Facebook Employees In An Uproar Over Executive's Leaked Memo (nytimes.com) 142
According to The New York Times, "Facebook employees were in an uproar on Friday over a leaked 2016 memo from a top executive defending the social network's growth at any cost -- even if it caused deaths from a terrorist attack that was organized on the platform." From the report: In the memo, Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, wrote, "Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good." Mr. Bosworth and Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, have since disavowed the memo, which was published on Thursday by BuzzFeed News.
But the fallout at the Silicon Valley company has been wide. According to two Facebook employees, workers have been calling on internal message boards for a hunt to find those who leak to the media (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). Some have questioned whether Facebook has been transparent enough with its users and with journalists, said the employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. Many are also concerned over what might leak next and are deleting old comments or messages that might come across as controversial or newsworthy, they said. In the aftermath, some Facebook executives have taken to Twitter for a public charm offensive, sending pithy phrases and emoticons to reporters who cover the company. Adam Mosseri, Facebook's head of news, in recent days wrote unprompted to a BuzzFeed editor and to its chief executive reminiscing and telling a story about his mother. He also wrote to a reporter from the Verge tech site about the songs played at his wedding reception.
But the fallout at the Silicon Valley company has been wide. According to two Facebook employees, workers have been calling on internal message boards for a hunt to find those who leak to the media (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). Some have questioned whether Facebook has been transparent enough with its users and with journalists, said the employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. Many are also concerned over what might leak next and are deleting old comments or messages that might come across as controversial or newsworthy, they said. In the aftermath, some Facebook executives have taken to Twitter for a public charm offensive, sending pithy phrases and emoticons to reporters who cover the company. Adam Mosseri, Facebook's head of news, in recent days wrote unprompted to a BuzzFeed editor and to its chief executive reminiscing and telling a story about his mother. He also wrote to a reporter from the Verge tech site about the songs played at his wedding reception.
Give me a break (Score:5, Informative)
How did you employees THINK you earned your paycheck? By siphoning user's private data and selling it to corporations, politicians, or anyone else who wanted to pay, that's how. Now you're crying because it didn't happen *exactly* like you think it did? Or someone said slightly mean things about the results of your actions?
Grow up, snowflakes. You're in bed with a corporation that doesn't value people or their privacy very highly. Actions and internal memos speak louder than public statements. Time to deal with that fact.
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Also, you "trusted him." You dumb fucks.
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
Grow up, snowflakes.
I share your criticism of Facebook employees, but at what point do they cry about being special and unique, warranting a "snowflake" insult? Your pejorative loses meaning when you don't even attempt to use it in context.
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
For a certain subset of jackoffs, "snowflake" is the go-to insult, no matter the context. "This is someone that I dislike and am unable to express why, so this person must be a snowflake" is how their reasoning goes.
Re: Give me a break (Score:4, Funny)
If AmiMojo and PopeRatzo are the same individual, then I'm APK and the TimeCube guy.
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I knew it!
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I tried being AHuxley as well for a while, but could never manage to say "Gulf of Tonkin" whilst keeping a straight face.
Re: Give me a break (Score:1)
I see, it's like the current use of bigot, racist, sexist, etc.
Re:Give me a break (Score:4, Insightful)
Grow up, snowflakes.
I share your criticism of Facebook employees, but at what point do they cry about being special and unique, warranting a "snowflake" insult? Your pejorative loses meaning when you don't even attempt to use it in context.
A snowflake ignorantly assumes that A) their company never does anything morally corrupt and B) the world is a happy place where nothing could possibly go wrong with what their employer is doing.
The believe this SO strongly that they're now demanding a witch hunt to find those who would dare expose "The Ugly" which they refuse to believe exists.
Perhaps you're right. Snowflake is not fair. Stupid Snowflake is more accurate. Perhaps we should let them flounder. Wisdom is never the teacher of the ignorant; they much prefer learning everything the fucking hard way.
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It is worth pointing out that everyone was perfectly happy with Facebook's extensive data mining business - until it was used to (marginally) aid a politician they didn't like. Then, and only then, did it become a big problem.
That's the real issue. They and everybody else, with a few exceptions, were and probably are fine with the idea of instrusive and inescapable tracking and the exploitation of other people's information for (astonishing) profit. That's the problem with havin
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
Grow up, snowflakes.
I share your criticism of Facebook employees, but at what point do they cry about being special and unique, warranting a "snowflake" insult? Your pejorative loses meaning when you don't even attempt to use it in context.
Well when I read that many Facebook employees seem to think that the company should step up its war on leakers and hire employees with more “integrity” [theverge.com] I had to laugh. Apparently the business practices are not the problem; what they want are more colleagues who "don't ask, don't tell".
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They are shocked—shocked—to find that surveillance is going on in here!
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
100% this.
I feel this way toward all of google, all of fb, all of twitter. and it includes any 'network management' (dpi, really) company, as well.
they all are traitors, of a kind. they sold their souls, mostly looking the other way as to not think too much about it, but the core reason for all of these companies to exist is to steal, swindle, lie, cheat and take whatever they can, in anyway they can. 'networking' is just a backdrop; all those companies are run by sociopaths who would kill for money.
you workers who joined those companies: are you now starting to have a conscience? I guess better late than never, but sheesh, what DID you think your company was all about?
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you workers who joined those companies: are you now starting to have a conscience? I guess better late than never, but sheesh, what DID you think your company was all about?
At least I can kinda understand them deceiving themselves in the name of keeping jobs that provide pretty good wages and healthcare. The ones I don't get are those, (many friends of mine among them), who continue to offer up the last vestiges of their privacy so they don't have to write an email or a letter, pick up a phone, or, (gasp!), arrange a gathering and actually travel somewhere to get together with their "friends". It seems to me that they're past 'give me convenience or give me death' and well on
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
The employees know, obviously. They're just in an uproar that someone made them look bad.
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I think you misunderstand, Facebook values people and their private information greatly. How else would they make any money, click thru ads ?
Re:Give me a break (Score:4, Interesting)
How did you employees THINK you earned your paycheck? By siphoning user's private data and selling it to corporations, politicians, or anyone else who wanted to pay, that's how.
There is a lot of religious oriented stuff on TV now, and one show told a story about how a guy named Jesus entrusted his private location data with a guy named Judas, who sold the information to the government, and they nailed Jesus to a tree!
Hey, that's Facebook!
Maybe we should start calling it Judasbook . . . ?
Anyway, I am extremely disappointed at the reaction of the Facebook employees to the leaking of this memo. This should be a call for all of them to clean up their act.
Instead, they want to sweep it under the rug, and ignore it.
It's far worse than I feared . . . Facebook, is indeed, totally rotten to the core. What causes folks to have no morals or ethics . . . ? Did the riches of technology corrupt them . . . ?
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I'm not sure I find anything objectionable about his statement. Almost anything can be used to kill someone, you need to make it anyway provided it's a useful thing that isn't strictly about killing people. Communications in particular, of all types from the land line to the most vapid facebook political post can be used to coordinate a massive terrorist attack, yes, you need to move on anyway. Or else we need to go back to the trees and stop people from using sticks and stones.
I did not read into his stat
Facebook is on fire... (Score:5, Informative)
And here I sit, enjoying the flames.
I doubt they're going to go away, but anything to get people to distrust and use it less is a positive thing for all of us.
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I got the marshmallows, grahms and chocolate. You bring the drinks.
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Yep, this is going to be a good roasting. I initially read this as the employees being outraged at the content of the memo but they've obviously read it already because it's an internal memo.
So we go with plan B: Memo leaks that makes the company look bad and all they can rail about is that it makes them look bad - fuck the people that die because of them. What this tells me is that the whole company is full of ruthless sociopathic slimeballs that are covering each other's asses and hoping they don't get ca
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Only those about TPS reports.
Re:Facebook is on fire... (Score:5, Funny)
This is /. . What do you have against old, uncool people?
Re: Facebook is on fire... (Score:5, Interesting)
That was my impression too. Read the whole memo to get the context of what he's saying. If you still don't get it, substitute a few words:
"Maybe someone eats a sandwich who's a terrorist who wants to attack and kill people. And still we feed people. The ugly truth is that we believe in feeding people so deeply that anything that allows us to feed more people more often is *de facto* good."
He then goes on to say that most of what they do is good (well, for some value of good), and the good outweighs the bad.
That single out-of-context quote does make for great clickbait, I must admit. Having said that, if I wanted that kind of crap I'd read the Sun, their page 3 is more interesting than Slashdot's.
Re: Facebook is on fire... (Score:5, Funny)
But you won't find Cowboy Neal on the Sun's Page 3.
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No true Slashdotter would say that!
They lit the match (Score:5, Insightful)
What's really rather ironic, is that they aren't just on fire but they are on fire because they poured the gasoline all over themselves and then proceeded to actually light the match.
A company that has taken the admitted stance of connection at all cost, which has exploited its phone apps to mine for contacts, and which almost singlehandedly invented and then exploited the culture of over sharing so much that privacy isn't even a consideration for a whole generation is now hoist by their own revelations. And they have the nerve to complain that the problem isn't in the memo, but that the memo was leaked. That is truly rich. They are so far gone they don't even see the problem any more. They talk about "suicide bomber" employees who are just getting a job to destroy the company, spies, and state actors they don't see that the problem isn't with the act of revelation. I actually hope that some state actors are involved, because if they are I want to thank that country.
Here is a tidbit for Facebook, and every other social networking executive and employee in the world. Learn it, because it's important. The problem is never in the revelation. If you are afraid of how other people will react if an action is revealed, then you need to ask yourself if that fear of revelation isn't a part of your own psyche (call it a conscience if you like) making a last ditch effort at telling you that maybe what you're doing is wrong. If you are that far gone that all you have left to keep you in check is the fear of how normal people will react to what you're doing or saying, then you desperately need to listen to that fear until you can get back whatever humanity you can. Because it's not a matter of if, but when it will come to light.
I especially love the part where Bosworth tries to claim he didn't even agree with what he was saying as he was saying it. A note to him, that particular reaction isn't what I'm talking about above. Trying to claim you were just trying to spark discussion and were playing devil's advocate doesn't work when you are the vice president and your statements influence the actions and motivations of hundreds of employees.
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Re:They [the cult leaders] lit the match (Score:2, Troll)
Nicely stated.
The way you phrase your analysis brought to mind another point of view about Facebook.
It is a cult.
Self-serving, self-aggrandizing, megalomaniacal autocrats promulgate a set of obscene antisocial philosophies that somehow hook in a group of followers solely on the basis of lies, subterfuge, or a perverse charisma (or money). They get their followers to "drink the Kool Aid" of thinking that there is something righteous in the plan or promotion. It all sounds so innocent or inspiring at first,
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A company that has taken the admitted stance of connection at all cost... is now hoist by their own revelations
Poetic justice, that. And the rank hypocrisy they are revealing here is even deeper and more pointed when you consider that they are among the folks who created and promoted the 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' meme.
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The cure could be worse than the disease. If people leave Facebook and end up going to one of a dozen new social network companies, forcing everyone to have to sign up for a half-dozen other services, most who will be even less trustworthy.
Nevermind how many of them will go to Weibo and the like.
Just make sure you brace for the new wave of malware to spread... a lot of these "new" socia
So they can delete. (Score:1)
They have the luxury of deleting and controlling what others can find out about them and their views while the rest of us are data mined and politically manipulated. Nice standards.
#deletefacebook
Re: So they can delete. (Score:2, Informative)
Make sure you poison any data you have before "deleting" your Facebook account with this script:
https://www.shift8web.ca/2018/03/delete-facebook-how-to-poison-obfuscate-and-purge-your-facebook-data-before-deleting-your-account/
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It's kind of like that terrible movie about Google, The Circle, where the company's downfall is when the transparency applies to them. It's too bad the movie sucked so bad (it completely lacked nuance), as it had a good point.
I don't like Facebook... (Score:3)
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How Refreshing! (Score:2, Insightful)
This is an executive who has a bottom line, and isn't afraid to tell it like it is.
Whether or not they REMAIN an executive remains to be seen.
Re:How Refreshing! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an executive who has a bottom line, and isn't afraid to tell it like it is.
In what sense is he "telling it like it is"?
Facebook's bottom line isn't about connecting people - and what they believe in "so strongly" isn't "connecting people". Facebook's entire business model is collecting personal information from their users and allowing advertisers to have access to that information so those advertisers can hopefully stuff to those users.
I suppose you could argue that he was at least being honest in saying he didn't care if people died because of Facebook's business model - but for him to claim the reason for that is because they "care so much about connecting people" is a bald-faced lie.
Re:How Refreshing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably "connecting people" is internal Newspeak for adding more users to data farm, and encouraging existing users to be more active so there's more data to farm.
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Facebook's bottom line isn't about connecting people - and what they believe in "so strongly" isn't "connecting people". Facebook's entire business model is collecting persal information from their users and allowing advertisers to have access to that information so those advertisers can hopefully stuff to those users.
You know why I'm not afraid of the 'all seeing all knowing Facebook?' Because they don't know squat. I've been on Facebook for eight years. I post something most days - Some days three or
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I get nearly no adds at all ... ... e.g. for bands and travel destinations or hotels I never willl visit.
But I take my time to click on the menu associated with adds and chose 'not interested'
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Facebook's bottom line isn't about connecting people - and what they believe in "so strongly" isn't "connecting people". Facebook's entire business model is collecting personal information from their users and allowing advertisers to have access to that information so those advertisers can hopefully stuff to those users.
And how do you suppose they persuade people to use their platform such that they can collect personal information? That's right, by providing some service "free" - like connecting people.
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Why does all of this "connecting people" shit remind me of the movie Human Centipede?
Re:How Refreshing! (Score:4, Interesting)
I hate to play devils advocate for someone who may actually be a devil, but in my experience most corporate executives believe - at least on some level - the bullshit they preach.
They genuinely think that they're doing something worthwhile, and that if a few bad things happen (like people dying), then that's OK because it's for the greater good. "If we can get everyone connected and talking to one another, then surely that must be a good thing; if people across borders are friends through Facebook, that must make wars less likely, saving millions of lives, so a few suicides and terrorist atrocities here and there are sad, but a price worth paying. The fact that we have to sell user data to skeezy people to pay the bills is just an unfortunate temporary problem that we'll work out further down the road."
I've seen this attitude at everything from defence contractors ("well yeah, this mechanism is technically designed to maximise the spread of clusterbombs in urban environments, but it's really neat engineering, and we've kept lots of high-paying jobs in the area") to online gambling ("we aren't like all those other firms that are really predatory, our players come to us for lighthearted entertainment and socialisation, not because we're exploiting a highly self-destructive addiction"). These people aren't stupid, and they aren't lying; they've just been slooowly twisted one day at a time until their worldview is out of whack with anyone remotely objective. There's a certain amount of self-selection, as people with a less malleable worldview don't tend to fit in at these companies. They might turn up and do the work, but they never settle in to the culture and soon leave or are pushed out. As a result, they are staffed by people who are easily moulded and sociopaths who are probably well aware of the wider consequences of their actions, but don't care.
This "Boz" guy sounds like the former; he's drunk the Kool-aid and things that what's good for FB is good full stop. Zuck is clearly the latter; he knows that he has done stuff that people would consider morally wrong, but only cares about how the revelation of that behaviour effects him and his company.
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No, no, it's connecting people. You're just confusing *which* people.
They're connecting advertisers to users. See? They're connecting people!
Or maybe they're connecting people to wallets...
Excellent example of corporate thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr. Bosworth's memo is a classic example of corporate thinking, and brilliant in its clarity and brevity.
It's a classic because it identifies certain ethical aspects of his company's conduct and then proceeds to declare all and any ethical considerations irrelevant. Ethics is placed in its proper corporate place, i.e. totally absent. The company is not malicious (there's no benefit in that) just completely a-moral.
The one and only thing that matters is what affects the company's continued economic success: growth. Growth which in turn hinges on whether a user's social circle ("friends") are on facebook. It is the clearest and most perceptive and most succinct statement I've yet encountered (from a manager) on how the "network effect" affects companies whose business it is to provide (and sell) connections.
This memo is also valuable from another perspective. Time and time again it's demonstrated that the question: "Am I being cynical?" is not relevant in conjunction with the corporate world. The correct question is: "Am I being cynical enough to accurately reflect reality?".
It also shows why corporate communications had better be phrased with both eyes on ways such communications expose the company or the sender to repercussions. Coming out and saying "We make money from connecting people, so that's what we will do, for good or for ill" is a bit crude. Not to say blunt. Mr. Bosworth might be due for a refresher course in proper corporate communication technique.
A more conventional phrasing of Mr. Bosworth's message is something like this: "We believe in connecting people. That's what we do and what continues to make us so successful. We will continue to serve the world in personal connectivity because we firmly believe that the good we do far outweighs any negative aspects. So for us the case is clear: we must expand our business as much as possible, as per our mission statement and the Good of Mankind."
There. Some people get that intuitively. It's part of them. Just look at Mr. Zuckerberg.
Last but not least it shows why certain things (like personal privacy) can only be achieved insofar as they are enforced by law.
Corporate self-regulation never works when corporations that don't follow self-regulation will simply outgrow and take over the ones that do. On the other hand, corporate self-regulation can work well when there is a high enough probability that the consequences of not following the rules are devastating for the rule-breaker.
Karma (Score:1)
Double standards (Score:5, Insightful)
According to two Facebook employees, workers have been calling on internal message boards for a hunt to find those who leak to the media
So.. they want everyone to share data with Facebook, but don't want Facebook to share its data with everyone else.
I suppose it makes sense. After all, you don't get rich by writing a lot of checks. And so in an information economy you don't get rich by allowing symmetry in data access and control.
For once I feel a little bad for Facebook (Score:4, Interesting)
Or perhaps actually a little bad for the guy who wrote the memo. You're getting dreadfully punished for actually having someone consider the potential negative consequences and put that to paper, instead of acting like you're oblivious to the possibility. It's like if you consider digital/cell phone cameras vs old film cameras. Will they be used for spying on people in the shower? Corporate espionage? Making kiddie porn? Yes. Yes. Yes. We're not going to outlaw them though. Facebook is connecting people, it's obviously going to connect good people with bad people and bad people with other bad people. I dread to think how that works as a general principle, like if you have a security risk you can't fix or haven't fixed yet let's not write it down. Because then we knew and did nothing, if we don't write it down we didn't know... yeah, that'll improve security.
Re:For once I feel a little bad for Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
For once I feel a little bad for Facebook
Get over it, dude. They'd sell you and your loved ones down a river in a heartbeat. If they could find a legal way to deprive you of oxygen for profit, they'd do it.
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What Boz means by "connecting people" is just empty bullshit. He has a very superficial metric and he has decided that actually thinking is no longer necessary -- let the metric rule all.
In fact, I do not have a great problem with the parts about how sometimes good things will be used for bad ends. The language was unfortunate, but he has a point I can understand, even if I do not agree with his unsubtle approach.
The part that is beyond dicey is his handwaving ends justify the means argument. Let's exami
Just found out (Score:4, Interesting)
Your task is to sort people to make money.
People are the product.
The workers must be really bad at their day job not to have understood their brands mission.
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Noble mission? (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook employees in an uproar? What business did they think they were in?
Zuck may sugar coat what they are doing as "connecting people" but its basically an image/comment sharing site. Not some grandiose save the world mission.
Get real.
Re:Noble mission? (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook employees in an uproar? What business did they think they were in?
Zuck may sugar coat what they are doing as "connecting people" but its basically an image/comment sharing site. Not some grandiose save the world mission.
Get real.
An image/sharing site? Facebook is now arguably the worlds largest human tracking database. With the amount of data they hold, someone can easily profile a human and learn a LOT about them, to the level of prediction, impersonation, and especially mass influence.
And when I say *someone*, that includes damn near any government on the planet.
That's not exactly the same as running a fucking personal blog where you share grandmas recipes and pictures of your favorite shoes.
If we're gonna "get real", then let's stop bullshitting about what power Facebook actually wields. If their database was held by any government and you caught stealing it, you would be facing life in prison or worse.
Even real news is also clickbait (Score:2, Informative)
"Adam Mosseri, Facebook's head of news, in recent days wrote unprompted to a BuzzFeed editor and to its chief executive reminiscing and telling a story about his mother."
Translation: A Buzzfeed editor tweeted a joke about a new Facebook feature, and a Facebook exec tweeted back a joke reply.
I don't doubt there's some brown-nosing involved, but this is still one heck of a misleading summary.
Because on slashdot, even real news is not good enough unless it's made into trumped-up clickbait.
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Mod parent up please. I read the same section and thought holy shit, that's pretty fucking cringey, don't they think people would see right through that? Turns out both "writing" were just short tweets that were relevant and not cringey at all.
It's no wonder trust in the media is at an all time low. Keep it up guys! It's amazing you still haven't learned after the 2016 election. You didn't even change, you're just doubling down, absolutely incredible.
Today I Learned® (Score:2)
Russian troll farmers are people too, and Facebook wants to connect us, and if that turns out to have been destructive, oh well! \_()_/
Suspicious source (Score:1)
It's from buzzfeed so it's automatically of dubious origin.
taken to twitter??? (Score:2)
oink? why did they get on *twitter* to make a public charm offensive. does that not break the "eat your own god-food" rule of trusting your own product oh wait, what was this story about again?
How does that work? (Score:2)
The bus has arrived! (Score:1)
Deleting (Score:2)
That will work. Yeap.
Down with telegraph, telephone, and e-mail COs (Score:2)
Those robber barons also profited (immensely!!) from our communications, and cared not, if terrorists benefited from the ease of communication along with the billions of others!
Boycott and divest from all of the communication companies!
Farcebook... (Score:1)
From the mouth of Andrew Bosworth... (Score:2)
We connect people. That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide. So we connect more people
That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools []
We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.
He then later (recently) wrote:
I don't agree with this post and I didn't agree with it when I wrote it. The purpose of this post [...] was to bring to the surface many issues [...] I thought deserved more attention.
Don't worry folks. It was a a mind f*** on his employees intended to have some unknowable side effect. Us filthy commoners will never understand how the minds of the Grand Wizards of Facebook work.
This is the mindset of the leaders of Facebook. BTW, Bosworth still works there and was publicly backed up by Zuckerberg after this all came to light.
Zuckerberg defended the memo's author, one of his most trusted confidants, calling Bosworth a "talented leader who says many provocative things."
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You tell 'em Boris.