Loss of life can be justified if it helps Facebook to grow – internal memo

Social media giant’s woes worsen after executive’s comments leaked

A FACEBOOK executive’s memo, which claimed the “ugly truth” was that anything it did to grow was justified, has been made public, embarrassing the company.

The 2016 post said this doctrine applied even if it meant that people might die as a result of either bullying or terrorism.

Both the author and the com- pany’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, have denied that they actually believe the sentiment. However, it risks overshadowing Facebook’s efforts to tackle an earlier scandal.

The executive, Andrew Bosworth, said he didn’t agree with the provocative memo, now leaked to Buzzfeed, in which he described the company’s mentality to grow and connect people at all costs.

Mr Bosworth, who goes by ‘Boz,’ said on Twitter yesterday he didn’t even agree with the post at the time when he wrote it.

In the 2016 internal memo, entitled ‘The Ugly’, he wrote that “all the work we do in growth is justified” – even if it costs someone their life because they are exposed to bullies or die in a terrorist attack.

Mr Bosworth has been at Facebook since 2006 and serves as the company’s vice-president in charge of virtual reality and augmented reality efforts. Previously, he was vice-president of ads and helped create Facebook features, such as Messenger, its news feed and groups.

Mr Bosworth tweeted on Thursday that he intended the memo to be provocative and that it was one of the most unpopular things he had written internally.

In a statement to Buzzfeed, which Facebook confirmed, CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Mr Bosworth a “talented leader who says many provocative things” but added that the memo was something “that most people at Facebook, including myself, disagreed with strongly”.

He continued: “We’ve never believed the ends justify the means.

“We recognise 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.”

Facebook is currently facing an unprecedented crisis as it continues to grapple with Russian elections-meddling through its platform and with privacy scandals.

The company’s privacy practices have come under fire after Cambridge Analytica, a Trump-affiliated political con- sulting firm, acquired data inappropriately.

Days after these revelations, Facebook faced new questions about collecting call logs and information on text messages from Android devices.

The company still has not explained why it needed this data and what it did with it, saying only that it was used to improve experience on Facebook.

The website Ars Technica reported that users who checked data gathered by Facebook on them found that it had years of contact names, telephone numbers, call lengths and text messages.