A former Facebook project manager, Frances Haugen, provided news outlets with hundreds of redacted documents detailing Facebook’s alleged malpractices and negligence on its platform. News organizations released these documents and analyses by news organizations on Oct. 25.
The documents show the company’s collection of data on several of the site’s issues. This data includes Facebook’s knowledge of human trafficking conducted through their site since 2017 and widespread vaccine misinformation whose spread could have been stopped with minor changes to Facebook’s feed algorithm.
“I saw Facebook repeatedly encounter conflicts between its own profits and our safety,” Haugen said during a Senate hearing. “Facebook consistently resolves these conflicts in favor of its own profits. The result has been more division, more harm, more lies, more threats and more combat.” Haegen believes the company should declare “moral bankruptcy” if it is to move forward.
Following Haugen’s provision of documents, more Facebook employees have come forward to criticize the company. A former Facebook data scientist, Sophie Zhang, told CNN that Facebook ignores false accounts used to weaken foreign elections and has become increasingly less willing to listen to employee criticism. Zhang was fired from Facebook in 2020.
“Yes, we’re a business, and we make profit,” Facebook said in a statement released after the documents were disclosed, “but the idea that we do so at the expense of people’s safety or wellbeing misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie.”
“The rise of polarization has been the subject of serious academic research in recent years but without a great deal of consensus,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told USA Today. “But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization.” Stone also said that Facebook conducted investigations regarding human trafficking but did not provide details or findings.
On October 28, Facebook rebranded its company name to Meta, complete with a logo change. The social media platform, however, will keep the Facebook name. “Facebook is one of the most-used products in the history of the world. It is an iconic social media brand, but increasingly, it just doesn’t encompass everything we do,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the announcement of the name change.
However, the move has been met with its own share of criticism, in light of and in addition to the whistleblower controversy. “If it works, Mr. Zuckerberg’s metaverse would usher in a new era of dominance — one that would extend Facebook’s influence to entirely new types of culture, communication and commerce,” writes New York Times columnist Kevin Roose. “And if it doesn’t, it will be remembered as a desperate, costly attempt to give a futuristic face-lift to a geriatric social network while steering attention away from pressing societal problems. Either possibility is worth taking seriously.”
