Want to Avoid Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation on Facebook? Good Luck
Summary
Facebook has been accused of knowing that its platform enabled misinformation to reach a significant number of people, especially in the US, long before the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol led to increased scrutiny of the companys policies. NBC News reports that a Facebook employee created an experimental account called Carol Smith in 2019 to research the platforms effect on users. NBC News and the Times say their reporting is based at least partly on internal documents shared with journalists and the US Securities and Exchange Commission by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower who testified about the companys response to misinformation before the Senate Commerce Committee in early October. But not all of the research was shared by Haugen, the Times says, and The Washington Post reports that another whistleblower told the SEC that Facebook "prizes growth and profits over combating hate speech, misinformation, and other threats to the public" on Oct. 13. That defense continued on Oct. 22 with a blog post attributed to Guy Rosen, its VP of Integrity, titled "Our Comprehensive Approach to Protecting the US 2020 Elections Through Inauguration Day."
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