Strategy question
If you are the product manager for new user registration at Facebook, and user research comes to you with a suggestion to remove picture requirement, how would you decide what to do?
- Meta
- Strategy
- Medium
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
Start a mock interview on this question · Mock interview from a job description
What this question tests
Product judgment under a trust/safety tradeoff: can you weigh a friction-reducing suggestion against its impact on platform integrity (fake accounts, catfishing).
How to approach it
- Clarify why the picture requirement exists: it likely helps reduce fake accounts and catfishing, supporting the 'real identity' norm on Facebook.
- Weigh the tradeoff: removing it likely increases signup completion (less friction) but may increase fake/low-trust accounts.
- Ask what data exists: current signup drop-off attributable to the photo step, and the fake-account rate among users who skip such steps in other flows.
- Propose a middle path: make the photo optional at signup but required or nudged before certain trust-sensitive actions (e.g. friend requests, messaging).
- Recommend testing: A/B test the change on a subset, measuring both completion rate and downstream fake-account/report rate.
- Decide based on data, not opinion, stating what threshold would make you keep or reject the change.
What a strong answer includes
- Identifies the real reason the requirement likely exists (identity trust, fake-account reduction) instead of treating it as arbitrary friction.
- Proposes a middle-ground design (optional at signup, prompted later) rather than a binary keep-or-remove decision.
- Insists on A/B testing both the positive metric (signups) and the risk metric (fake accounts, reports) before deciding.
- Shows the tradeoff explicitly instead of siding with research's suggestion without scrutiny.
Common mistakes
- Accepting the research suggestion at face value without weighing the trust/safety cost.
- Rejecting the suggestion outright without proposing how to test it properly.
Likely follow-up questions
- What metric would make you decide to keep the requirement even if signups improve?
- How would you design the test to catch downstream harm, not just signup rate?
More strategy questions
- How would you decide between showing more ads on the Facebook Newsfeed vs showing a "People you may know" recommendation widget?Meta · Strategy · Hard
- How would you decide whether to build a feature or fix a bug (assuming both take the same engineering effort)?Meta · Strategy · Easy
- An engineer suggests showing suggested Buy/Sell Groups on users' newsfeed instead of the People You May Know section. How do you determine if that is a good idea or not?Meta · Strategy · Medium
- Why should Facebook enter the dating market and how would you execute it?Meta · Strategy · Hard
- What should Airbnb's strategy be during the COVID-19 pandemic?Google · Strategy · Hard
- Imagine you're a PM at Amazon and you're working on a partnership with Facebook that has the goal of leveraging FB's friend network to drive Amazon sales. Walk through the lifecycle for building this integration/partnership.Amazon · Strategy · Hard
More questions from Meta
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop