What You Need to Know About the Facebook Scandal
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies on Capitol Hill in April 2018. A trove of insider documents known as the Facebook Papers has the company facing backlash over its furnishings on social club and politics. Flake Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies on Capitol Hill in April 2018. A trove of insider documents known as the Facebook Papers has the company facing backfire over its effects on society and politics.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Facebook's rank-and-file employees warned their leaders most the company'southward effects on social club and politics in the U.s.a.. And they say its inability to finer moderate content has magnified those dangers, both in the U.S. and abroad. Those are ii of the main takeaways from thousands of internal Facebook documents that NPR and other news outlets accept reviewed.
The documents, known collectively as the Facebook Papers, were shared in redacted form with Congress after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a one-time Facebook product director, disclosed them to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Haugen alleges that the trove of statements and data prove that Facebook'due south leaders accept repeatedly and knowingly put the visitor's image and profitability ahead of the public practiced — even at the risk of violence and other harm.
Some of the internal documents initially emerged last calendar month in The Wall Street Journal . They include internal enquiry findings and internal audits that the visitor performed on its own practices.
Here are four main takeaways from news outlets' review of the documents:
Facebook employees hotly debated its policies, specially after Jan. 6
When so-President Donald Trump'due south supporters mounted an insurrection at the U.South. Capitol on Jan. 6, Facebook rushed to take technical measures that aimed to clench down on misinformation and content that might incite further violence. The next day, it banned Trump from the platform — at offset temporarily, but and then permanently.
In the weeks leading up to the violence, Facebook worked to defuse vitriol and conspiracy theories from Trump voters who refused to have his defeat. As NPR'south Shannon Bond and Bobby Allyn have reported, the company repeatedly shut downwardly groups affiliated with the End the Steal motion. But those groups were attracting hundreds of thousands of users, and Facebook was unable to keep step every bit the conspiracy theorists regrouped.
The postal service-ballot turmoil put a quick cease to the relief that many at Facebook felt on Nov. 3, when the U.S. election played out more often than not peacefully and without inklings of foreign meddling.
But then came January. half dozen — and every bit the assault on the Capitol riveted and horrified audiences in the U.S. and elsewhere, Facebook employees aired their frustration and acrimony.
"We've been fueling this fire for a long fourth dimension and we shouldn't be surprised it'southward now out of control," one employee wrote on an internal message board, the documents show.
"Hang in there everyone," Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's chief technology officer, wrote on a message lath, calling for calm as he explained the company'south arroyo to the riot, according to the documents.
In response to Schroepfer's message, Facebook employees said information technology was too little too belatedly.
"I came here hoping to effect change and amend gild, but all I've seen is cloudburst and abdication of responsibility," one commenter said, according to the documents.
In a statement to NPR, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said Facebook did non bear responsibility for the Capitol siege.
"The responsibility for the violence that occurred on January 6 lies with those who attacked our Capitol and those who encouraged them," Rock said.
Content standards were contorted, ofttimes out of fright of riling high-profile accounts
One of the primeval revelations from the internal documents is the particular they provide about Facebook's separate set of content standards for high-profile accounts, such as those for Trump, or for celebrities.
During Trump's presidency, he regularly fabricated faux and inflammatory statements nigh a wide range of matters. Simply only a small handful were removed by Facebook, as when the then-president made dangerous claims like saying COVID-xix was less unsafe than the flu or stating that children were "almost immune from this affliction."
Facebook has previously defended its arroyo to such controversial and misleading statements, proverb politicians like Trump should exist allowed to say what they believe so the public knows what they retrieve. Facebook CEO Marker Zuckerberg has also repeatedly insisted that Facebook is but a platform, non the "arbiter of truth."
But the documents propose Facebook's policy of treating influential people differently — codified in a VIP arrangement called XCheck — was created in big part to foreclose a public relations backfire from celebrities and other high-profile users.
The entire premise of the XCheck system, the Periodical's Jeff Horwitz told NPR in September, "is to never publicly tangle with anyone who is influential enough to do you damage."
Facebook'southward own Oversight Board sharply criticized the program last week, saying the company has not been forthcoming enough most its varying standards for content moderation.
A Facebook spokesperson told NPR in a statement that the company asked the board to review the program because information technology aims "to be clearer in our explanations to them going forward."
Young people encounter Facebook content as "irksome, misleading, and negative"
For much of the by decade, senior citizens have been the fastest-growing U.S. demographic on Facebook — a dramatic turnabout for a visitor whose founding mystique rests on the image of a hoodie-wearing coder creating a infinite for college kids to connect on.
During the aforementioned timespan, Facebook has seen younger people become less likely to join the site. Information technology'south a worrying tendency for the visitor — Facebook insiders got an update on that trend this year, in an internal presentation that is reflected in the documents.
"Most young adults perceive Facebook as a identify for people in their 40s and 50s," the visitor's researchers said, according to The Verge. "Young adults perceive content as slow, misleading, and negative. They ofttimes have to get past irrelevant content to get to what matters."
Forth with that stumbling block, young users were found to have negative views of Facebook due to privacy concerns and its potential "impact to their wellbeing," The Verge reports.
Haugen previously leaked a Facebook study that plant that 13.5% of British teen girls in a survey said their suicidal thoughts became more frequent later on they joined Instagram.
In improver to its namesake platform, Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp.
"It is clear that Facebook prioritizes profit over the well-being of children and all users," Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said during a Senate hearing this calendar month in which Haugen testified.
Facebook'south global reach exceeds its grasp
While much of the focus on Facebook in the U.Southward. has to do with its part in enabling and intensifying political divisions, the documents likewise mistake the visitor for its activities in numerous other countries.
The documents portray Facebook every bit declining to bargain with a number of social and language complexities stemming from its more than ii.8 billion users worldwide. The results have been particularly dangerous and harmful in countries where unrest or rights abuses are mutual, the documents state.
"Two years ago, Apple threatened to pull Facebook and Instagram from its app store over concerns about the platform being used every bit a tool to merchandise and sell maids in the Mideast," The Associated Printing reports.
The company routinely struggles with posts and comments in Arabic, both on its chief platform and on Instagram, according to the documents. Arabic is one of the globe's about widely spoken languages, simply its many dialects are highly distinct from each another.
Facebook "doesn't accept anyone who tin speak most of them or tin understand virtually of them in terms of sort of the vernacular," Horwitz told NPR. "And it likewise doesn't have a organisation to route content in those dialects to the right people."
The problem extends beyond Arabic and has a broad range of furnishings.
"In countries similar Afghanistan and Myanmar, these loopholes have allowed inflammatory linguistic communication to flourish on the platform," the AP reports, "while in Syria and the Palestinian territories, Facebook suppresses ordinary speech, imposing blanket bans on common words."
As similar stories emerged over the weekend about India and Ethiopia, Facebook said that it has more than 40,000 people "working on safety and security, including global content review teams in over 20 sites around the world reviewing content in over 70 languages."
Editor's note: Facebook is amongst NPR's recent financial supporters.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/25/1049015366/the-facebook-papers-what-you-need-to-know
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