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WASHINGTON: Sixteen months before last November’s presidential election, a researcher at Facebook described an alarming development. She was getting content about the conspiracy theory QAnon within a week of opening an experimental account, she wrote in an internal report.
On November 5, two days after the election, another Facebook staffer posted a message alerting colleagues that comments with “combustible election misinformation” were visible below many posts. Four days after that, a company data scientist wrote in a note to his co-workers that 10% of all US views of political material — a startlingly high figure — were of posts that alleged the vote was fraudulent.
In each case, Facebook’s staffers sounded an alarm about misinformation and inflammatory content on the site and urged action — but the company failed or struggled toaddress the issues. New internal Facebook documents provided by former employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen provide a glimpse into how the firm appears to have stumbled into the January 6 riot. It quickly became clear that even after years under the microscope for insufficiently policing its platform, the firm had missed how riot participants spent weeks vowing — on Facebook itself — to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory.
Facebook has blamed the proliferation of poll falsehoods on former President Donald Trump and other social platforms. In January, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, said the January 6 Capitol riot was “largely organised on platforms that don’t have our abilities to stop hate.” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, told lawmakers in March the firm “did our part to secure the integrity of our election”. But the documents show the degree to which Facebook knew of extremist groups on its site that were trying to polarise American voters .
What the papers do not offer is a complete picture of decision-making inside Facebook. Some internal studies suggested that the firm struggled to exert control over how quickly information spread, while other reports hinted that Facebook was concerned about losing engagement. Yet what was unmistakable was that Facebook’s own employees believed the social network could have done more.
On November 5, two days after the election, another Facebook staffer posted a message alerting colleagues that comments with “combustible election misinformation” were visible below many posts. Four days after that, a company data scientist wrote in a note to his co-workers that 10% of all US views of political material — a startlingly high figure — were of posts that alleged the vote was fraudulent.
In each case, Facebook’s staffers sounded an alarm about misinformation and inflammatory content on the site and urged action — but the company failed or struggled toaddress the issues. New internal Facebook documents provided by former employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen provide a glimpse into how the firm appears to have stumbled into the January 6 riot. It quickly became clear that even after years under the microscope for insufficiently policing its platform, the firm had missed how riot participants spent weeks vowing — on Facebook itself — to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory.
Facebook has blamed the proliferation of poll falsehoods on former President Donald Trump and other social platforms. In January, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, said the January 6 Capitol riot was “largely organised on platforms that don’t have our abilities to stop hate.” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, told lawmakers in March the firm “did our part to secure the integrity of our election”. But the documents show the degree to which Facebook knew of extremist groups on its site that were trying to polarise American voters .
What the papers do not offer is a complete picture of decision-making inside Facebook. Some internal studies suggested that the firm struggled to exert control over how quickly information spread, while other reports hinted that Facebook was concerned about losing engagement. Yet what was unmistakable was that Facebook’s own employees believed the social network could have done more.
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