Facebook Accused of Tolerating Dangerous and Criminal Behavior to Preserve Profitability

A new whistleblower affidavit submitted by a former Facebook employee 'alleges that the company prizes growth and profits over combating hate speech, misinformation and other threats to the public,' reports the Washington Post:

The SEC affidavit goes on to allege that Facebook officials routinely undermined efforts to fight misinformation, hate speech and other problematic content out of fear of angering then-President Donald Trump and his political allies, or out of concern about potentially dampening the user growth key to Facebook's multi-billion-dollar profits...

Friday's filing is the latest in a series since 2017 spearheaded by former journalist Gretchen Peters and a group she leads, the Alliance to Counter Crime Online. Taken together, the filings argue that Facebook has failed to adequately address dangerous and criminal behavior on its platforms, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger... 'Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives repeatedly claimed high rates of success in restricting illicit and toxic content — to lawmakers, regulators and investors — when in fact they knew the firm could not remove this content and remain profitable,' Peters said in a statement.

Friday's filing, which was accompanied by a second affidavit from Peters based on interviews she conducted with other former company employees, argues that top leaders at Facebook, including chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, are aware of the severity of problems within the company but have failed to report them in SEC filings available to investors... Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which some lawmakers are pushing to reform, gives broad immunity to Internet companies for content that users post on their platforms. That is a barrier to some kinds of legal scrutiny but not necessarily to an investigation by the SEC, which has wide-ranging enforcement powers.

There appears to be a convenient case study available. Facebook 'had set up safeguards that were aimed at combating misinformation and other forms of platform abuse' in the run-up to America's 2020 election, 'but it dismantled many of them by mid-December,' Bloomberg reported Friday, citing a new package of redacted documents provided to Congress by whistleblower Frances Haugen.

And in addition, 'In early December, Facebook disbanded a 300-person squad known as Civic Integrity, which had the job of monitoring misuse of the platform around elections... even as efforts to delegitimize the election intensified.'

Meanwhile, Stop the Steal groups were 'amplifying and normalizing misinformation and violent hate in a way that delegitimized a free and fair election,' Facebook's internal analysis concluded.

But there's more in that company after-action report, adds the Washington Post:

The documents also provide ample support that the company's internal research over several years had identified ways to diminish the spread of political polarization, conspiracy theories and incitements to violence but that in many instances, executives had declined to implement those steps...
The documents and interviews with former employees make clear that Facebook has deep, highly precise knowledge about how its users are affected by what appears on its sites. Facebook relentlessly measures an astonishing array of data points, including the frequency, reach and sources of falsehoods and hateful content and often implements measures to suppress both. The company exhaustively studies potential policy changes for their impacts on user growth and other factors key to corporate profits, such as engagement, the extent of sharing and other reactions.

The article adds that at Facebook, even the public relations and political impacts 'are carefully weighed — to the point that potentially flattering and unflattering news headlines about the company are sketched out for review.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.