The Need for Ethics and Governance In AI Implementation

Meta, more specifically, Mark Zuckerberg, just laid off 600 employees that were part of hiring for their AI initiatives.

Reading the details of they layoffs was infuriating.

• Quick hires of a lot of people without a clear vision of sustainability.

• Coverage focused almost entirely on Meta.

• Little discussion about the governance needed to prevent ongoing issues exactly like this.

Important decisions were made by the company to calculate speed to market and financial gains. Were decisions made to mitigate for the fallout to anyone else besides Zuckerberg, stakeholders, and those poised to benefit from the enormous rewards that will likely be earned?

I took to LinkedIn after the announcement to share my frustration and concern with my community on LinkedIn. It's my channel of choice for my professional life, but it also serves as a gentle and loving reminder about all the goodness in my world of marketing, writing, and creating.

I shared a post, went to a soccer game, and didn't think about it until the MAX Light Rail ride home. I opened the app and saw that my post had been flagged and removed because it didn't adhere to their Professional Community Policies. I felt a twinge of embarrassment because I know better. There are standards that the social platform is quite clear about. They are good about enforcing those standards and language is one of them.

When I got up the next morning, my plan was to remove the single curse word that resulted in the flag and move on. When I went to my posts, I noticed that all of my posts now included a note that read, "This post is not eligible to be boosted." I don't boost my own content, only the content of my employers or clients, but that stung. I am part of a community here that I love and have been building since I joined in 2008. I have NEVER had content flagged. I come to this community for joy, learning, and support from the people I've known (some for nearly 30 years) who, like me, chose a challenging and inspiring job they love. I also depended on LinkedIn as a tool to find work in my field of digital marketing, but that part of the tool is now utterly useless because the 3rd party data that drives the jobs platform isn't always accurate. The systems for hiring on and off the tool are broken.

My feelings went from frustration to a simmering rage when I noticed that now ALL of my posts included the note that, "This post is not eligible to be boosted."

One post was about the Portland Timbers game.

One post was about Augustana Lutheran, a church that I attend on occasion since I learned about them in 2023. It's an interdenominational church that focuses on love and justice. It's ran by a caring, activist pastor and the video describes their congregation and mission. It's an invitation to come together to praise, have faith, depend on each other and bring our best selves to the world.

Put aside the user experience shenanigans that the top of the posts are advertising their ad platform, "Promote this post to reach people who matter to you" at the top of the post. And the subsequent message at the bottom of the post says something conflicting, "This post is not eligible to be boosted." This decision was made with zero input from a human, the decision was algorithmic.

I have been a part of the LinkedIn Community for 17 years. I have 1,732 connections, not random connections, but thoughtful ones. People I've either met in person or have connections to, people I trust and are sharing great ideas. I have shared hundreds of posts and supported my LinkedIn connections through joys, job loss, and confusion about the current state of work.

Where I'm from, we mete out punishment with context. Does the person committing the offense operate from a place of good faith? Is this recurring behavior or a misstep? With a little digging, I find another marketer (whom I deeply admire) who uses the F#$% prolifically and effectively. Is the LinkedIn policy and algorithm trained to ignore guidelines if the reach hits a certain threshold? I've poured over LInkedIn Help Center and trying to find another path to engage customer service. Here's what I know today:

• The policy for no profanity aren't applied to everyone.

• It's difficult to get to a person via phone, email, or text for customer service inquires.

• I believe the cards are stacked heavily in favor of the tech, not the humans using it.

I left Facebook a few years ago. I'm moving away from Twitter and finding community on Substack. I'm not active on Instagram or Pinterest. I use Google far less and embrace Claude far more. I am using Amazon less and trying to support local businesses more. Social community-building is an important part of my life. Of all of our lives, digital and physical.

I love the humans and learning in my online communities, but the platforms on which my communities are built don't love us back. It is unclear to me how social platforms are establishing their governance and ethics policies and making decisions about the people and content that generate revenue for their businesses.