A trove of Facebook documents
has been released detailing how
the social media site has exposed
vulnerable communities around the
world to a cocktail of dangerous
content, divisive content.
Now these internal documents dubbed
the Facebook papers were published
widely by a consortium of news
outlets who obtained the redacted
materials made available by
a company whistleblower.
Her name is Frances Haugen.
Now let me give you some of these
revelations, and then we'll go to
some of the testimony from
the whistleblower herself.
So according to Washington Post,
the company exhaustively studies
potential policy changes for
their effects on user engagement,
and other factors key to corporate
profits.
Amid this push for
user attention, Facebook abandoned
or delayed initiatives to reduce
misinformation and radicalization.
In fact, one 2019 report tracking
a dummy account set up to represent
a conservative mother
in North Carolina found
that Facebook's recommendation
algorithms led her to QAnon,
an extremist ideology that the FBI
has deemed a domestic terrorism
threat, in just five days.
Still, Facebook allowed QAnon to
operate on its site largely
unchecked for another 13 months.
Now before we go into more details
about these documents and
what they say, I do want to go to
the first video featuring
Frances Haugen, because she is not
only the Facebook whistleblower,
she has given us a lot of insight.
Honestly, reinforcing what
many already believed, but also
giving us some new information.
And she talks here specifically
about how the algorithm favors bad
actors who post
the divisive content.
Let's watch.
>> I am not aware of
any research that demonstrates
a political bias on Facebook.
I am familiar with lots of research
that says the way engagement based
ranking was designed.
So Facebook calls it meaningful
social interactions.
Though meaningful,
could have been hate speech or
bullying up until November 2020.
It would still be considered
meaningful.
So let's call it social
interaction rate ranking.
I've seen lots of research
that says that kind of ranking,
engagement based ranking
prioritizes polarizing, extreme,
divisive content.
It doesn't matter if you're on
the left or on the right,
it pushes you to the extremes, and
it fans hate, right?
Anger and hate is the easiest
way to grow on Facebook.
There's something called
virality hacking.
Where you figure out all the tricks
on how to optimize Facebook.
And good actors, good publishers
are already publishing
all the content they can do.
But bad actor have
an incentive to play the algorithm,
and they figure out all the ways to
optimize Facebook.
And so the current system is biased
towards bad actors, and
bias towards people who push people
to the extremes.
>> So before we go on, I just want
to note one thing, right?
The whole business model for
Facebook and
many other social media platforms
is to increase engagement.
Meaning, the more time you spend on
the platform, the better.
Now, people like to think of
advertising as the main revenue
source for Facebook, but the fact
of the matter is, they make a ton
of money by collecting user data
and selling it to third parties.
That's a huge part of their profit
motive, and their profit model.
And remember,
this is a publicly traded company.
Which means they have a fiduciary
responsibility to
their shareholders.
What they're trying to do
is maximize profits for
their shareholders,
that is priority number one.
So when you see the media and
the way that they cover this story,
I'm not saying reject the narrative
or the questions about whether
Mark Zuckerberg is a good guy or
a bad guy.
I think that that's a secondary
question, because the question
primary thing that people should be
focusing on is how this system,
not just with Facebook,
the system overall incentivizes
exactly what Mark Zuckerberg and
Facebook is doing right now.
Again, fiduciary responsibility to
the shareholders.
That's number one,
everything else is secondary.
They don't have a fiduciary.
They don't have a responsibility to
us as Americans or
citizens of the world, right?
They don't,
the number one priority, again,
is to the shareholders.
That's why this is happening,
it's not about individuals,
it's about the system.
>> So the clip you saw of
Frances Haugen.
I agree and disagree, so and
this is important, and
I've got facts to back it up.
So the agreement part is the part
that Anna is talking about.
They want to drive up engagement
because that drives up profits.
So that's they're not doing it for
no reason.
That's the main reason why they're
doing it.
So what part two I disagree with?
What she said,
it's not a right wing or
left wing thing.
That's just not true,
it's empirically not remotely true.
And then when you say dangerous
things like that, what it's
going to do is have them go, let's
ban people saying racist things and
criminal things and false things.
But let's also been people saying
true things, non criminal things,
and fighting against racism.
By the way,
that has happened in the past,
any discussion of race.
You're racist, you're against race,
it doesn't matter,
we're banning you all.
That's a coward's way out.
Okay, and very likely what they'll
wind up doing.
And so now,
is she wrong about that?
Yeah, I have quotes from
a Wall Street Journal here.
They have documents that they
looked at from Facebook.
Here's one quote from
Wall Street Journal.
The documents viewed by the journal
which don't capture all the
employee messaging, said, quote,
didn't mention equivalent debates
over left wing publications.
So they had debates about,
wait a minute,
right wing publications.
They're saying all these hateful
things, just trying to false
things, and it's driving these.
Do they have debates about left
wing publications, and
making exemptions for
them to violate the rules?
Never once.
If a left wing publication
violates any rule, gone, okay?
Right wing publications
like Breitbart, violating rule
after rule after rule.
In fact, here's another
quote from the Wall Street journal.
They also alleged Facebook gave
special treatment to Breitbart and
other conservative publishers
helping them skirt penalties for
circulating misinformation or
hate speech.
>> Why?
>> Show me if it's both, okay?
Show me where the left wing is
promoting hate speech or
misinformation?
By the way, if they are,
I think they should face the same
consequences as any
right wing publication would.
And another by the way,
I don't want the right wing being
published for their opinions.
So if you're bringing up hey,
I don't like what they're saying
about Black Lives Matter, okay.
But they got a right to say that.
They have a right to cover those
stories in any way that they
view to be fine unless they're
violating your rules.
And they say black people are this,
and your policy saying, well,
you can't do that based on race.
It depends on what your policies
are, but you must enforce your
policies fairly, not fairly as in,
I just took a bunch of
right wingers and
a bunch of left wingers, and
I banned them all, because I didn't
want to bother dealing
with political ramifications.
No, what did people actually do?
So which then say, well, were they
really scared of right wingers?
More quotes.
Here's from an actual researcher.
When they were discussing
internally at Facebook, hey,
should we punish the right wing for
clearly obviously
violating our laws?
Quote, at best, it would be a very
difficult policy discussion.
Okay, here's another quote from
an employee in an internal
communication at the time.
Quote, we're scared of political
backlash if we enforce our
policies without exemptions.
So they're having conversations
about how they're scared of
the right wing.
The right wing is intimidating
them, and it's totally working.
You see it in their internal
communications.
Last couple here,
the staffer wrote about Breitbart,
we make special exceptions
to our written policies for them.
We even explicitly endorse them by
including them as trusted partners
in our core products.
And in case all of that wasn't
clear enough,
this is from Yahoo News.
The whistleblower allege that when
questioned about a policy exempting
publishers, including Breitbart
News from its standard rules.
Facebook's Vice President of
Global Public Policy, Joel Kaplan
said, quote, do you want to start
a fight with Steve Bannon?
>> It's amazing.
>> So- >> It's pathetic.
>> The right wing bullied them and
intimidated them.
And by the way,
also created profits for them,
through hatred and
purposely violating the rules, and
Facebook thought, hm, profits.
Plus, disagreeing with a right
winger is going to get me in
a lot of trouble,
political trouble in this country.
So, I don't want any piece of it,
the right wing is now exempt from
our rules.
It's unbelievable, and
if anyone in the left wing get it,
they would be crushed to oblivion.
So that's the reality of what's
happening on social media >> But
what's the main difference between
the right wing and
the left wing in the country?
It's not just about the power
behind the publication
doing the publishing.
It's about the funders funding
the publication, and
there are a lot of powerful people
behind right wing content creators,
>> Yeah, and look,
we're also beating around the bush.
It looks by all indications
on economic issues that Mark
Zuckerberg is very much right wing.
>> It's a publicly traded
corporation, of course, of course.
This is the way it works guys,
doesn't matter if he's a good guy
or a bad guy, that again,
it is secondary.
It's about incentives and
disincentives.
The incentives lead him to do what
he's doing right now, that's it.
>> Zuckerberg on several occasions
had dinner with Ben Shapiro asking,
what shall we do?
How many did he have with
progressive leaders?
Zero, nobody has take progressive
leaders into account.
By the way, I'll say
one last thing.
Republicans use their politicians
to put undue pressure on outlets
like this, and it totally works.
Democrats do no such thing.
And even progressive leaders, they
leave progressive media to fend for
itself.
And there we have no allies,
we have no political pressure,
we have no nothing.
The right wing knows how to
play this game.
And progressives are so
obsessed with themselves,
they never actually band
together to help one another.
And it creates an uneven playing
field where these guys run rampant,
and we can't do a damn thing.