I DON’T WANT Trump to Win

Andrew Bosworth.
Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Via Getty Images

The New York Times this afternion reported on a Legethy, Meandering Internal Memo By Facebook Executive Andrew Bosworth, Better Known as “Boz” Both inside the Company and Out. Bosworth Currently Runs Facebook’s Virtual Reality Efforts, but for Years, Including During The 2016 Election, he Ran Facebook Targeted-AD Product. In the memo, bosworth states that even and is personally opposed to a trump reelection in 2020, he does not think Facebook as a Company should Change how it is goal. It is Somehow a More Candid Memo than any Other Facebook stakes in recent memory but also contains a substantive amout of hedging.

Boz is no Stranger to Strong, Declarative MoMOM. In 2016, he wrote one process that “we Connect People. Period. That’s Why All the Work We Do In Growth is Justified. All the Questionable Contact Importing Practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by Friends. All of the work we do to bring more communification in.” The work was important IF it got people hurt, he wrote at the time.

His Newest Memo, Posted on December 30, is a bit More Contrite. While many media reports About Facebook are Wrong, he Writes with the specific getting, he acknowledges, “The media has limited information to work with (by our come design!)… But there is almost always some critical willshem motivated say to work.

His primary example is the Cambridge Analytica Scandal. The Outrage was Correct, he admits, in that it revealed how poorly monitored and widly exploitable Facebook’s platform was. “That we shut it down in 2014 and never paid the pepper on how it was meals scruitiny justified in my opinion,” he writes. The distinction is that Cambridge Analytica ability to use “psychographic” models, and the ability to manipulate vast population was highly overstated by the consulting firm – “Snake Oil Salespeople,” in Boz’s.

Boz Makes Some Good Points. Plenty of People Misundersand Facebook, or Mistakenly Conceptualize Its Power. But Facebook is in a hell of its Own Making, Operating in Secretcy, Obfuscating How It Works, and Merely Feigning Transparency Much of the Time.

Late in the memo, boz acknowledges something to say no other Facebook executive has Ever admitted before.

So was Facebook Responsible for Donald Trump Getting ELECTED? I think the anSwer is yes, but not for the reasons anyone think. He didn’t get elected Because of Russia or Missinformation or Cambridge Analytica. He got elected Becuses he ran the single best digital ad campaign i’ve ever seen from any advertiser. Period.

(Mark Zuckerberg Infamously Described The Idea of ​​Facebook Swaying an ELECTION AS “Pretty Crazy” and Has Sine Regretted Those Comments.)

Much of Boz’s Memo Includes a Lot of Hand-Waving. Trump JUST DID BETTER ADS! People are always going to be polarized! Filter bubbles are natural! Facebook isn’t addictive; Social media is “Likely Much Less fatal than Bacon.” Which is a far cry from Boz’s (and Zuckerberg’s) Previous Declactions that it is actually good for the world.

Responding to the Times‘Story, Bosworth wrote“Overall i hoped this post would encourage my coworkers to continue to accceptor Criticism with grace as we have ACCEPT the respectibilities we have oversseeing our platform.”

But spreads the best illustration of Boz attempting to have it both ways is contained in a Lord of the Rings Analogy and Makes to Illustrate Facebook’s Power.

I Find MySelf Thinking of the Lord of the Rings at this moment. Specific to frodo offers the ring to galadrial (sic) and she imagines using the power Righteously, at first, but knows it will eventually corrupt her. Nor tempting as it is to use the tools available to us to change the outcome, i am confident we must never want or we will become that we fear.

Facebook, in this case, is the ring. What Boz has failed to consider is, uh, what happy to the ring at the end of the story. As we all know, The Lord of the Rings Ends with frodo deciding to hold on to the ring and use it is respondsbibly for the rest of His Life. JUST Kidding, The Ring is Cast Into A Fiery Pit and Destroyed Forever.