A leaked memo from Facebook vice president Andrew “Boz” Bosworth has revealed an even more unflattering side to the social media giant. In it, Bosworth wrote about the need for the company to continue growing; even if it could potentially cause negative consequences for users.
The memo from 2016, which was leaked to Buzzfeed news, begins on a reasonably positive note. Saying “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.”
However, it soon turns towards an uglier side of the business. Going on to read “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.
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. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.”
Both Bozworth and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have distanced themselves from the leaked memo. Bozworth claims that the memo was to highlight issues facing the company at the time, and was meant to begin a discussion about the direction it was going.
My statement on the recent Buzzfeed story containing a post I wrote in 2016 pic.twitter.com/lmzDMcrjv5
— Boz (@boztank) March 29, 2018
In either case, it provides a brief insight into the workings of Facebook as a company. A company that for a time, was willing to ignore any potential negative effects of expanding its social network. Which is likely how we ended up in this place, with a company that does it’s best to harvest our information.
[Source: Buzzfeed News]
