If a company desired to be able to sow doubt if its impacts on society ever came under a microscope... one gambit (and an effective one, based on your reaction) would be to hire people who genuinely and passionately research and work on trust and safety, then systematically under-resource their teams and gaslight them into thinking there are fundamental reasons their recommendations must be ignored.
For instance, contrast Zuckerberg's statement here:
> And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world?
> The memo is a damning account of Facebook’s failures. It’s the story of Facebook abdicating responsibility for malign activities on its platform that could affect the political fate of nations outside the United States or Western Europe. It's also the story of a junior employee wielding extraordinary moderation powers that affected millions of people without any real institutional support, and the personal torment that followed.
> She soon grew skeptical that her team could make an impact, she said. Her team had few resources, she said, and she felt the company put growth and user engagement ahead of what it knew through its own research about its platforms’ ill effects.
The fact of the matter is that if Zuckerberg were to say "I'm going to pour our profits into trust and safety and abuse avoidance in order to ensure that our position as a trusted brand is sustainable for generations to come," his high levels of voting control and clear defense to any allegations that this was against long-term shareholder interest would fully make that possible. The fact that quite the opposite has happened should be considered with much more weight than his words in a reactive press statement.
For instance, contrast Zuckerberg's statement here:
> And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world?
With such severe under-resourcing and deprioritization that one person had the literal weight of worldwide election integrity on her shoulders, as revealed more than a year ago: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook...
> The memo is a damning account of Facebook’s failures. It’s the story of Facebook abdicating responsibility for malign activities on its platform that could affect the political fate of nations outside the United States or Western Europe. It's also the story of a junior employee wielding extraordinary moderation powers that affected millions of people without any real institutional support, and the personal torment that followed.
Haugen echoes the same in https://archive.is/tQwE9 :
> She soon grew skeptical that her team could make an impact, she said. Her team had few resources, she said, and she felt the company put growth and user engagement ahead of what it knew through its own research about its platforms’ ill effects.
The fact of the matter is that if Zuckerberg were to say "I'm going to pour our profits into trust and safety and abuse avoidance in order to ensure that our position as a trusted brand is sustainable for generations to come," his high levels of voting control and clear defense to any allegations that this was against long-term shareholder interest would fully make that possible. The fact that quite the opposite has happened should be considered with much more weight than his words in a reactive press statement.