How do you think it happened, then? Having also worked there the OP’s story makes total sense to me lol. If you’re on a team with the charter to “make AI profiles in IG work” then you’re just inevitably going to turn off your better judgement and make some cringy garbage.
I think the incorrect premise here was that engineers always know what a good product is. :) And I say that as an engineer myself. It's fully possible that the whole team was aligned on a product idea that was bad, it happens all the time. From my experience though, if there's any company where engineers don't just mindlessly follow the PMs and have a lot of agency to set direction, it's Meta. Might differ between orgs but generally that was my experience.
