"PLEASE just focus on what they are REALLY criticizing you about and acknowledge it and stop throwing your researchers under the bus and double crossing journos so this can all end PLEASE"

Shruti Bhutada: "So apparently FB published the deck before WSJ and thats really bad practice in comms" Wendy Tegge Gross: "yup" Shruti Bhutada: "I am more worried they keep making this into a bigger fire than hurt." Shruti Bhutada: "And I am hella hurt" Shruti Bhutada: "like PLEASE just focus on what they are REALLY criticizing you about and acknowledge it and stop throwing your researchers under the bus and double crossing journos so this can all end PLEASE" Shilpa Mody: "There is a world where they could have annotated with actual context instead of a tear down, and that would have been a reasonable outcome" Wendy Tegge Gross: "agree to all of this. I'm hearing it was direction from MZ" Wendy Tegge Gross: "ended up being basically an MZ call on how it was handled" Shruti Bhutada: "Like MZ asked Cox and Adam to say research used flowery language and asked researched leadership to as their own ICs to flame other ICs research?" Wendy Tegge Gross: "I get the impression that MZ decided how to frame the external narrative, that other teams fought back hard and lost" Shilpa Mody: "It does feel like the tone of the response has shifted... like Adam previously sounded like 'the wsj was misleading, and the numbers aren't as bad as they look, but also we acknowledge there's a problem and here's what we're doing about it'" Shilpa Mody: "That last part has definitely dropped off now" Wendy Tegge Gross: "For example: 'When reporting on qualitative research results, some conclusions/statements may be researcher speculation versus what was actually reported by participants' makes it sound like I was just guessing or making things up rather than finding the common themes across the qual groups." Shruti Bhutada: "In the meantime, how do I respond to leaders checking in and asking how they can support me? Whats a non-causal, non-floral way of saying: You could start by not throwing us under the bus and giving us boiler plate replies?" Shilpa Mody: "this is a good question! I just replied honestly to ████ and ████ about how I feel betrayed, that the town hall was tone deaf, etc. But not sure if that's also the right response to give to Kristin etc" Shruti Bhutada: "Ok I wrote this to Diego, tell me if a version of this can be sent to Kristin etc: I am disappointed in senior leadership and how they are responding to this. I am disappointed in the constant use of vague words like 'floral, flowery, hyperbolic' to describe our words and the focus on how the research was done rather than the external critique which is about why nothing was done as a result of it. It was extremely hurtful and disappointing to see our work (and abilities) flamed in the annotations (and I dont know see that helps contextualize or critique the work in a useful way). But most of all I am just sad me, Shilpa, Wendy, Justin, you and ████ have to go through this." Shilpa Mody: "Also.... if we feel like it, i think there could be an opportunity to reply to Adam's email and push him to be bolder on mwb work. Like literally the best thing you could do to support us right now is to take seriously the possibility that we haven't done enough here, and that we should consider bigger bets that take a stronger POV to show teens and the public that we actually care about this problem." Wendy Tegge Gross: "It would need to be so diplomatic. Like support us by showing that you value the research and invest in the space. But not calling out that the company has thrown us under the bus and not making it seem like we don't understand trade offs the company has made" Shruti Bhutada: "its a bit trippy to also be in some of the product threads where ████ or Miki will literally say, we should just do this, teens dont want that, what about lava lamps for take a break." Shruti Bhutada: "I cant tell if this is some PR strategy where they publicly discredit their own research to save their backs" Shilpa Mody: "It is absolutely a PR strategy to publicly discredit the research. I think they are seriously afraid of legal/regulatory repercussions if there are acknowledged causal links."