- Facebook executive Guy Rosen penned an update Wednesday about the platform's response and review process in light of the recent mass shooting in New Zealand.
- A Guardian journalist pointed out that the post initially went up with Rosen's title as "VP of integrity," although Rosen's official title has previously been "VP of product management."
- After the journalist inquired about the title change, Facebook quietly edited the post to revert Rosen's title back to VP of product management.
Facebook recently referred to one of its executives as "VP of integrity" — then quickly changed his title back to what it was previously after a journalist pointed it out and asked about it.
Facebook posted an update Wednesday about its response to the mass shooting in New Zealand. The suspect in the shooting was widely reported to have livestreamed footage of the attack on Facebook, and the platform in turn has faced criticism for not doing enough to prevent the video from circulating afterwards.
The Wednesday blog post says Facebook used experimental "audio matching" technology to detect videos posted of the shooting, which claimed the lives of 50 people in attacks on two mosques in New Zealand's city of Christchurch.
"Many people have asked why artificial intelligence didn't detect the video from last week's attack automatically," Guy Rosen, VP of product management, wrote in the blog post. "AI has made massive progress over the years and in many areas, which has enabled us to proactively detect the vast majority of the content we remove. But it's not perfect."
Except when the blog post first went up early Wednesday, Rosen's name appeared next to the title "VP of integrity" — a title that Facebook has not publicly introduced before. On Rosen's LinkedIn and Twitter, and in past Facebook media featuring Rosen, the executive has consistently been referred to as Facebook's VP of product management.
The only person who apparently noticed the title discrepancy was Guardian tech reporter Alex Hern. Hern wrote on Twitter that as soon as he reached out to Facebook to inquire about the title change, the platform silently edited the blog post to reflect Rosen's past title, VP of product management.
—alex hern (@alexhern) March 22, 2019
Internet archiver Wayback Machine captured a screenshot of the original blog post featuring Rosen's title as VP of integrity, which you can see below.
"Why must they be like this," Hern wrote in a follow-up tweet.
Facebook didn't respond to Business Insider's request for comment about the title change.
It appears that the "VP of integrity" title would be a new one for Facebook. A Recode article from May 2018 listed the responsibilities of Naomi Gleit, Facebook's VP of social good, to include overseeing Facebook's "integrity" efforts — "the company's attempts to find and remove questionable content."
