So.... first thoughts.

This reads like it was intended to be an apology of sorts — that corp, after realizing that they were acting with bad or incomplete data and took actions that, well, caused the biggest hullabaloo on the network to date, are now trying to fix some of that damage.

It's... a start.

It includes taking responsibility for some of the things that were done, admitting that mistakes were made, and expresses interest it rebuilding. Which is all well and good. But we're still left with a couple problems.

First off, how did this situation even get to this state in the first place? How is it that the people with experience, who told you that there was something wrong with the data you were working with, got summarily ignored?

I made the tough call to stop asking employees to make announcements there and to pull back from the platform a bit. There were a bunch of people internally that thought this was a bad decision, and that we were abandoning some of our most valued community members. It’s a discussion that has continued nearly daily over the past six months. In hindsight, it would have been preferable to reach consensus through more research earlier, given that many people in the company (and community) care deeply about these issues, it was a discussion that was front of mind.

That paragraph there tells me, reading between the lines, that it was largely the old-school devs and the Community Managers who stepped up to say that Meta was more important than you thought at the time. I could be wrong, but that's the impression I get.

So why is it, and how is it that decisions about the community were made ignoring the advice of the Community Managers - the people hired to deal specifically with these people and who know how the sites function on a practical level? Do they have no voice within the company?

Anyway... the situation developed. The CMs were again ignored and prevented from acting in the way they deemed best - not digging right now, but there are several posts here on MSE that lay things extremely bare about this.

And then two of them were fired.
Because of actions taken by those above them in the company.
Who acted against the CMs' advice.
And are now discovering that the CMs were right all along.

We have a pickle now. Sure, you've realized you've made mistakes and you want to put it behind us. But there's some permanent fallout from these mistakes that's going to made it very hard to move forwards.

The CM team was understaffed when it was at fourteen people. It's certainly not any better now.

The company removed some of the people that we, the community, most trusted - like Shog. That's permanent. Those CMs are out of the company for good. And that's a real stumbling block that's currently getting in our way for rebuilding.

Trust takes a long time to build, but can be destroyed in an instant. The trust built up over the past eleven years? Poof. Gone. You now have to start over from scratch, and that's going to take a very long time.

Yaakov has been an אלוך (champion) in community-rebuilding efforts. But trust isn't earned back overnight, or in a month, or even in a year. It's going to be a long slog until trust is anywhere near the old levels - especially if the CM team remains in the state it is, and until the root causes of the issues are addressed.

I may sound cynical, or sour, or grumpy, or whatever. But this is my honest feedback and thoughts upon reading this, so... make of it what you will.