.jpg)
Desperate times call for desperate measures and no other big tech company is feeling the heat more than Meta Platforms Inc. A report published by Wall Street Journal last week revealed the strict new policy it has imposed on some employees asking them to either look for new positions somewhere else within the company or face termination. Meta has announced that it plans to cut costs by 10%. In the earnings released for the previous quarter, Meta’s results looked grim. The company had lost close to 50% of its value by the second-quarter of this year. The company also reported an outlook predicting higher-than-expected losses for the third-quarter.
In a bid to rid itself of all excesses, the axe fell first on the company’s Responsible Innovation Team (RIT). The team was a crucial part of Meta’s efforts to redress the many blows that have been dealt to its reputation in the past few years. The company has had more than its fair share of scandals including Cambridge Analytica—which was recently settled—breeding political extremists and spreading misinformation during the US elections, violation of children’s privacy in Ireland and staking its money on the metaverse.
Turbulent times in Meta
In 2018, a vice president of product design with the company—Margaret Stewart—established the team to tackle the “potential harms to society” caused by Facebook’s products. Ironically, just last year, Stewart posted a blog titled, ‘Why I’m optimistic about Facebook’s Responsible Innovation efforts’, stating that she inherently believed that a lot of good could come from technology and Meta was ready to put in the work for it. “Goodness isn’t inevitable. It comes through sustained hard work, investing time in foresight work early in the development process, surfacing and planning mitigations for potential harms, struggling through complex trade-offs, and all the while engaging with external stakeholders, including members of affected communities, “ Stewart explained.
Despite dissolving the team, Meta has promised that the team which comprised two dozen engineers and ethic specialists will continue with its work albeit in a scattered way. Eric Porterfield, a spokesman with the company, said that employees from the RI team would work in safety and ethical product design with specific issues in teams. He also stated that they weren’t guaranteed new jobs.
