Leaked Facebook memo says what the site does is ‘justified’ - even if it kills people

A leaked memo by a top Facebook executive suggests that what Facebook does is ‘de facto good’ – even if terror attacks are coordinated via the site.

The memo, published by Buzzfeed, was written by Facebook’s Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, VP of consumer hardware.

It also suggests that the deaths of people who die as a result of bullying on Facebook are in some way justified by the site’s goal of ‘connecting people’.

Mark Zuckerberg distanced himself from the memo, saying, ‘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.’

Bosworth has since said that he did not agree with the content even when he posted it, and that the goal of the memo was to inspire ‘discussion’.

The memo reads, ‘We talk about the good and the bad of our work often. I want to talk about the ugly.
We connect people…

‘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.’

‘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.’