Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos resigned from Facebook in March 2018 and implored his colleagues to take responsibility for the social network’s failings.

He sent a note to employees attributing the social network’s problems to “tens of thousands of small decisions made over the last decade.”

His comments included:-

• We need to build a user experience that conveys honesty and respect, not one optimised 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 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 deprioritize short-term growth and revenue.
• We need to be open, honest and transparent about challenges and what we are doing to fix them.

These are all issues that many people outside of Facebook have known about the company for a long time – the company is nasty, self-serving, greedy and obnoxious but it’s good to hear a senior insider trying to get the message through to his colleagues at Facebook.

Let’s hope someone listens.

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