Facebook Hasn’t Learned Anything

At a Facebook-led telecommunications summit in London on Oct. 16 and 17, attendees could be forgiven for wondering what year it was. The social media company’s executives spoke optimistically about building tools to connect more of the world to the internet at higher speeds, and mobile operators said they were proud to be using those tools.

There was no mention of the spiraling problems Facebook Inc. has fueled around the globe with its grow-at-all-costs strategy—not the apparent genocide in Myanmar, the viral propaganda attacking opposition politicians in the Philippines, or the election misinformation in Brazil. Instead, employees’ laptops carried stickers promoting Facebook’s defunct Aquila drone project, meant to beam internet access down to underserved populations with lasers and satellites. It could have been a scene from 2015.