Facebook Executive's 2016 Memo Shows Company Aware of Its Faults

A 2016 memo from a Facebook Inc. executive made the case for the company’s grow-at-all-costs culture, explaining that the negative consequences of the social network -- even deaths and terrorist attacks -- weren’t reason to abandon its purpose of connecting people to one another.

Facebook has spent the last year reacting to a variety of crises including the spread of misinformation, manipulation by overseas actors, violent videos, racist ad-targeting and, in the past few weeks, a privacy scandal. In each case, the company has responded by saying it will review the issues and adjust to be better for the future. In the memo obtained by Buzzfeed News, entitled “The Ugly,” longtime executive Andrew Bosworth explained that Facebook believes the risks of growth are worth the larger goal: connecting people to one another across the globe.