Comment by KaiserPro

Yeah this was the thing.

Basically there are four tribes in meta: Product, Advertising, Infra & other.

Facebook had the most comprehensive onboarding I've ever had at a place, literally 5 weeks of learning. We had actual lessons on data laws, rules that facebook has and why they are there. Lots of talk about how to speak up for the user and that kind of stuff. Loads of do the right thing, if in doubt choose the user, long term growth over short term gain, that sort of shit.

And where I worked, that was kinda the experience, We had reasonable debates about user experience and the like. The data storage system is setup so that you don't really need to think about storing data securely or privately because thats the default.

But

I was in the "other" tribe so I didn't have the same pressure. My "impact" that I had to deliver wasn't to do with moving metrics, or making money.

The real problem is that to get promoted, you need to, every 6 months, deliver something that has impact. And a good way to get impact is to move a metric, or get more cash.

combine that with naivety, and you get the scandals that we see.

Instgram kids USP was basically that it would an app that was tailored to kids, and there would be some parent tools to help shame the algorithm. There wasn't any budget to spend on proper moderation, so there would be loads of content that was be designed to warp/groom/fuckup young minds. I think the main concession was that DMs would be turned off. It would have been a walled garden, but with no real controls. Perhaps there might have been algorithm tweaks to avoid promoting certain topics.

That was the rumour at least.

Anyway, it would have been a shit show, so there was a concerted effort to leak it to the press, because the "product council" were like "fuck yeah, tiktok does it, lets do it too, we're fucking gods who made reels a thing, what the fuck do you know?"

but the real sketchy shit is in advertising, and where it crosses into product. They know that some of these metric boosting changes are bad, but because they make money, they allow it. Thats where the rules are deliberately bent or broken. The rest of the time is just naivety, by idealistic shelters young colleges types.

Lastly, Facebook can't really do new products. So if your app or thing cant easily be added to instagram/facebook, and needs its own standalone app/site, you're probably fine.

And by the way, this is as an outsider, I have no insider knowledge, but it's from the same company that sent women (teenagers) ads of beauty products after they had deleted a selfie

I was all gung-ho for "You don't need regulation (imprisonment) for something that's just a mirror held up to society" before realizing Facebinstapp literally does things like this