Facebook Papers Reveal How Sketchy and Dangerous the Company Is
The Facebook Papers have made its rounds online and it reveals a lot about the social media giant that many people didn’t know about, including how sketchy and dangerous it gets. Here’s what you need to know.
Facebook Papers Revelation
Frances Haugen. Picture credits: The Verge
As many of you may know by now, things hasn’t exactly been great for Facebook, especially with the Wall Street Journal publishing reports on how unhealthy using the social platform is for the young. Now, things are going a few steps deeper as a former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, leaked over 10,000 pages of internal documents to the media and the SEC.
The information shared by Haugen revealed how the company conducts business, with claims that Facebook intentionally favoring controversial content to keep users hooked, and even European political parties were forced to change their political strategies to match the social platform’s algorithm. While Haugen has since testified over Congress, there were many more things uncovered within the documents.
According to the leaked documents, which is being referred to as Facebook Papers, it confirms that politics is central to the company’s decision-making process. The Wall Street Journal reported on a thread in an internal message board showing concern over “hyperpartisan sources” appearing in their News Tab.
Moreover, employees are reportedly concerned over the power that political lobbyists have in the company’s decision-making process as the document reveals that “Facebook routinely makes exceptions for powerful actors when enforcing content policy”. When added together with the US Capitol Building attack on 6th January that started on Facebook, this is starting to sound much worse than expected.
The issue gets even worse in developing countries as the Facebook Papers reveal that the policies get worse in places like India, to the point where The New York Times called the social platform an “inundation of hate speech, misinformation, and celebrations of violence” after going through an internal report.
In Ethiopia on the other hand, the social platform is a common tool use to incite violence, with CNN even reporting on how it helps perpetuate an ongoing civil war. As if that wasn’t bad enough, documents studied by The Washington Post showed that Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly complied with Vietnam Communist Party demands for anti-government censorship, which throws away free speech completely.
It’s quite lengthy to go through, but there are plenty more. As such, we’ve compiled a list right below here so you can judge for yourself as to how bad the company truly gets thanks to these Facebook Papers:
Inside Facebook, Jan. 6 violence fueled anger, regret over missed warning signs
A trove of internal documents turned over to the SEC provides new details of the social media platform’s role in fomenting the storming of the U.S. Capitol. – Washington Post
‘Carol’s Journey’: What Facebook knew about how it radicalized users
Internal documents suggest Facebook has long known its algorithms and recommendation systems push some users to extremes. – NBC News
Internal Alarm, Public Shrugs: Facebook’s Employees Dissect Its Election Role
Company documents show that the social network’s employees repeatedly raised red flags about the spread of misinformation and conspiracies before and after the contested November vote. – NYT
Facebook Faulted by Staff Over Jan. 6 Insurrection: ‘Abdication’
Employees and the company’s own research highlight ways Facebook failed to police its platforms ahead of the siege on the Capitol. – Bloomberg
Facebook Services Are Used to Spread Religious Hatred in India, Internal Documents Show
Company researchers identified calls to violence that coincided with the 2020 riots in Delhi that left 53 dead. – WSJ
Facebook wrestles with the features it used to define social networking
Likes and shares made the social media site what it is. Now, company documents show, it’s struggling to deal with their effects. – NYT
Facebook documents offer a treasure trove for Washington’s antitrust war
Documents collected by whistleblower Frances Haugen could give the company “a lot to regret” in its fights to prove it’s not a monopoly. – Politico
Facebook knew about, failed to police, abusive content globally
Facebook employees have warned for years that as the company raced to become a global service it was failing to police abusive content in countries where such speech was likely to cause the most harm. – Reuters
Facebook Privately Worried About Hate Speech Spawning Violence
The company’s own analysts asked if the social-networking giant was doing enough to ‘limit the harm’. – Bloomberg
Facebook, alarmed by teen usage drop, left investors in the dark
Rising internal concerns about young users was largely invisible to outsiders, forming the basis of a whistle-blower’s SEC complaint. – Bloomberg
How Facebook users wield multiple accounts to spread toxic politics
People operating multiple Facebook accounts spread a large portion of the site’s incendiary political content, and Facebook has done little to crack down on them. – Politico
Employees pleaded with Facebook to stop letting politicians bend rules
Facebook’s senior executives interfered to allow US politicians and celebrities to post whatever they wanted on its social network despite pleas from employees to stop, leaked internal documents suggest. – The Financial Times
Facebook knew it was being used to incite violence in Ethiopia. It did little to stop the spread, documents show
Facebook employees repeatedly sounded the alarm on the company’s failure to curb the spread of posts inciting violence in “at risk” countries like Ethiopia, where a civil war has raged for the past year. – CNN
Inside Facebook’s struggle to keep young people
The world’s largest social network is internally grappling with an existential crisis: an aging user base. – The Verge
Apple once threatened Facebook ban over Mideast maid abuse
Two years ago, Apple threatened to pull Facebook and Instagram from its app store over concerns about the platform being used as a tool to trade and sell maids in the Mideast. – Associated Press
Given how big Facebook has become with nearly 3 billion active users monthly, it’s hard to imagine them failing. However, this leaked Facebook Papers document could spell huge trouble for the company unlike anything they’ve ever faced before. With that being said, there are plans for them to completely rebrand themselves, and there’s no better time than now.
While more of the Facebook Papers is being analyzed, we expect more stories to come out of this very soon. We will report more as soon as information becomes available so stay tuned.
Pokdepinion: Well, this is certainly a huge mess that no one expected, and I’m sure it’s only going to get worse. There’s probably a lot more happening in the platform that we’re unaware of, whether it’s in our country or in other places.
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