FB's leaked memo outlines 'ugly truth' behind its mission

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A Facebook executive wrote that the company must pursue its aim of connecting people using "questionable" practices even if it costs lives, in a 2016 memo leaked in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica revelations.

Andrew Bosworth, a vice-president at Facebook who has been there since the early days, wrote a memo entitled "The Ugly", which was leaked to BuzzFeed that said everything Facebook does to grow is "justified". The memo was published internally at Facebook the day after the death of a Chicago man was shown on Facebook Live.

"Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack co-ordinated on our tools," he wrote. "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... That isn't something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price."

Bosworth said this justified "questionable contact importing practices" where users give up their friends' data, and implied the privacy policy was meant to deceive with "the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends". Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief executive officer, distanced himself from the memo, saying that "most people at Facebook, including myself, disagreed with it strongly".

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