We're living in a world where voting rights of pensioners have been delegated to big companies like Vanguard and Black Rock. They clearly are not keeping the best interest of the shareholders which would be their duty, and vote politically instead.
If you look in the medical industry for example ethical decisions are always managed by a different group than Product/Legal because it's a completely different set of skills and competencies.
Even more so at places like Twitter which are heavily dependent on ML models to make real-time decisions. And so you need a dedicated team that is proactive rather then reactive like a Legal team would be.
Putting the "what will our users think" question in an ethical framing is not obviously (to me) going to benefit users. (Especially when modern fashionable ethics centers around utilitarian normative ethics, but that's besides the point.)
Some companies, such as for instance Procter & Gamble or Apple care about their brand equity a lot, since they rely on it to charge above market premiums. Twitter needs to care about that too, since if they get caught doing something unsavoury they will turn toxic to their advertisers, or at least those who care about their brands. I am not a marketing exec but if Twitter now drops the pretense of caring about ethics you will see major advertisers pull out, and make a point of communicating why they do it. Thats the ROI on having functioning ethics teams.
I consider much of the practices of social media companies designing for dopamine hits to be unethical, but it had been very lucrative for shareholders for more than a decade. It’s still lucrative but shareholders are taking it on the chin for other macro reasons.
But that wouldn't be the crony capitalism that we're stuck with now. Also, things have been moving too fast for a long time, making it nearly impossible for governments to keep up.
As political discourse and more elections are swayed by rage-bait and disinformation pumped into voters retinas by these platforms, the political risks to these platforms and their bottom line will increase (and become wildly unpredictable).
ML ethics and accountability is beneficial to both society and to any company which has an interest in self-preservation.
[Stephan Livera Podcast] SLP421 Vivek Ramaswamy - The Antidote to Corporate Woke-ism https://podcastaddict.com/episode/146353684