Facebook exec defends leaked memo on Twitter

2025-04-28 08:15:55admin

When you're a high-level Facebook executive and something you said in the past comes back to haunt you, your best hope for salvation is frantically taking to Twitter.

Or so it would seem for Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, the Facebook Vice President who is trying to distance himself from an internal 2016 company memo he wrote that was published Thursday by BuzzFeed News.

SEE ALSO: Thread about how much data Facebook and Google have on you will freak you the hell out

The memo argues that the purpose of Facebook is to connect people, and that even if that connection means people literally die as a result, the company will not slow down in its attempts at growth.

"That can be bad if they make it negative," he noted. "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."

What's more, the memo seems to justify shady growth practices in the name of growth.

"That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified," he wrote. "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."

Shortly after the BuzzFeed story went live, Bosworth tweeted that not only does he disagree with the contents of his own memo today, but that he disagreed with them even when he wrote it.

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"I don't agree with the post today and I didn't agree with it even when I wrote it," reads his statement. "The purpose of this post, like many others I have written internally, was to bring to the surface issues I felt deserved more discussion with the broader company."

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, that attempt to cover his ass didn't go over so well with reporters who wondered why he would ever write a company memo that he explicitly disagreed with.

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In response, Bosworth tweeted that his post was "intended to be provocative."

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What other chin scratchers did he tweet? We're glad you asked. He insisted that starting a post by taking an extreme viewpoint and then "working your way backwards is pretty reasonable."

He failed to mention, of course, that nowhere in the memo published by BuzzFeed News does he work anything backward.

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He tried various iterations on this theme before apparently deciding better of it.

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In a sign of just how bad this looks for Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg managed to crawl out of his Cambridge Analytica bunker to issue a statement to BuzzFeed News:

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.

Notably, unlike Bosworth, Zuckerberg didn't take his thoughts to Twitter. And neither, for that matter, did he apparently attempt to hand wave away violence caused by his company in the name of connection and growth.

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