Thousands of pages of internal files furnished to Congress by means of a former employee depict an internally conflicted company

1. Profit or people? New
Facebook papers reveal a
deep internal conflict

2. Facebook the organisation is dropping
manipulate of Facebook the product no
longer to say the ultimate shreds of its
cautiously crafted, decade-vintage picture
as a benevolent business enterprise just
trying to connect the world.
Thousands of pages of inner files provided
to Congress by a former employee depict
an internally conflicted corporation in which
information at the harms it reasons is
abundant, however solutions, a good deal
much less the will to behave on them, are
halting at exceptional.
The crisis exposed via the documents
suggests how Facebook, in spite of its
frequently avowed correct intentions,
seems to have gradual-walked or sidelined
efforts to cope with actual harms the social
network has magnified and now and again
created. They display numerous instances

3. in which researchers and rank-and-record
workers uncovered deep-seated issues
that the organisation then ignored or
ignored.
Final responsibility for this scenario rests
with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who holds
what one former worker defined as
dictatorial strength over a employer that
collects information on and presents
unfastened services to roughly 3 billion
human beings around the arena.
Ultimately, it rests with Mark and anything
his prerogative is and it has usually been
to grow, to increase his power and his
reach," said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse
University communications professor who's
accompanied Facebook closely for years.
Zuckerberg has an ironclad maintain on
Facebook Inc. He holds most of the people

4. of the organization's voting stocks, controls
its board of directors and has more and
more surrounded himself with executives
who do not appear to question his vision.
But he has to date been unable to address
stagnating person boom and shrinking
engagement for Facebook the product in
key areas which includes the USA and
Europe. Worse, the employer is losing the
eye of its maximum crucial demographic
teens and young humans and not using a
clean path to gaining it again, its very own
files reveal.
Young adults engage with Facebook a long
way less than their older cohorts, seeing it
as an old network" with beside the point
content material" that provides restrained
fee for them, consistent with a November
2020 internal record. It is dull, misleading
and terrible," they say.

5. In other words, the younger see Facebook
as a place for vintage human beings.
Facebook's person base has been growing
older faster, on common, than the overall
population, the organization's researchers
located. Unless Facebook can find a way
to show this around, its populace will retain
to become older and younger people will
locate even fewer motives to sign on,
threatening the monthly user figures which
are vital to selling advertisements.
Facebook says its products are
nonetheless broadly used by young adults,
even though it acknowledges there may be
tough opposition" from TikTok, Snapchat
and so forth.
So it is able to maintain to make bigger its
reach and electricity, Facebook has
pushed for high consumer increase out of

6. doors the U.S. And Western Europe. But
as it accelerated into much less acquainted
components of the arena, the corporation
systematically did not address or even
assume the unintentional effects of signing
up hundreds of thousands of recent
customers with out additionally offering
personnel and systems to become aware
of and restriction the unfold of hate
speech, misinformation and calls to
violence.
In Afghanistan and Myanmar, as an
example, extremist language has
flourished because of a systemic loss of
language assist for content moderation,
whether or not it is human or artificial
intelligence-driven. In Myanmar, it has
been linked to atrocities dedicated against
the usa's minority Rohingya Muslim
population.

7. But Facebook seems not able to well
known, a lot less prevent, the real-world
collateral damage accompanying its
untrammeled boom. Those harms
encompass shadowy algorithms that
radicalize users, pervasive incorrect
information and extremism, facilitation of
human trafficking, teen suicide and more.
Internal efforts to mitigate such problems
have frequently been brushed aside or
deserted when answers struggle with
increase and, via extension, income.
Backed into a corner with tough proof from
leaked documents, the organization has
doubled down protecting its picks in
preference to try to restoration its
problems.
We do no longer and we've now not
prioritized engagement over safety,"

8. Monika Bickert, Facebook's head of world
policy control, advised The Associated
Press this month following congressional
testimony from whistleblower and former
Facebook worker Frances Haugen. In the
days when you consider that Haugen's
testimony and appearance on 60 Minutes"
in the course of which Zuckerberg
published a video of himself sailing
together with his wife Priscilla Chan
Facebook has attempted to discredit
Haugen by way of repeatedly stating that
she didn't immediately paintings on most of
the issues she discovered.
A curated choice out of thousands and
thousands of documents at Facebook can
in no way be used to attract fair
conclusions about us," Facebook tweeted
from its public relations newsroom account
in advance this month, following the
organisation's discovery that a set of news

9. companies changed into operating on tales
about the inner documents.
At the coronary heart of these memories is
a premise which is false. Yes, we are a
business and we make income, however
the concept that we do so on the expense
of human beings's safety or wellness
misunderstands in which our own industrial
interests lie," Facebook stated in a
organized statement Friday. The truth is
we've got invested $thirteen billion and
have over 40,000 human beings to do one
task: preserve human beings secure on
Facebook.
Statements like those are the cutting-edge
sign that Facebook has gotten into what
Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook
information scientist, defined as a siege
mentality at the agency. Zhang remaining
year accused the social community of

10. ignoring faux debts used to undermine
foreign elections. With extra whistleblowers
substantially Haugen coming forward, it's
only gotten worse.
Facebook has been going via a bit of an
authoritarian narrative spiral, in which it
becomes much less conscious of
employee grievance, to internal dissent
and in a few instances cracks down upon
it," stated Zhang, who become fired from
Facebook within the fall of 2020. And this
ends in more inner dissent."
I have seen many colleagues that are
extremely annoyed and indignant, even as
on the identical time, feeling powerless and
(disheartened) about the cutting-edge
situation," one employee, whose call
become redacted, wrote on an internal
message board after Facebook decided
remaining yr to depart up incendiary posts

11. with the aid of former President Donald
Trump that cautioned Minneapolis
protesters can be shot. My view is, if you
need to repair Facebook, do it inside.
This story is based totally in component on
disclosures made to the Securities and
Exchange Commission and supplied to
Congress in redacted form by means of
Haugen's prison suggest. The redacted
versions acquired by using Congress were
received by means of a consortium of
information corporations, consisting of The
Associated Press.
They detail painstakingly accumulated
facts on problems as extensive-ranging
because the trafficking of domestic
employees inside the Middle East, an over-
correction in crackdowns on Arabic content
material that critics say muzzles free
speech whilst hate speech and abuse

12. flourish, and rampant anti-vaccine incorrect
information that researchers determined
could have been easily tamped down with
subtle modifications in how users view
posts on their feed.
The company insists it does no longer
conduct research and then systematically
and willfully ignore it if the findings are
inconvenient for the corporation." This
claim, Facebook stated in a
announcement, can best be made by way
of cherry-picking selective prices from
person portions of leaked cloth in a way
that gives complicated and nuanced
problems as if there is best ever one
proper solution."
Haugen, who testified before the Senate
this month that Facebook's merchandise
damage youngsters, stoke department and
weaken our democracy, said the

13. corporation should claim ethical financial
ruin" if it is to move forward from all this.
At this degree, that appears not going.
There is a deep-seated warfare among
profit and people within Facebook and the
organisation does no longer look like ready
to give up on its narrative that it is correct
for the arena even as it often makes
selections intended to maximise increase.
Facebook did everyday surveys of its
personnel what percentage of personnel
trust that Facebook is making the arena a
higher vicinity, Zhang recalled.
It changed into round 70 percentage when
I joined. It become round 50 percent once I
left, stated Zhang, who became on the
corporation for more than years earlier
than she turned into fired within the fall of
2020.

14. Facebook has not stated wherein the
quantity stands today.