Facebook Papers Show Conflict Between People and Profit

 

A former Facebook employee gave members of the United States Congress thousands of company documents. The documents show a company that recognizes the harm it is causing but does not want to find solutions.

The documents are being called "The Facebook Papers."

Seventeen media organizations, including The Associated Press, worked together to be able to examine and report about the documents. A separate group of European news organizations gained access to the same set of documents. Members of both groups began publishing stories about the papers on October 25.

Facebook says it has good intentions – or aims and goals. But the documents show how the company has avoided or been slow to address the problems the social media company has often created.

Final responsibility for the company lies with company head Mark Zuckerberg. One former employee described him as having total control over the corporation. Facebook has around 3 billion users around the world.

Jennifer Grygiel is a communications professor with Syracuse University in New York. She has followed Facebook closely for years. She said, "Ultimately, it rests with Mark and whatever his prerogative¹ is — and it has always been to grow, to increase his power and his reach."

Zuckerberg owns the majority of the company's voting shares and controls its board of directors. Critics say he surrounds himself with executives that do not question his ideas.

Facebook is struggling to attract younger users in the United States and Europe. A November 2020 Facebook document said that young people see Facebook as a "boring" network with "irrelevant² content" that brings little value to them.

Facebook worked to expand its number of users outside the U.S. and Western Europe. But as it grew, the company failed to deal with or even predict the effects of signing up millions of new users. For example, the company did not hire extra workers or create new systems to identify and limit the spread of hate speech and misinformation.

And in places like Afghanistan and Myanmar, extremist language has spread easily and successfully. In Myanmar, hate speech on Facebook has been connected to crimes carried out against the country's Rohingya Muslim population. Facebook lacked workers who spoke³ the language to help limit such speech.

Facebook appears unwilling⁴ to prevent or even recognize the real-world damage its site can cause. Those harms include algorithms that push users into extremism, widespread misinformation, suicide among young people and more.

Efforts to help such problems often have been pushed to the side when solutions conflict with growth and profit.

The company continues to defend its choices instead of trying to fix problems. It denies that it has put money over people's safety.

Facebook said in a statement last week, "Yes, we're a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of people's safety or wellbeing misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie."

More former employees have come forward with their own criticism of Facebook, making matters worse for the company. Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook data scientist, said the social network ignores false accounts used to weaken foreign elections.

Zhang said the company has become less willing to answer employee criticism and "in some cases cracks down upon it." Zhang was dismissed from Facebook in the fall of 2020.

One employee wrote on a company message board that many workers are "angry, while at the same time, feeling powerless ... about the current situation." The person wrote the message last year after Facebook decided⁵ to keep posts by former President Donald Trump⁶ that suggested Minneapolis protesters could be shot.

The Facebook Papers show how the company collected data on a number of problems on the social media site. For example, the company looked at how Facebook was used in the trafficking of workers in the Middle East. They also collected data on widespread vaccine⁷ misinformation that could have been easily slowed with small changes in how users see posts on their Facebook feed. But Facebook has done little to deal with the problems.

The company says it "does not conduct research and then ... ignore it if the findings are inconvenient⁸ for the company."

Frances Haugen is a former Facebook employee who spoke in front of the U.S. Senate this month. Through her lawyers, she has provided several news organizations access to the Facebook Papers.

Haugen told Congress that Facebook's products harm children, create division and weaken democracy. She said the company should declare "moral bankruptcy⁹" if it is to move forward and solve its problems.

Right now that does not seem likely. The company still says that it is good for the world, even as it makes decisions meant to grow profit.

Words in This Story

prerogative — n. a right or privilege

irrelevant — adj. not important or relating to what is being discussed right now : not relevant

algorithm — n. a set of steps that are followed in order to solve a mathematical problem or to complete a computer process

profit — n. money that is made in a business, through investing, etc., after all the costs and expenses are paid : a financial gain

expense — n. the amount of money that is needed to pay for or buy something

crack down — phrasal v. a serious attempt to punish people for doing something that is not allowed : an increased effort to enforce a law or rule

posts — n. message on an online message board

inconvenient — adj. causing trouble or problems : not convenient

bankruptcy — n. a condition of financial failure caused by not having the money that you need to pay your debts

1 prerogative   

n.特权

参考例句：

• It is within his prerogative to do so.他是有权这样做的。
• Making such decisions is not the sole prerogative of managers.作这类决定并不是管理者的专有特权。

2 irrelevant   

adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的

参考例句：

• That is completely irrelevant to the subject under discussion.这跟讨论的主题完全不相关。
• A question about arithmetic is irrelevant in a music lesson.在音乐课上，一个数学的问题是风马牛不相及的。

3 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

4 unwilling   

adj.不情愿的

参考例句：

• The natives were unwilling to be bent by colonial power.土著居民不愿受殖民势力的摆布。
• His tightfisted employer was unwilling to give him a raise.他那吝啬的雇主不肯给他加薪。

5 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

6 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

7 vaccine   

n.牛痘苗，疫苗；adj.牛痘的，疫苗的

参考例句：

• The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives.脊髓灰质炎疫苗挽救了数以百万计的生命。
• She takes a vaccine against influenza every fall.她每年秋季接种流感疫苗。

8 inconvenient   

adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的

参考例句：

• You have come at a very inconvenient time.你来得最不适时。
• Will it be inconvenient for him to attend that meeting?他参加那次会议会不方便吗？

9 bankruptcy   

n.破产；无偿付能力

参考例句：

• You will have to pull in if you want to escape bankruptcy.如果你想避免破产，就必须节省开支。
• His firm is just on thin ice of bankruptcy.他的商号正面临破产的危险。