Facebook Parent Meta Cuts Responsible Innovation Team (wsj.com) 19
Meta Platforms has disbanded its Responsible Innovation team, which was once a prominent piece of its effort to address concerns about the potential downsides of its products. From a report: The team had included roughly two dozen engineers, ethicists and others who collaborated with internal product teams and outside privacy specialists, academics and users to identify and address potential concerns about new products and alterations to Facebook and Instagram. Meta spokesman Eric Porterfield said the company remains committed to the team's goals, and that most of its former members would continue similar work elsewhere at Meta, though they aren't guaranteed new jobs. He said the company believed its safe and ethical product design resources were better spent on more issue-specific teams.
The team's demise comes at a tumultuous time for Meta, as it contends with a precipitous slowdown in its core digital-advertising business that has prompted it to slow hiring in recent months. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to overhaul a broad swath of the social-media giant's businesses, emphasizing initiatives that can help drive near-term growth or that fit with his longer-term emphasis on the metaverse, a loosely defined, more immersive version of the internet that he says is central to the company's future. As envisioned, according to past statements by the company and the team's leaders, the Responsible Innovation team was to have had a formative role in future company products, beginning with encouraging newly hired engineers in how to think about potential downsides to what they build and then consulting on the design of specific products.
The team's demise comes at a tumultuous time for Meta, as it contends with a precipitous slowdown in its core digital-advertising business that has prompted it to slow hiring in recent months. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to overhaul a broad swath of the social-media giant's businesses, emphasizing initiatives that can help drive near-term growth or that fit with his longer-term emphasis on the metaverse, a loosely defined, more immersive version of the internet that he says is central to the company's future. As envisioned, according to past statements by the company and the team's leaders, the Responsible Innovation team was to have had a formative role in future company products, beginning with encouraging newly hired engineers in how to think about potential downsides to what they build and then consulting on the design of specific products.
Who needs negativity (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Who needs negativity (Score:1)
When Vince Neil killed Razzles while drunk driving he had to do public service announcements and swear off the evils of doing alcohol and drugs too.
It kept him out of jail, but nothing changed.
Having that group at Faceplant served the same purpose at the time it was necessary to appear as if they were respective of people's privacy...
Yes, it was always a crock, in both cases, and they no longer feel a need to maintain that facade.
Business ethics is always expendable (Score:2)
How else are they going to compete with TikTok? (Score:1)
No other choice but to race to the bottom. Exploit users devices & brains, billions in government subsidies, fake content and engagement, etc. The government seems to have no ability to address the military weapon that is TikTok, thanks to ahem... "diversified incentives" So here we are.
To be fair ... (Score:5, Funny)
Facebook Parent Meta Cuts Responsible Innovation Team
Maybe they're just switching to alliterate names, like Canonical does with Ubuntu, and going with Irresponsible Innovation Team -- which would be more on-brand anyway ...
This makes sense (Score:1)
Posting anonymously because my son works at Facebook.
I see a different side of Facebook than most and I can say that the product teams my son is involved with take ethics and privacy very seriously. Their biggest issues are related to serving hundreds of millions of users on the entire planet in re
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my son is involved with take ethics and privacy very seriously. Their biggest issues are related to serving hundreds of millions of users on the entire planet in real time, and unintended consequences of algorithms designed to drive engagement to pay the bills.
My good sir/madam/individual...the problem is that while I completely believe that your son truly does have the correct set of intentions at heart...these two adjacent sentences are inherently contradictory.
"Algorithms designed to drive engagement" are fundamentally flawed from an ethics perspective. People respond to emotional triggers, which most commonly involves outrage. It's certainly nothing new; nightly news broadcasts have used clickbait-like wording in their descriptions of upcoming segments for de
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Let that be the first decision you make, and the rest will be a lot more profitable (in the most wholesome sense of the term).
In this specific instance, Meta has no reason to exist. But neither do its compe
Facebook Appears to Allow Data Scrapers (Score:2)
Going irresponsible? (Score:1)
I doesn't pay... (Score:2)
Reason (Score:2)
They actually did their job and produced results.
Don't Ask Questions You Wanted Answered (Score:2)
Seems right to me. I stopped getting on a scale between 2003 and 2018. The result wasn't modifying my behaviour, so why measure?