> Still, she did not believe that the failures she observed during her two and a half years at the company were the result of bad intent by Facebook’s employees or leadership. It was a lack of resources, Zhang wrote, and the company’s tendency to focus on global activity that posed public relations risks, as opposed to electoral or civic harm.
> “Facebook projects an image of strength and competence to the outside world that can lend itself to such theories, but the reality is that many of our actions are slapdash and haphazard accidents,” she wrote.
> “We simply didn’t care enough to stop them”
This is the key takeaway, IMO. Not as an excuse for Facebook, but as an indictment of "slapdash" information technology in general, particularly social media. It's becoming more and more clear that "bringing the world closer together" is a pandora's box, one that Facebook is not equipped (motivated?) to deal with the consequences of. Maybe no company ever could be. Maybe this is simply a thing that shouldn't exist.
Right, which was the reason for the "(motivated?)". It is a genuinely hard problem, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's intractable even for a motivated organization, but at the very least there's no profit-incentive to put real effort into solving it. So for one reason or another, I don't think any company can be relied upon to keep a handle on this problem.
I think it’s more an indictment of the former employee’s naïveté. Who, at this point, doesn’t think that the point of Facebook is to engage in manipulation at a global scale?
> “Facebook projects an image of strength and competence to the outside world that can lend itself to such theories, but the reality is that many of our actions are slapdash and haphazard accidents,” she wrote.
> “We simply didn’t care enough to stop them”
This is the key takeaway, IMO. Not as an excuse for Facebook, but as an indictment of "slapdash" information technology in general, particularly social media. It's becoming more and more clear that "bringing the world closer together" is a pandora's box, one that Facebook is not equipped (motivated?) to deal with the consequences of. Maybe no company ever could be. Maybe this is simply a thing that shouldn't exist.