Facebook: the internal memo puts the finger on the cost of growth

Photo AFP

AFP

Friday 30th of march 2018 11:44

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Friday 30th of march 2018 11:44

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The problems of Facebook is worse on Friday with the leak of an internal memo from a senior officer, two years of dating and claiming that the social network was determined to grow even at the expense of risks for its users.

The author of this memo, which dates back to 2016 and that was revealed on Thursday by the web site Buzzfeed, is Andrew Bosworth, the senior leader of a group which is considered close to the founder and chairman Mark Zuckerberg.

In a press release received Thursday by the AFP, Mr. Bosworth has, however, taken some distance from his own text.

“The sad reality is that we believe so much in bringing people closer than anything that can allow us to connect more people between them and as often as possible seems to us to be de facto good,” says the memo.

The text reminds us that these connections also allow users to find your soul mate or avoid a suicide, but the author wonders, however, about their negative consequences.

“It is possible that this costs lives by exposing people to harassment,” continues the memo. “It is also possible that someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated through our tools”.

Andrew Bosworth, however, was known to be a vigorous defender of Facebook, imperturbable in the expression of his opinions.

“I’m not agree today with this text and was not even when I wrote it”, he points out, however, in a statement received by AFP.

“The purpose of this paper, as in many others, that I have written in-house, was to bring up subjects that deserve, in my opinion, more discussion and more broadly within the company,” says the author.

In response to questions from AFP, Mr. Zuckerberg introduced Mr. Bosworth as a leader talented, but holding about sometimes provocative, among which this memo.

“This is one of those with which most people at Facebook, including me, are the most disagree,” said Mr Zuckerberg.

“We never thought that the end justifies the means. We recognize that connecting people is not in itself sufficient. We also need to work to make people more close to each other,” said the founder of Facebook.

Even if the memo of Mr. Bosworth was not prepared to confront his colleagues with difficult questions, he suggests that the leaders of Facebook were aware of the risks associated with connecting to the social network and share opinions and personal data.

This leak occurs at a time when the use of the data of 50 million users of Facebook by the company of the british council Cambridge Analytica, who has worked at the election campaign of us president Donald Trump in 2016, is scrutinized by the justice on both sides of the Atlantic.

Facebook has already sent documents to the justice of the State of New York and has expressed its desire to cooperate fully in the investigation said Thursday the prosecutor, Eric Schneiderman, about the case of Cambridge Analytica.

The regulator of u.s. trade (FTC) has confirmed that they opened an investigation on the protection of private data by Facebook, in the wake of the scandal Cambridge Analytica and the possible violation of a previous agreement with the firm of Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook has signed an agreement with the FTC in 2011, putting an end to charges that it had deceived consumers by telling them that their personal information on Facebook remained private, as he had shared.