Enlarge image
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg wants regulatory guidelines - these should help his company find a “balance between freedom of speech and the limitation of harmful content”
Photo:
Bloomberg / Bloomberg via Getty Images
With WhatsApp, Facebook owns the most widely used messenger in the world, Instagram is one of the most popular social networks, plus around 100,000 kilometers of internet cable, and it dominates important parts of the lucrative digital advertising market. In some parts of the world the service is practically equivalent to the Internet. In view of this enormous market power, the same questions arise after each new revelation of misconduct: Will this leak now permanently damage the company? Does it even mean the end of the success story?
The same questions that were raised after the Cambridge Analytica scandal are now being asked again after numerous international media reported on the so-called Facebook Files or Facebook Papers on Monday. The documents show that, thanks to internal investigations, Facebook often knew exactly what damage and problems it could cause in the real world. But the company puts its "astronomical profits before the well-being of the people." At least that is how the whistleblower Frances Haugen, who smuggled tens of thousands of documents from inside the group to the media, described the group's priorities in a hearing before the US Congress.
However, the group does not have to fear that these revelations will send the stock market price or profit on a longer downward slide or lead to an exodus of users.
Something else could endanger the group in the long term
However, this has nothing to do with the fact that the company would not look bad because of the reports, but with the fact that Facebook's reputation has been battered anyway.
The fact that Facebook is doing too little against hatred, agitation and problematic content on its platform, as is now being reported, fits in with what the company has been publicly accused of for a long time, without having massively damaged the business.
The internal documents, about which the »Süddeutsche Zeitung« (SZ) reports in Germany, however, take an interesting look at what could really be dangerous to the company's success story in the long term: the dissatisfaction of its own employees.
The reports show how internal employees reported and discussed the risks and dangers of Facebook with increasing frustration.
Suggestions for improvement were therefore probably only insufficiently taken into account.
The documents also contained several farewell letters from departing employees who made Facebook serious allegations, according to the SZ.
It is only unclear how representative they really are in view of the 60,000 employees.
How is Facebook supposed to attract young talent?
Can such a group be an attractive employer in the long term, attracting the best engineers and tech experts who will secure it a supremacy on the Internet? Previously, Facebook could advertise making the world a better place by connecting people. Today, hardly any new employee can fully subscribe to the fact that growth and more networking automatically advance humanity. The fact that Facebook has long since stopped developing the coolest and hottest social media products in Silicon Valley could make the search for talent more difficult.
Another finding from the internal documents is likely to be problematic for Facebook. The company appears downright desperate in its efforts to win over younger target groups again. According to the reports, Facebook employees suggested dubious methods of targeting children. That doesn't sound like a confident, thriving company, wrote technology reporter Kevin Roose of the New York Times. His conclusion: "Facebook is weaker than we think." The documents, he writes, paint a picture of a corporation whose best days are behind him.
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg sees it differently in his first reaction.
So he said in a video link with investors that the Facebook community had continued to grow in the past quarter.
Meanwhile, 3.6 billion people used the company's services, Zuckerberg said on Monday evening.
Zuckerberg's current statements do not indicate an internal course change.
In response to the “current debate” about his company, it was said that he wanted regulatory guidelines that would help his company find a “balance between freedom of speech and the containment of harmful content”.
In addition, five billion dollars have been invested in security this year.
They do more here than any other company.
Statements and positions with which Facebook had already reacted in the past.
However, Zuckerberg dismissed the current media reports as a "campaign". Communications chief Nick Clegg indicated in a memo to employees, according to a CNN reporter, that the traditional media were only longing to go back to the old days when they could decide for themselves what their audience would see. Humility or insight do not seem much in demand at the moment.
When refuting the individual allegations, however, Facebook takes a half-hearted approach.
The company is neither willing to publish its internal research results comprehensively, nor does it offer better access for independent research.
It can also claim that the "Facebook files" have been torn out of context, paint an incomplete picture, are sometimes out of date or have long since initiated appropriate countermeasures.
That is not verifiable, but it is also not refutable.
The leak and the regulators
And then there is politics.
Despite all the criticism of Facebook, effective and sensible regulation has hardly succeeded so far.
Whistleblower Frances Haugen is exerting pressure here, however: She has filed a complaint with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and handed over some of the documents she had collected to the US Congress.
Politicians in the USA and also in the EU, where the Digital Services Act is a major attempt at regulating social networks, have taken note of the revelations with interest.
However, it will be a long time before the planned tightening of the law comes into force in Brussels or Washington.
The actual influence of the current revelations is therefore unlikely to become apparent for a few years.
