Complaints against Facebook unite 17 newspapers, TV and news agency – 10/23/2021

NS Facebook social networking site Back in the news on Saturday (23) with nearly simultaneous posting by various A . cars Series Denouncing the way the company handled (or failed to deal) with messages exposing false information and conspiracy theories about the US elections in 2020.

According to the Associated Press, the “Facebook Sheets” represent a Unprecedented cooperation Among 17 US news agencies, including the agency itself. “Journalists from different newsrooms, large and small, worked together to access thousands of pages of internal company documents obtained by Frances Hogan, a former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower.”

As the information site noted, “It’s not often that major news organizations coordinate to scrutinize a trove of leaked documents from a company and agree not to publish stories about them on a particular date. But in the world of news-related Facebook, these are extraordinary times.”

Francis Hogan was the secret source who leaked a series of documents to the Wall Street Journal in September, accusing Facebook of “weakening democracy” by putting profits above the safety and well-being of users. In early October, she decided to show her face in an interview with “60 Minutes” on CBS. He then made a statement before the US Senate Commerce Subcommittee.

This Saturday, the new batch of documents led to reports in the New York Times and Washington Post, and on CNN and NBC News. Everything indicates that more press material will come in the coming days.

The stories show that various officials warned Facebook about the spread of “incendiary election disinformation” in the days after the election. Mark Zuckerberg’s social network would have done nothing to stop the circulation of false information that led, on January 6 of this year, to Invasion of the Capitol (The New York Times report may be in Portuguese to read here).

In 2019, a company researcher at the time began receiving suggestions about QAanon, a conspiracy theorist group, days after creating a fake profile in which she expressed interest in issues related to Donald Trump H Fox News.

The Washington Post has provided testimony from a new anonymous source declaring its support for Francis Hogan’s claims. The whistleblower accused the Facebook executive of creating a “whitelist” that protected some of the characters who promoted disinformation, such as Steve Bannon’s website Breitbart, from sanctions. Facebook denied the charge. “There was no whitelist exempting publishers, including Breitbart, from Facebook’s rules against misinformation.”