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Peter Rojas
About
Peter Rojas discusses his transition from being a journalist and founder of Engadget and Gizmodo to leading product for Meta's Messenger and Instagram. He shares insights on the challenges of innovating within a large organization and the importance of maintaining user empathy when building for billions of people. The conversation also explores the societal impacts of technology and the evolving role of AI in communication.
Best quotes
the thing that has really powered me over the past 25 years now or so of my career is being just really excited about where technology is taking us
how do we continue to be Innovative and not get stuck in the process at a place like this how do we think about not just incrementalism right which is important
you have to be able to develop this empathy for the user and the empathy and when you have as many users as we do you have to figure out how to you know have empathy for billions of users
I think as a society I wish we had bigger conversations about what we value and what we want right I think that like when we talk about Ai and we talk about the risks dangers of AI
FAQ
What was Peter Rojas's initial role when he joined Meta?
Before moving to Messenger, Peter was the head of product for the new product experimentation (NPE) group, which focused on incubating new standalone products.
Why did Peter decide to move from venture capital back into an operating role?
He wanted to focus on the product-related work of helping founders bring ideas to life while avoiding the time-consuming process of raising money from limited partners.
How does Peter maintain user empathy when building for a global audience?
He emphasizes stepping outside of one's own experience to understand that users in different countries may have different needs or use older hardware with limited battery life.
What is Peter's view on AI being trained on publicly available data?
He notes that while there are concerns about agency, human language and culture are essentially a remix of words and ideas learned from others.
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