And now we’re living in the world that has been shaped by these people and their lethal carelessness.

The case officer tells me she doesn’t think they violate our rules, but she can’t find anyone who speaks Burmese, and Google Translate doesn’t do Burmese, so she can’t say for sure.

Boz showed that Facebook’s senior management knew exactly what Facebook was doing. Then he argued that Facebook should step back from all this “optimizing and driving,” instead letting people have greater input and more control over the content they see. But nothing changed.

(he doesn’t mention the spyware Onavo that showed him which apps to buy by giving him confidential usage data, making acquisitions like shooting fish in a barrel).

an internal memo titled “Mapping a Vector Space in Motion,” Facebook’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, urges senior management to change Facebook’s focus on engagement at all costs, pointing out that it is irresponsibly influencing behaviours, including negative behaviours. Acknowledging Facebook’s centrality in all of it.

Facebook does work for a beauty product company tracking when thirteen-to-seventeen-year-old girls delete selfies, so it can serve a beauty ad to them at that moment.

“When will women focus on work and stop talking about diversity already?”

To me, this type of surveillance and monetization of young teens’ sense of worthlessness feels like a concrete step towards the dystopian future Facebook’s critics had long warned of.

Totalitarian regimes move the line on what’s admissible. Something that seems safe to post on Facebook today—support for some idea or leader or book or musician or movie—could change tomorrow or in a year and users would pay the very steep price.