Meta Disbands Team Studying Potential Negative Impacts of Facebook, Instagram

Facebook parent company Meta has reportedly disbanded an internal team dedicated to studying the potential negative impacts of the company’s products, including Facebook and Instagram.

Around 20 engineers, ethicists and others made up the Responsible Innovation team, as it was called, which until now had to Facebook and trademark Instagram, according to The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. A Meta spokesman told the Journal that most of the former team’s members would keep doing similar watchdog work elsewhere in the company, though they weren’t guaranteed jobs.

The vast majority of the former Responsible Innovation team is doing their former work directly on other teams as a shift in company strategy. 

«This work is more of a priority than ever, not less,» Meta spokesman Eric Porterfield told CNET in a statement. «We are scaling it by deploying dedicated teams of experts into priority product areas and have more people working on responsible innovation within product teams than two years ago. That’s why the overwhelming majority of former members of this team are continuing with this kind of work elsewhere at Meta.»

The company is in a period of change. Meta has been struggling with a mid-year , has shuttered  and faces a  by EU authorities for failing to protect children. The company is continuing its refocus on virtual reality with a coming alongside a on Oct. 11.