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Breitbart And Other Conservative Publishers Get ‘Special Treatment’: Here’s What The ‘Facebook Papers’ Allege So Far [forbes.com]:

Topline

Facebook gives preferential treatment to conservative publishers and offered only a “tepid” response to growing violence during the January 6 Capitol riots, according to a trove of internal documents a company whistleblower provided to the Securities and Exchange Commission that are now forming the basis for an ongoing “Facebook Papers” series of exposes running in a number of major news organizations.

Key Facts

Facebook often prioritizes “political considerations” in decision making to avoid appearing biased, and gives high-performing right-wing publishers “special treatment” that lets them evade punishment for misinformation, the Wall Street Journalreports [wsj.com], with one Facebook staffer noting in a memo the company makes “special exceptions” for conservative news site Breitbart and “even explicitly endorse[s] them” by including the site in Facebook’s News Tab.

Facebook removed “safeguards” to stop the spread of election misinformation after Election Day before of the January 6 attack and had a “tepid” response after the violence started that employees criticized as insufficient, according to documents reported by outlets including Bloomberg [bloomberg.com], CNN [cnn.com], the Associated Press [apnews.com], Washington Post [washingtonpost.com], Journal [wsj.com] and New York Times [nytimes.com].

The Journal and Post report Facebook conducted extensive internal research that provided recommendations for how the platform could stop the spread of extremist content, but “in many instances, executives had declined to implement those steps”—and NBC News reports [nbcnews.com] the efforts Facebook did take to ban QAnon and other conspiracy groups were criticized by internal researchers as “piecemeal” and effectively stop the movement’s “meteoric growth.”

The Journalreports [wsj.com] Facebook takes a “whack-a-mole” approach to banning extremist movements, conducting “surgical strikes” on individual entities it believes to be dangerous rather than a “more systematic approach” that officials believed would stifle Facebook’s growth.

Hate speech and misinformation on Facebook has flourished and often been left unchecked in India—Facebook’s largest market—particularly anti-Muslim rhetoric and incitements of violence, despite the company conducting internal research that demonstrates the extent of the problem, the Post [washingtonpost.com], Times [nytimes.com], Bloomberg [bloomberg.com], Journal [wsj.com] and AP [apnews.com] all reported.

Facebook has been unable to police a lot of content in India because it does not have the ability to effectively moderate and fact-check posts in the country’s 22 official languages, including Hindi and Bengali, which the Post notes are the fourth- and seventh-most spoken languages globally, respectively.

Two Hindu nationalist groups that have not been banned from Facebook despite spreading anti-Muslim content or incitements of violence have ties to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his political party, the Journal notes, and one group wasn’t removed because of “given political sensitivities,” according to an internal document.

87%. That’s how much of its resources for fighting misinformation Facebook dedicates to the U.S., leaving only 13% for the rest of the world, according to a document cited by the Times. The Post also reports Facebook dedicates 84% of its “global remit/language coverage” to the U.S. versus other countries. (Facebook disputed those figures to the Times, saying they don’t take third-party fact checkers into account, many of whom are abroad.) In addition to India, documents cited by the two outlets also found the platform has had issues adequately policing content in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Indonesia.

“I’m struggling to match my values with my employment here,” an employee wrote on Facebook’s internal message board on January 6, as quoted by the Post and Bloomberg. “I came here hoping to affect change and improve society, but all I’ve seen is atrophy and abdication of responsibility.”

Facebook has broadly pushed back against the news outlets’ reporting and defended the company’s efforts against misinformation and extremism. A Facebook spokesperson told the AP the company has “invested significantly in technology to find hate speech in various languages, including Hindi and Bengali” and “reduced [the] amount of hate speech that people see by half” in 2021 in response to the outlet’s reporting on India. Spokesperson Andy Stone also told the Times the company is “proud” of its work around the 2020 election. “The responsibility for the violence that occurred on Jan. 6 lies with those who attacked our Capitol and those who encouraged them,” Stone said.

More stories. Facebook VP of global affairs Nick Clegg told employees Saturday workers “need to steel ourselves for more bad headlines in the coming days,” according to an internal post reported by Axios [axios.com]. The coordinated effort by approximately two dozen news outlets to report the Facebook documents was reportedly initially slated to drop early Monday morning, suggesting more articles will be coming out then.

Facebook has long faced criticism for its alleged failure to stop misinformation and hate speech on its platform, but those allegations have ramped up in recent weeks after whistleblower Frances Haugen spoke out on 60 Minutes [forbes.com] and testified to Congress [forbes.com] about the company’s alleged misdeeds. The former member of Facebook’s Civic Integrity team told Congress the company has “put their astronomical profits before people” and urged lawmakers to take action against Facebook, which Haugen claimed on 60 Minutes is “substantially worse” than what she had seen at other social networking companies. The internal documents that Haugen collected and provided to the SEC, which her lawyers then gave to the news outlets, were first reported by the Journal.

In addition to its pieces on India and the January 6 riot, the Journal has also used Haugen’s documents to publish stories on Facebook’s reported policy [wsj.com] that exempts “VIPs” from its rules, the company’s awareness [wsj.com] of Instagram’s “toxic” effect [wsj.com], particularly on teen girls; how a 2018 algorithm change [wsj.com] resulted in making the platform and its users “angrier;” the company’s “weak” response to posts from drug cartels and human traffickers; its failure [wsj.com] to police anti-vaccination content; its plans [wsj.com] to attract preteens to its platforms; how the company’s employee lists have changed [wsj.com]; employee doubts [wsj.com] about how effective Facebook’s use of artificial intelligence could be and the company’s struggle [wsj.com] to detect users that have multiple accounts on its platform.

Inside Facebook, Jan. 6 violence fueled anger, regret over missed warning signs [washingtonpost.com] (Washington Post)

Internal Alarm, Public Shrugs: Facebook’s Employees Dissect Its Election Role [nytimes.com] (New York Times)

How Facebook neglected the rest of the world, fueling hate speech and violence in India [washingtonpost.com] (Washington Post)

Scoop: Facebook exec warns of "more bad headlines" [axios.com] (Axios)

Facebook Whistle-Blower Says Company Dropped Guards Against Political Misinformation In ‘60 Minutes’ Interview [forbes.com] (Forbes)

Facebook ‘Puts Astronomical Profits Over People,’ Whistle-Blower Tells Congress [forbes.com] (Forbes)

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