[orijing]

The "break fast and move things" mantra isn't black and white, nor is it universal. It is a general alignment that, at the high level says, don't be afraid to make calculated mistakes but be prepared to quickly respond to feedback and those mistakes as appropriate.

That means a privacy or a security issue will be tackled with the utmost urgency--we would even shut down the site if we didn't have a quick fix for a security/privacy bug. However, if one of the Timeline aggregations isn't working or if a particular text box is not aligned, then we will fix it with the next release (usually in another day or half).

So it's not true that "move fast and break things" means "it's OK to introduce privacy/security holes" or even "it's OK to release shitty products". It just means we push early and push often.

[jessedhillon]

Yes, you are not misunderstood, there is no need to clarify/interpret this slogan for us. The OP is saying that some mistakes are irreversible. Say, for example, a buggy privacy feature which -- because of fast and loose implementation -- allows users to see previously very private nude pics of a celebrity which he/she had only sent to their partner.

Even if it took only 30 seconds to find the error and the entire site was unplugged from the web so you could fix the bug, the damage is done, it's permanent and it's devastating. Facebook is crossing the line from failures being trivial to failures being potentially catastrophic. Sad, perhaps, by the standards around here, but some people conduct their lives on Facebook -- encouraged by Facebook to do so, mind you -- and you guys are treating it a little more seriously than a hackathon, from the sounds of it.

[DominikR]

I feel that this kind of criticism is out of place, since Facebook has been working this way (successfully) for almost a decade without anything like that happening on a great scale.

Yes, mistakes can happen and they do happen everywhere, but Facebooks standards seem quite reasonable to me and they must be, since such mistakes would not be tolerated by its users.

Anyways, I doubt that Facebook ever encouraged its users to upload nude pictures. Whoever does this must be out of his/her mind.