Facebook COO and famed “Lean In” author Sheryl Sandberg addressed MIT’s class of 2018 last weekend, breaking her surprising relative silence since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to caution the soon-to-be graduates about moral responsibility in the digital age, and to promote her newest book, “Lean Over: Giving away privacy for free and liking it.”
“We know people want accurate information, not false news, on Facebook, and we take that really seriously. My new book addresses those concerns. At Facebook, we were way to idealistic. We believed that we could offer you a service you would believe was free, and was designed to be addictive, while using all the information you voluntarily provided about your personal life and financial status to make us money, throw elections, and a few other things that haven’t yet been revealed. But we were wrong. We did not do enough to protect our motives, and that’s our fault.”
When asked if she enjoyed the speech, a student who wished to remain anonymous stated, “I think her lesson was very important: if you’re going to surreptitiously data mine in this day and age, cover your tracks. I mean, come on, the technology is there, and it’s getting better all the time. It’s really an ethical responsibility to protect your advertisers and foreign government clients.”