Facebook employees have reportedly called for more censorship of right-wing publishers in the past few years, but senior management has resisted such efforts, partly out of fear of political blowback from conservatives.
Rank-and-file employees and management at Facebook regularly engage in heated debates over content moderation decisions, in which political considerations are a major factor, according to internal Facebook chat boards obtained by the Wall Street Journal.
“We’re scared of political backlash if we enforce our policies without exemptions,” one Facebook employee said in an internal communication.
Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s global head of public policy and a former top staffer to President George W. Bush, pushed back in part against an anti-misinformation campaign on the platform that he thought would lead to excessive censorship, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Many Facebook employees focused their frustration on Facebook’s decision to allow Breitbart and other right-leaning news publishers to spread what the platform deemed misinformation or hate speech.
“We make special exceptions to our written policies for them, and we even explicitly endorse them by including them as trusted partners in our core products,” a Facebook staffer said regarding Breitbart.
Conservative publications are consistently among the most popular and well-read content creators on Facebook, according to user data from research firm NewsWhip.
The social media giant plays a critical role in connecting publishers to their readers, with more than a third of Americans getting their news from the platform, according to recent data gathered by the Pew Research Center.
BREAKING UP BIG TECH WOULD ADDRESS CONSERVATIVE FEARS OF BIAS, TOP DEMOCRAT SAYS
Facebook, in the past few days, has been inundated with critical coverage of its products and services after a number of news outlets gained access to internal company documents that paint a portrait of a company that ignores societal problems it has created or made worse.
Most of these revelations have come thanks to internal documents obtained by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who has been behind a recent series of revelations about Facebook’s effects on teenage girls’ mental health, its use by drug cartels and human traffickers, and its special rules for VIPs.
She said she became disillusioned with the tech company’s motives and felt she had to do something about the ways it was often knowingly harming users.
Now, other Facebook executives and former employees are starting to speak out against the company as well.
A former member of Facebook’s integrity team, which is tasked with reducing harmful content on the platform, filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday saying that the company misled investors and that it values user growth and profits over trying to tackle hate speech, misinformation, and other threats to public interest, the Washington Post reported.
Facebook has also been used to create religious divisions in India, according to leaked documents reported by the Associated Press on Sunday.
Facebook also faces an existential threat because it is losing popularity with teenagers and young adults. A group of Facebook researchers earlier this year compiled a report showing that “time spent” on Facebook by U.S. teenagers was down 16% year-over-year and that young adults in America were also spending 5% less time on the platform, according to a Bloomberg report on Monday.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, warned employees over the weekend “to steel ourselves for more bad headlines in the coming days, I’m afraid.”
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“In the past, public discourse was largely curated by established gatekeepers in the media who decided what people could read, see and digest. Social media has enabled people to decide for themselves,” Clegg wrote in an internal post to staffers. “This is both empowering for individuals — and disruptive to those who hanker after the top-down controls of the past.”
