Welcome to the Tech Meme Ride Home for Friday, March 30th, 2018. Today an internal Facebook memo causes controversy, Under Armour was hacked, SpaceX gets FCC approval

for satellite internet, utility companies Dream of Electric Cars, and The Weekend Long Reed's suggestions.

This is what happened today in the world of tech. Tech. Last night, Buzzfeed a team of Tech reporters, Ryan Mack, Charlie Worsall, and Alex Kantruitz, dropped a bombshell by reporting

on an internal Facebook memo written by Facebook Vice President Andrew Boz-Bazworth in 2016.

Best thing to do I guess is probably to just read from the memo directly.

Bosworth writes,

We talk about the good and the bad of our work often. I want to talk about the ugly.

We connect people. That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves a life of someone on the brink of suicide.

So we connect more people.

That can be bad if they make it negative.

Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies.

Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.

Later on in the memo, Bosworth continues,

The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything

that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good.

It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we're concerned.

And later on, quote, that's why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices, all the subtle

language that helps people stay searchable by friends, all of the work we do to bring more communication

in. The work we do to bring more communication in.

The work we will likely have to do in China someday, all of it."

End quote.

This full-throated defense of growth at all costs did not come off well to a lot of people.

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