A change in the FB technology leadership team follows hot on the heels of a series of reports last week by WSJ that discussed how Facebook “either ignores or fails to properly address numerous problems affecting users across its services”.
Included in the articles was the allegation that FB was fully aware that Instagram has had a negative effect on the mental health of teenage girls as well as how algorithm changes “made users angrier” and how Facebook is exploited by criminal gangs to recruit members.
FB has criticised the WSJ articles saying that they contain “deliberate mischaracterisations” and saying that they ” [make] a claim which could only be made by cherry-picking selective quotes from individual pieces of leaked material in a way that presents complex and nuanced issues as if there is only ever one right answer.”
The current FB CTO is to replaced by the head of FB hardware which some have seen as potentially signalling a switch away (or diversification) from the FB social media platform to alternative hardware-based products and services for the corporation.
article updated in the interest of balance to include responses from FB critiquing the WSJ articles