Departing Facebook Security Officer's Memo: "We Need To Be Willing To Pick Sides" -- BuzzFeed

From a March 2018 Facebook internal memo; on a related note, see Facebook pledges tough U.S. election security efforts as critical memo surfaces (Reuters)

"Most importantly, this narrative absolves us of the hard things we have to do to win back the world’s trust. It would be really simple to believe that the outcomes of arguments between a handful of people got us to this point, but the truth is that we need to all own this. The problem the company is facing today are due to tens of thousands of small decisions made over the last decade within an incentive structure that was not predicated on our 2018 threat profile. While it has been disconcerting to hear anger and sadness in the voices of our colleagues this week, I also take heart in how widespread our desire has become to align ourselves in the new landscape. I saw this shift in many executives last year, as they clearly recognized the emerging imperatives to prioritize security, safety, integrity and trust over all else, but no number of all-hands or corporate goals was going to be able turn this huge ship without a bottom-up change in culture.

So now we need to turn that angst into action. We need to change the metrics we measure and the goals we shoot for. We need to adjust PSC to reward not shipping when that is the wiser decision. We need to think adversarially in every process, product and engineering decision we make. We need to build a user experience that conveys honesty and respect, not one optimized to get people to click yes to giving us more access. We need to intentionally not collect data where possible, and to keep it only as long as we are using it to serve people. We need to find and stop adversaries who will be copying the playbook they saw in 2016. We need to listen to people (including internally) when they tell us a feature is creepy or point out a negative impact we are having in the world. We need to deprioritze short-term growth and revenue and to explain to Wall Street why that is ok. We need to be willing to pick sides when there are clear moral or humanitarian issues. And we need to be open, honest and transparent about challenges and what we are doing to fix them."

Departing Facebook Security Officer's Memo: "We Need To Be Willing To Pick Sides" -- BuzzFeed