The Facebook Files

I know, it’s not a new topic for anyone who knows about the subject.

But the agenda is changing so fast. So you might be missed some important details about Facebook. In recent days lots of leaks spread in our media about Facebook. Some former employees made statements against Facebook. 

According to some investigations and claims that stand out:

Let’s dive in

Facebook has been struggling with serious problems in recent years. The company’s products and practices are frequently criticized around the world, especially in the US. According to journalists, the company hides its problems from the public.

The Facebook Files opened by The Wall Street Journal recently focus on those who are hidden from the public.

According to rights defenders and media experts, Facebook could not give satisfactory answers to these claims. For example, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri was interviewed on the Recode Media podcast. 

In the interview with host Peter Kafka, Mosseri attempted to defend the negative effects his platform has on its users by comparing social media to cars. So, What is the main idea of his argument? Some people are just going to get run over, and that’s the price we all pay.

The fact that Facebook tries to complicate the work of those who want to do research on its problems also causes the process to deepen.

Internal research reports show that Facebook’s platform design and algorithms are dominated by Eastern Europe-based ‘trolls’. The report obtained by MIT Technology Review states that the same troll team also manages the Facebook pages, which were most popular among Christian and black Americans, just before the 2020 US elections.

The former employee of the company Frances Haugen, who leaked thousands of company notes and documents to the Wall Street Journal, said that Facebook’s priority wants to make a profit, not fight hate speech and fake news. That has led to what may be the most threatening scandal in the company’s history.

According to her, they are meant to drive engagement and the company has found that the best engagement is the kind of instilling fear and hate in users. “It’s easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions,” Hagen said.

After the leaks and interview, Haugen has given also a testimony in the US Congress

After all this, the attorneys general of 14 U.S. states sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking if the top disseminators of vaccine disinformation on the platform received special treatment from the company.

There’s more to the WSJ’s investigation. I tried to sum it up as briefly as I could. These coverages show that social media giants are causing serious trouble for us. If we want to be less exposed to misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech, it should be better for us to move away from social media platforms and access the news from its original sources. Of course, these sources must also be credible.

I keep following this process. If you want to feed me about this subject, please contact me via my Twitter address. All my other contact information is in the profile of the newsletter.

There are subscribe now buttons above and below if you want to subscribe to the newsletter.

Click here to see old bulletins.

Have a nice week!