The Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen has suggested that Facebook corporate culture will continue to value growth over responsible information management unless and until Mark Zuckerberg steps down.

It’s interesting that Facebook talks about “making progress” in cutting down on the reach of anti-vaccine disinformation and other kinds of irresponsible communication. But as Haugen has been pointing out for weeks now, they have it within their power to stop much of the disinformation rather than merely “make progress" on diminishing it.

They don’t stop it because they don’t want to. Zuckerberg doesn’t want to inhibit Facebook growth and Facebook profits. Facebook managers who disagree with Zuckerberg’s growth philosophy don’t stay at Facebook very long.

As a society, we need to grapple with the reality that information sharing has fundamentally changed in the last couple decades. And we need to do something about false, dangerous information spreading on what are essentially public communication backbones.

If Zuckerberg won’t take responsibility, then the public through our elected representatives need to do it instead. Whether that’s realistic remains to be seen.