A shocking 2016 memo written by one of Mark Zuckerberg’s longest and most trusted top executives defends Facebook’s “questionable contact importing practices” and acknowledges that the platform can get people killed — but it’s all justifiable in the name of growth.
Titled “The Ugly” and published by BuzzFeed News on Thursday night, the memo reads in part:
“Maybe it costs someone 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,” Bosworth wrote. “That isn’t something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. 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.”
The memo surfaced just as Mark Zuckerberg and the company are having to answer for the data of 50 million people who had their data unknowingly harvested and used to target American voters in the 2016 election.
Zuckerberg issued a statement after the memo was published, writing:
“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.”
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