Facebook struggles from halting and inconsistent response to rising extremism in the U.S. It a used by the Stop the Steal movement to organize a violent insurrection against the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. The platform is overrun by conspiracy theories.
When the Stop the Steal group was taken down by Facebook on November 5, 2020 there were already 360,000 members with tens of thousands joining every day. The group simply scattered to the plethora of other hate filled misinformation groups Facebook had nurtured.
Frances Haugen a a product manager in Facebook’s civic integrity team supplied Congress with thousands of internal Facebook documents that showed that the company knew that rubes would best engage with the platform if they were angered by the content. A peaceful exchange of ideas does not garner enough clicks. Facebook is an addiction engine.
Inside Facebook employees were warning that the platform encouraged groups to grow quickly and those groups were getting louder. In its internal report, Facebook acknowledged something striking: It “helped incite the Capitol Insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021. Haugen noted that the company knows about the problems endemic to its platform, and how resistant it is to make changes that affect the growth it prizes above all else. “The thing I think we should be discussing is, what choices did Facebook make to expose the public to greater risk than was necessary?” Haugen says. “We should ask who gets to resolve these tradeoffs between safety and Facebook’s profits.” Se has claimed that Facebook misled investors and the public about its role in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Oh, and Facebook is changing its name to Meta, or Maga, something like that. That should make this all better in Zuckerburg’s warped mind.