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by piva00 1703 days ago
Not working on integrity but really, really interested in seeing this coming alive. I've had a very deep curiosity about this topic for a couple of years, allegedly Facebook's products might have influenced the elections on my home country (Brazil), which has very directly impacted the quality of life of my family still living there.

Looking forward to see what comes out of this and wishing you and the team all the best luck, thank you.

2 comments

I am not working on integrity (I have a feeling that the integrity offices of many companies have brooms and buckets in them), but I do write software that Serves a constituency that has a very vested interest in the matter, and wish you well.

I also have a personal code of ethics, and hold myself to a very high standard of Personal Integrity.

In my experience, talking about that in the tech community does not end well.

Ethics and Integrity do not seem to be popular topics for discussion in SV.

Corporate departments you do NOT want to be in: Innovation, Ethics, Trust… unless of course it’s corporate doublespeak and the department is doing the exact opposite of what its name implies.
Exactly. If "Innovation, Ethics, Trust" are being addressed by a department:

1. They have no profit and loss, so are going to get sidelined by the higher impact (in any short or medium term) concerns of every department that does.

2. They have no direct control over serious corporate activities, so are going to be considered a distraction at best, interference at worst, by others under their own pressures. If they are noticed at all.

It isn't an accident when universal values are silo'd into departments from the rest of the company. It means leadership doesn't want the rest of the company to waste time or focus on them. But feel like the values need token recognition.

--

It gets even worse if these were governmental departments.

Department of Innovation: enforces acceptable methods and subjects of innovation, i.e. anti-innovation.

Department of Ethics: Reinforces the governments views by justifying them as ethical, and demands lip service to those fictional high ethics.

Department of Trust: You must trust us.

Worst one of all: Department of Truth. Here it is. Don't look elsewhere.

Thank you! I helped set up the Brazil Election War Room -- the first election war room inside of FB. It was intense! There is a special place in my heart for your country <3
This sounds like election interference by a foreign power. What business do employees in a US company have influencing the elections of a foreign country?
More or less intense than the Myanmar Genocide War Room? Was it the first genocide war room at facebook or were there ones before it?