Fake News

In response to this article, one critic, Anna Lauren Hoffman, a scholar at Berkeley University, argues that hiring a chief ethicist is not an adequate solution to Facebook's fake news problem (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/01/a_chief_ethics_officer_won_t_fix_facebook_s_problems.html). Her first point is that tech companies, including Facebook, already have educated people, capable of making ethical decisions. Thus, to make the suggestion that Facebook should hire a chief ethicist would make the implication that all ethical problems would be resolved with one new hire.
Hoffman brings up a good point. How much would a large company such as Facebook really benefit from one new hire when several intelligent and ethically literate people already compose much of the staff? Would it really make a difference? While the answer to that question may be difficult to measure, I do believe that hiring a chief ethicist is a good first step in resolving such a broad and difficult issue as this one.
Hoffman's second argument states that in a world where many companies sacrifice ethical values in order to achieve economic or political incentive, hiring a chief ethics officer is not enough to bring about such desired positive change. For example, researchers have discovered that Google had previously sacrificed their privacy policies in exchange for business interests. Thus, Hoffman argues that rather than "bringing in" ethics to a company, technology users should bring greater external pressure onto the companies to keep them accountable: "Without a major culture shift and increased external and regulatory pressure, the possibility that an ethics officer could spark widespread and necessary company reform remains limited" (Hoffman). 
While Hoffman's argument makes sense, it also implies that there is not enough regulation and external pressure already. It is simply not true that regulations do not exist to prevent these companies from following ethical principles and guidelines. While there is always room for improvement, I believe that the backlash Facebook faced after its fake news incident is reflective of the tight external pressures that already exists today.
Perhaps a combination of Hoffman and Heider's solutions can help bring about the change that we desire. Nonetheless, hiring a chief ethicist appears to be a good start.