see in Santa Clara (Google bikes)," they said. "Currently, the number of blue bikes have been reduced to a very low amount. You hardly see them anymore."

In a post in a local Facebook group last March, someone posted a photo of two of the bikes and wrote: "Two more Facebook bikes have been left right outside of the Los Robles school entrance. On my way into the school I almost crashed into the bike on the left-hand side of this picture. If you see people leaving these bikes around please be aware if the bikes are in a safe place."

In November, another user shared photos of bikes that appeared to have been stripped of their parts and then discarded on a street corner. "Scavenged bike carcass are beginning to up in my neighborhood," they wrote.

Harrison, the Facebook representative, said: "Our Transportation team regularly reminds our employees that Facebook bikes are only for intercampus transportation. Our goal is to ensure that our employees are not abandoning our bikes on sidewalks, or in public places outside of campus."

The issue is reminiscent of the problems that some bike- and scooter-rental startups have caused in cities in recent years, with riders dumping the vehicles in inconvenient or unsafe spots.

Google, headquartered in Palo Alto, has also faced similar struggles with its bikes. The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2018 that the company estimated it lost 100 to 250 bikes a week and that residents, viewing them as a "community service," often ended up using them.

Do you work at Facebook or live in the neighborhood? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a nonwork phone, email at rprice@businessinsider.com, Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Mark Zuckerberg explains why an ad-free Facebook isn’t as simple as it sounds

As trust in Facebook and its ability to handle user data has eroded over the past year, one particular question has been asked a lot: Why isn’t there an ad-free version of Facebook?

The general thinking is that Facebook should offer users a version of its service that doesn’t depend on user data and targeted advertising to make money, but instead relies on a subscription fee. People who don’t mind targeted ads could keep using Facebook for free, and those who don’t want those ads could pay to remove them.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long argued that Facebook needs to be free in order for the company to accomplish its mission of connecting the world. But wouldn’t a subscription option solve many of Facebook’s problems?

Not exactly, according to a new interview Facebook published Wednesday, February 20, in which Zuckerberg spoke at length with a Harvard law professor about all kinds of topics, from “fake news” to blockchain to augmented reality.

When the conversation turned to an ad-free Facebook, Zuckerberg correctly identified that the problem most people seem to have with Facebook is not actually with Facebook’s ads — it’s with the personal data that Facebook collects and uses to target people with those ads.

“When people have questions about the ad model on Facebook, I don’t think the questions are just about the ad model,” Zuckerberg said. “I think they’re about both seeing ads, and data use around ads.

“I don’t think people are going to be that psyched about not seeing ads, but then not having different controls over how their data is used,” he added. In other words, no ads is a package deal with better controls over the data Facebook collects.

Zuckerberg suggested that a subscription product would need to include a way for people to opt out of Facebook’s data collection practices altogether — something that doesn’t currently exist. Facebook users can opt out of certain types of ads, or curate the list of their “interests” that Facebook uses to show them targeted ads. But there is some data Facebook collects about people no matter what, like their internet browsing data.

Zuckerberg used “Clear History,” a feature Facebook is building to disassociate your off-Facebook browsing history from your personal profile, as an example of the kind of feature users would expect in some kind of subscription.

“Clear History is a prerequisite, I think, for being able to do anything like subscriptions,” Zuckerberg explained. “Partially what someone would want to do if they were going to really actually pay for [ad-free Facebook] — you would want to have a control so that Facebook didn’t have access or wasn’t using that data or associating it with your account.

“And as a [matter of principle], we are not going to just offer a control like that to people who pay,” he continued. “If we’re going to give controls over data use, we’re going to do that for everyone in the community.”

Zuckerberg’s argument is that it wouldn’t be fair to stop collecting data about people only if they can afford to pay for it. Instead, it sounds as though Zuckerberg thinks Facebook needs to create a way for all users to better control Facebook’s data collection, and once everyone has that ability, it would make sense to let some people pay for an ad-free version, if they choose.

It’s a complicated explanation, mostly because Facebook’s data collection is complicated. Facebook pulls data from all kinds of sources, and even collects data about people who don’t have Facebook accounts. Facebook’s data collection is so broad and ingrained into the internet that the company has to build new features in order to stop collecting data about people.

Even if Facebook comes up with these new data privacy controls, Zuckerberg seems confident that a subscription service won’t be necessary.

“I personally don’t believe that very many people would like to pay to not have ads,” he said. “It may still end up being the right thing to offer that as a choice down the line, but all the data that I’ve seen suggests that the vast, vast, vast majority of people want a free service, and that the ads, in a lot of places, are not even that different from the organic content in terms of the quality of what people are being able to see.”

You can watch the whole interview below.

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Facebook accused of tricking kids in complaint to FTC

Child advocates want the FTC to examine whether Facebook facilitated "friendly fraud."

James Martin/CNET

Child advocates and other consumer groups are urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Facebook violated federal law by allegedly duping kids into spending their parents' money on online games. 

The complaint, which was sent to the FTC on Thursday, stems from an investigation by Reveal, a website run by the Center for Investigative Reporting. The nonprofit news organization, citing 135 pages of unsealed court documents from a 2012 class-action lawsuit, reported that the social network facilitated "friendly fraud" by encouraging game developers to let kids spend their parents' money without consent. Facebook settled that lawsuit in 2016.

Facebook said it updated its policies in 2016 to address purchases made by minors.

"We have in place mechanisms to prevent fraud at the time of purchase and we offer people the option to dispute purchases and seek refunds," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. "As part of our long history of working with parents and experts to offer tools for families navigating Facebook and the web, Facebook also has safeguards in place regarding minors' purchases."

More than a dozen advocacy groups, including Common Sense Media and the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, say the lawsuit wasn't enough and that the FTC should investigate to ensure Facebook doesn't take advantage of children and their families in the future.

"Facebook's internal documents indicate a callous disregard for young people and a culture that prioritized profits over people," according to a draft of the complaint viewed by CNET. 

The FTC confirmed it received the complaint but said it had no additional comment.

By allegedly tricking children into spending their parents' money, Facebook may have violated the FTC Act, a federal law that prohibits "unfair or deceptive acts" from affecting commerce, the complaint states. The groups also argue that Facebook may have run afoul of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act that protects children under 13 years old.

"Documents demonstrate that Facebook knew that certain games were highly popular with young children, some as young as 5 years old," the complaint stated. "This calls into question Facebook's claims that its entire platform is for a 'general audience,' as these games appear targeted to youth."

The groups also want the FTC to look into the data Facebook collected from children and whether it deleted this information. 

The FTC is already investigating Facebook over its privacy practices, and the social network could face a record-setting fine from the agency. 

Originally published Feb. 21 at 7:20 a.m. PT.Update, 8:48 a.m. PT: Includes statement from Facebook and FTC.