Facebook’s parent company Meta reportedly disbanded its Responsible Innovation Team, according to The Wall Street Journal (via Engadget ). According to reports, the squad was established a few years ago to address any potential societal damages caused by Meta goods.
Concerns regarding the social platform’s policies toward teens and users under the age of 18 are growing at the same time as the disbandment. In order to understand how Meta products impact society, the Responsible Innovation Team worked with internal product teams, outside privacy professionals, academia, and consumers. Members of this team included engineers as well as experts in ethics and civil rights.
Naturally, Eric Porterfield, a spokesman for Meta, stated that the majority of the team’s members will remain at the business and carry out comparable tasks in other divisions. He added that the business still supports the team’s objectives.
Advertisement THE METAS RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION TEAM HAS DIED. It might seem an odd move on the part of the firm to dissolve the Responsible Innovation team. The team’s manager and vice president, Margaret Gould Stewart, expressed her optimism for the team’s progress in a blog post from last year.
She wrote in the blog post from June 2021. We collaborate with specialists in civil rights, accessibility, human rights, and safety as well as academic institutions, governments, and customers who use our products, like you, as we design our products with privacy as our top priority.
The team has experienced numerous ups and downs since then. Zvika Krieger, who was in charge of the team, left the organization earlier this year. According to Krieger, the activities of the company’s Responsible Innovation teams go beyond other work including safety and integrity. For instance, he cited their contribution to the Facebook dating team’s decision to abandon plans to allow users to target or eliminate potential romantic partners who belong to a particular race.
Advertisement Mark Zuckerberg changed the company’s name to Meta and underwent a significant organizational overhaul. The Social Impact team and the Responsible AI team were combined earlier this summer. In the future, there might be more adjustments.
