Everything [Facebook] does and chooses not to do flows from a single motivation: Zuckerberg's relentless desire for growth. Quiñonero's AI expertise supercharged that growth. His team got pigeonholed into targeting AI bias, as I learned in my reporting, because preventing such bias helps the company avoid proposed regulation that might, if passed, hamper that growth. Facebook leadership has also repeatedly weakened or halted many initiatives meant to clean up misinformation on the platform because doing so would undermine that growth.
In other words, the Responsible AI team's work — whatever its merits on the specific problem of tackling AI bias — is essentially irrelevant to fixing the bigger problems of misinformation, extremism, and political polarization. And it's all of us who pay the price.