Facebook documents leaked by ex-employee reviewed by 17 news outlets
A group of news outlets, which consists of The New York Times, CNN and 15 others, on Monday (25 October) stated that they have reviewed the leaked documents brought by Facebook ex-employee and whistleblower, Frances Haugen.
Among the reviewed documents are those reviewed and reported by the Wall Street Journal. This includes the fact that Facebook acknowledges its negative impacts on teen girls and its weak response to flagging drug cartels and human traffickers on its platform.
The 17 news outlets on Monday shedded new lights in what really is going on in Facebook and the list goes as follows:
Bloomberg and The Verge reported that the social media platform is desperate to get back the teenager traction it lost. Since 2012, Facebook has been trying to attract users under the age of 30, and yet the problem keeps on growing. This is why the company is so keen to attract the younger demographic via Instagram.
Financial Times reported that employees urged Facebook not to let politicians bend the rules on their platform.
The Washington Post reported that Mark Zuckerberg approved the Vietnam government’s demands for censorship on content that questions the government for growth and profits. In this report, the news outlet also cited three Facebook insiders.
Politico reported how Facebook portrayed its power and influence from its own perspective. The documents reveal that Facebook employees are aware of the company’s dominance in the market in internal presentations which contradicts the company’s public assertions.
The Associated Press reported that Facebook’s failure in moderating content in various languages is far more systemic and structural than it is an innocent mistake. It appears that the company has long acknowledged the issue and had not yet fixed this loophole which ended up giving more space for offensive languages to soar as the company targeted more common words to censor.
NBC covered the documents that revealed that there were internal debates and disillusionment on whether Facebook has done enough to counter hate speech and disinformation.
The Atlantic reported that in the documents, Facebook employees appeared to be concerned about the company being harmful to democracy as well as its role in the January 6 Capitol Riot.
In a different coverage, The Atlantic covered a part of the documents that reveals that Facebook did give lesser moderation resources for its market outside the US. This resulted in the flourishing of hate-speech, sex-trafficking, drug-cartel activities and ethnic-cleansing.
Echoing Facebook’s failure on diverse languages moderation, Wired dived into the part where Facebook failed to moderate the Arabic language even when it is the third most-used language in the platform.
CNN covered the documents that show how unprepared Facebook was against the Stop the Steal Movement and January 6 Capitol Riot. The documents it reviewed revealed that Facebook was slow to respond to Stop the Steal’s organising activities on its platform.