A senior Facebook executive has defended a leaked internal memo in which he appeared to endorse corporate growth even if it came at the expense of user's lives.

Vice president Andrew Bosworth wrote in 2016 that the social media giant's reason for existence was connecting people - and it should pursue that mission and embrace “growth tactics”.

“We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it,” he wrote.

But he later admitted that connecting people "can be bad if they make it negative".

"Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good”.

After the memo, entitled “the Ugly”, was obtained and published by BuzzFeed, Mr Bosworth said he had only intended to encourage discussion and that the post did not represent his views or those of Facebook.

“I don’t agree with the post today and I didn’t agree with it even when I wrote it”, Mr Bosworth said in a statement.

He added that he cared "deeply how our product affects people and I take very personally the responsibility I have to make that impact positive”.

“It was intended to be provocative,” he said in a follow-up tweet.

“This was one of the most unpopular things I’ve ever written internally and the ensuing debate helped shape our tools for the better”.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg disavowed Mr Bosworth's note, saying in a statement that his deputy was “a talented leader who says many provocative things”.

“This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly”, Mr Zuckerberg said.

“We've never believed the ends justify the means. We recognise that connecting people isn't enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people closer together.

"We changed our whole mission and company focus to reflect this last year”.

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Its release comes at a sensitive time for the social media giant, which has spent recent weeks striving to reassure users that the company is acting in their best interest.