NBC News reports:

Steps away from the glass-enclosed office suite of Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s No. 2 executive, a team of employees has been taking shape with a mission that’s become critical to the tech giant’s future: avoid contributing to another genocide.

The driving force behind the team is the company’s blotted legacy in Myanmar, the southeast Asian nation where, according to United Nations researchers, Facebook became the go-to tool for spreading propaganda that helped drive a genocide of a religious minority, the Rohingya, that is estimated to have killed more than 10,000 people since the beginning of 2017.

Called Strategic Response, the team is a mix of the kind of people who have typically been found in either governments or multinational corporations with far-reaching interests. The team’s formation, which started in spring of last year and recently ramped up hiring, represents the latest evolution in the Silicon Valley’s culture: less “move fast and break things,” and more thinking through the harm they are adding to half a world away.

It’s also an implicit acknowledgement that Facebook, up until just a few years ago seen as an innocuous app for sharing photos and catching up with distant friends, has grown beyond its roots and must now embrace its emergence as a global company that plays a part in the daily lives of more than 2 billion people. [Continue reading…]