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Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection In 2016 Memo, Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed (buzzfeed.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: On June 18, 2016, one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's most trusted lieutenants circulated an extraordinary memo weighing the costs of the company's relentless quest for growth. "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," VP Andrew "Boz" Bosworth wrote. "So we connect more people," he wrote in another section of the memo. "That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools." The explosive internal memo is titled "The Ugly," and has not been previously circulated outside the Silicon Valley social media giant.
The Bosworth memo reveals the extent to which Facebook's leadership understood the physical and social risks the platform's products carried -- even as the company downplayed those risks in public. It suggests that senior executives had deep qualms about conduct that they are now seeking to defend. And as the company reels amid a scandal over improper outside data collection on its users, the memo shows that one senior executive -- one of Zuckerberg's longest-serving deputies -- prioritized all-encompassing growth over all else, a view that has led to questionable data collection and manipulative treatment of its users. The full memo is embedded in BuzzFeed's report. In response to the story, Zuckerberg wrote in a statement: "Boz is a talented leader who says many provocative things. This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly. We've never believed the ends justify the means. We recognize that connecting people isn't enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people closer together. We changed our whole mission and company focus to reflect this last year."
The Bosworth memo reveals the extent to which Facebook's leadership understood the physical and social risks the platform's products carried -- even as the company downplayed those risks in public. It suggests that senior executives had deep qualms about conduct that they are now seeking to defend. And as the company reels amid a scandal over improper outside data collection on its users, the memo shows that one senior executive -- one of Zuckerberg's longest-serving deputies -- prioritized all-encompassing growth over all else, a view that has led to questionable data collection and manipulative treatment of its users. The full memo is embedded in BuzzFeed's report. In response to the story, Zuckerberg wrote in a statement: "Boz is a talented leader who says many provocative things. This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly. We've never believed the ends justify the means. We recognize that connecting people isn't enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people closer together. We changed our whole mission and company focus to reflect this last year."
https://mobile.twitter.com/boz...
I'm not sure I believe anything any of them say but it certain does provide a different view of it than the article portrays.
It's no secret that Facebook's various offenses and Zuckerberg's pretty damning responses to the blowback are troubling the Facebook eloi. One can only imagine how difficult it must be to concentrate on automating the liberal safe space they all dream of while navigating this ongoing shitstorm. They thought they were working on behalf of the most virtuous of all the virtue mongers in the Valley, but it turns out they're actually employed by a bunch of piratic shitheels.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
That's a high-trust society being abused by low-trust people. One of the things that makes America great is how strangers trust each other, just because we're all Americans. It is a tremendous source of strength. But, Zuckerberg and his ilk were raised to distrust strangers and think that Americanism is nothing but racism. Thus, it is virtuous to abuse them, as Zuckerberg demonstrates here. Unfortunately, trust is declining and I don't believe it will ever come back.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I fully believe that he wanted to spur discussion. If you write a memo knowing that it goes against the grain of your audience, and you don't want a discussion, then what on earth do you want? But his comment, like Zuck's repsonse, is rather duplicitous (sleazily weaselly). Of course he wanted a discussion, but that's not all; he wanted change to follow, or at least warn people about how their policy might backfire. I don't believe for one second that this memo was just a discussion piece that did not accurately describe the company policy.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
To all of you who thought Big Brother would come from "The Government": Surprise!
Here is where our free society dies...not with the bought-off corporate shills we elect, but far more directly. Even our damaged and fallible version of representative democracy is being rendered irrelevant by corporate executives who simply arrogate to themselves decisions about the kind of society we will have, and the acceptable costs of creating it.
This is what happens when a social or technological innovation allows some organization to gather and use power in a way that outstrips the ability of our democratic processes even to properly evaluate it, much less control it. So some unaccountable, unreachable corporate douchebag decides how many deaths will be an acceptable cost for implementing his personal vision of America. And what are the consequences for this kind of arrogant corporate over-reach? We just put an angry-face emoticon at the bottom of a 100-word comment, and fool ourselves into believing that's the extent of a citizen's duty in a democratic society.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The span of what you can do with personal data--even just what you can find around the 'net--is terrifying to contemplate. Now and then, when I spot somebody from whom I want to garner political support, I spend about 3 minutes hopping around Google and build a profile. Sometimes I get not much; other times I know everything about you, up to and including unearthing personal cell phone numbers for politicians and other high-profile folks.
Data privacy laws. We need them. I'll work out how to construct them eventually (I have to win an election first).
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