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Comment by guy_ro | Hacker News Reader

Fair enough, but I also get to see first-hand how decisions are made and how rigorous debates take place, so I have more faith in the process. We've got lots to do to improve transparency of how this stuff happens, because I know people care about it. One way we started a while ago is publishing minutes to one of our meetings where decisions on content policies get made. https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/content-standards-forum-mi... -- lots more to do!

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Can you qualify what you mean by “rigorous” ? I think this is an important point of contention because Facebook is so accustomed to using data to justify decisions. Yet these ethical issues often either have no data and/or the consequences of Facebook’s actions impact users who are not on Facebook. Moreover, the data is not available to the public (despite the public generating the data) so the public can’t actually reproduce the warrant used internally at Facebook. This lack of reproducibility is why I think there’s so much friction around Facebook claiming their decisions are made with “rigor.” Thanks.

You didn't answer either of his questions.

His work history is on LinkedIn. VP Integrity is essentially an executive product management role so qualifications would be along those lines.

Edit: LinkedIn says he was an engineering manager, then took a series of roles culminating in a data startup that got him into Facebook in the current role.

'A data startup'? How very generous of you. He co-founded a spyware company that was bought by Facebook to discover what other companies/apps to buy or clone.

You do not get to the position he has at Facebook by having either ethics or morals. Having seen this up close at Facebook HQ I can assure you that everyone at VP level or above there knows what they are doing, knows the long-term consequences, and simply does not care because the paycheck is far too large for simple ethics to enter into the discussion.

Morality and strong ethics do not place a glass ceiling on anyone’s achievement. Arguably, consistently good ethics lead to more opportunites and better outcomes.

The main issue here is people have different ideas of what is ethical. Disagreements arise when countries and increasingly companies exert power of people given to them by those same people.

In my mind, the same problems existed before facebook and expecting facebook to solve them for everyone is rediculous. Even more rediculius is expecting everyone to accept facebook’s solutions.

Thank you for examining his career more closely.

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