Mashable: Many other teams have also been reorganized within the company.

The "Responsible Innovation Team" at Meta, whose job it was to mitigate the "possible damages to society" posed by Facebook's products, has disbanded.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported(via Engadget) that Facebook has disbanded a team of approximately 20 engineers, ethicists, and others known as the Responsible Innovation team. This group had been responsible for evaluating user feedback on proposed improvements to Facebook and Instagram. According to the Journal, a spokesperson for Meta said that the majority of the disbanded team will continue doing similar watchdog work inside the firm, albeit they were not assured employment.

According to a blog post published in 2021 by Facebook's VP of Meta, Margaret Stewart, the Responsible Innovation team was first founded "many years ago." Her group, which included engineers and experts in civil rights and ethics, provided guidance to the company's product teams on how to avoid "possible damages across a wide range of social challenges and difficulties," as she explained in an article published the previous year. Earlier this year, The Journal reported that the team's leader, Meta employee Zvika Krieger, had left the company.

Not only has the Responsible Innovation team been reorganized, but so have many others. Meta merged its Responsible AI division with its Social Impact team as part of a company-wide AI reorganization earlier this summer. As the firm experiences a decline in income for the first time in its existence, it has been actively seeking ways to reduce expenses. Moreover, speculations of layoffs have caused Meta to hold down recruiting and cancel certain Reality Labs initiatives.