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Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg leaves the Merrion Hotel in Dublin after meeting with Irish politicians to discuss social media regulation, political advertising transparency and the safety of vulnerable young people and adults. Tuesday April 2, 2019, in Dublin, Ireland.
Artur Widak | NurPhoto | Getty Images
Facebook has spent the weekend on the defensive after a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal last week revealed how far the company has gone to prioritize profits over the health and safety of its employees. billion users.
It’s a familiar pattern to those who have followed the social media giant in recent years. Disturbing anecdotes about Facebook and the behavior of its executives are published by mainstream media, followed by a storm of criticism and threats from lawmakers to regulate the company and to call the top executives before Congress.
Next, Facebook apologizes half-heartedly, but not before criticizing the accuracy of the information and blaming the leakers who, in this case, were company employees. On Saturday, following the Journal’s in-depth series, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, posted a blog post titled “What the Wall Street Journal Got Wrong – About Facebook.”
The Journal’s investigation showed how Facebook has repeatedly failed to properly address critical issues highlighted in internal studies conducted by the company’s own employees, such as how the most controversial content appears in so much. of news feeds because of its high engagement. The reports come two months after President Joe Biden said Facebook was ‘killing people’ with misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines and after the company struggled to come up with a cohesive message to deal with the false information on the 2020 elections.
The problems highlighted by the Journal were consistent with what Facebook critics have long said: Executives are plagued by revenue growth and engagement.
One of the stories was that CEO Mark Zuckerberg received a recommendation from an employee about a change the company could make to reduce the algorithmic push for harmful content that caught the eye and overwhelming attention. Zuckerberg responded by telling the employee he would reject the proposal if it had a significant impact on users’ interactions with each other, according to the report.
In a separate article, the Journal explained how Facebook ignored or brushed aside the mental health issues caused by Instagram, especially for teenage girls. Facebook was aware of the issues because the conclusions were drawn from its own research. Not only has the company failed to make any improvements, it is now planning a version of Instagram for children under the age of 13.
One thing Facebook tested as a potential solution on Instagram was to hide likes. After experimenting with the idea, Facebook found it didn’t improve anything. Still, the company decided to offer users the option to hide likes, as this “would be received by the press and parents as a strong positive indication that Instagram cares about its users,” Facebook executives wrote, according to the. report.
Another Journal article found that Facebook rarely solves problems in markets outside the United States because there were not enough people speaking the necessary local languages or dialects to identify the problems. So, there are places where the site is overrun with anti-vaccine misinformation and other lies and conspiracy theories.
For a company that is worth $ 1,000 billion and generated $ 86 billion in revenue last year and nearly $ 30 billion in profits, failure to hire the right experts is a bad excuse.
Facebook defended itself as it often does. The company accused the Journal of misrepresenting its actions and implying clearly false motives on the part of its executives and employees.
“Facebook understands the important responsibility that comes with operating a global platform,” Clegg wrote in the post in response to the series. “We take it seriously and we don’t shy away from scrutiny and criticism. But we fundamentally reject this distortion of our work and challenging the motives of the company.”
However, Clegg did not refute any specific fact reported by the Journal, as the newspaper’s own reporters noted. And if the past is any indication, we shouldn’t expect dramatic changes from Facebook, as long as investors keep buying the stocks and regulators don’t act.
A Facebook representative did not comment beyond the blog post and said, “We have also worked with reporters from the WSJ to ensure our responses are included in the series.”
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