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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."
Delete your accounts now! To hell with the Zuck!
I could give my life story on there and they still wouldn't know dick about me.
Projecting the image that you know everything about everyone may spook the product, but it's great marketing.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
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.
http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5
Da Blog
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!
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.
I've observed that social media in general has turned out to be better at dividing, isolating and siloing people than it is at unifying. I think social media is more about people talking than about listening. More about expressing one's one opinion than being enlightened by the opinions of others. More about people trying to distribute their ideas and beliefs and fears like tiny seeds on the winds of the internet. But those seeds fall on sterile, desiccated ground.
I don't think this is how social media wanted to be, just how it, or it's user base has evolved. Of course I reserve the right to be wrong. My Daytimer quote for the day is from Dean Rusk:
One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears -- by listening to them
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
The point of Facebook *is* to "connect people".
That may have been true when it started out, but it hasn't been for a long, long time. The whole point of Facebook now is to get more and more people to give them more and more personal information that they can sell to advertisers. That's how they make money and that's all that they really care about.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
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...
I can see it now.
FBI: "Hi guys, you're doing a bang-up job!"
FB: "Thanks!"
The end.
Regardless of his intent, he was an idiot to put it in writing. You never write anything, or say anything on an electronic device, that you might have trouble explaining to a jury.
If he wanted to discuss these issues, it should have been a privileged conversation with an attorney in the room.
FB needs to hire some adult supervision.
Yes, any technology can be used for good and bad. What can be used to find a self-help group of people suffering from the same rare disease you have can be used for fringe loonies looking for equally deranged individuals. But that is NOT the problem with Facebook.
Don't try to deflect the discussion now onto whether FB's effect on people is good or bad, hoping that someone will come and defend Facebook akin to "Facebook doesn't kill people, the Terrorists using it do, it's just like guns, ya see?". That isn't the problem with Facebook. The problem with Facebook is not how its users (ab)use it.
The problem is how its owners abuse its users.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That is why I often mail things like "As discussed earlier, we agreed to do ... If I misunderstood this, please let me know." This covers my ass and gives the other person a moment to opt out. It also removes future discussions where he and I had interpreted information differently.
Once i did not interpreted the "Yeah sure" as sarcastic.Saved BOTH our asses.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.