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Facebook knows very well about its users (symbol picture)
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The US internet giant Facebook is confronted with allegations of other ex-employees after the accusations of the whistleblower Frances Haugen.
The Washington Post reported that an unnamed informant had lodged a complaint with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Accordingly, he accuses Facebook of having put its own business interests in the foreground when dealing with problematic content.
The former Facebook product manager Haugen had already made similar allegations.
She had accused her ex-employer of putting her own profits above people's safety.
"I believe that Facebook's products harm children, fuel divisions and weaken our democracy," she said at a hearing in the US Congress in early October.
Facebook has firmly denied the allegations.
In his complaint, the now known whistleblower reported on internal processes in 2017, when Facebook was faced with the question of how to deal with the controversy over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
"It will be a flash in the pan," said one of Facebook's PR managers, Tucker Bounds.
“Some MPs are going to get mad.
And then in a few weeks they'll be doing something else.
In the meantime we are printing money in the basement and we are fine «.
According to the Washington Post report, the informant accuses Facebook managers of regularly obstructing the fight against disinformation and other problematic content because they feared annoying then-US President Donald Trump or deterring users.
What role did Facebook play in the storming of the Capitol?
This is matched by further reports in the US media, which deal with the role of the platform in the US elections last November and the subsequent storming of the Capitol on January 6 of this year. According to a report in the New York Times newspaper, the group ignored warnings from its employees shortly before the election and encouraged disinformation campaigns. Relevant posts are cited as examples, which can be traced back to the conspiracy supporter QAnon. Around ten percent of American posts claimed that the election results were falsified, the report said.
The Washington Post also reports that Facebook could demonstrably have done more to prevent false information about the election. According to internal documents, the company lifted the measures to prevent false information too quickly after the election. The documents further show that the in-house research department had identified ways of containing political polarization, conspiracy theories or incitement to violence over several years. However, the executives would have rejected these steps in many cases.
Facebook itself admitted that it had withdrawn some protective measures on its platforms in December. However, the reason was that the problematic content had already decreased significantly. Instead, the company blamed former President Donald Trump and other social platforms for spreading misinformation. In mid-January, Sheryl Sandberg, the co-managing director of Facebook, said the January 6 uprising in the Capitol was "largely organized on platforms that do not have our ability to stop hatred." Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, said in March that the company "did its part to ensure the integrity of our choice."
However, the documents available to the newspapers contradict this representation.
They show that Facebook knew very well about extremist groups that were trying to polarize Americans in the run-up to the election.
And even after the election, according to the reports, false information was spread, especially with regard to alleged election fraud in favor of the Democrats.
According to the anonymous staff who spoke out to US journalists, Facebook could have done more to stop the campaigns.
kry / AFP