Facebook tried to curb the hottest posts inciting violence in the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6. But it did not succeed. This is what emerges from some internal documents of the company, also cited by the Financial Times, which highlight the clumsy attempt of the social network, despite a few days after the crimes in Washington, Sheryl Sandberg, operating director of Facebook, had minimized the role of social media in this story.
A dark moment
The documents – provided to Congress and a consortium of news outlets by former employee Frances Haugen – are part of a larger dossier and cite internal company research and documents that show Facebook was aware of much of the damage caused by its apps and from its services, but has not solved the problems or struggled to solve them – all of this comes at a very difficult historical moment for Facebook. While the parent company (Facebook Inc.) is preparing to change its name, the social is struggling with a series of headaches on the public relations front that are making it the darkest moment after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Too slow and too late
A couple of weeks ago, Frances Haugen – now a Facebook whistleblower on multiple fronts, supported in this battle by Pierre Omidyar, eBay founder – testified before Congress accusing Facebook of preferring profits to the safety of its users. And in the next few days, Haugen herself will appear before the UK parliament. We’ll see what happens. The New York Times reports that, based on documents provided by Haugen, a Facebook data scientist wrote to his colleagues to say that 10% of all U.S. views on political content were posts claiming the presidential election was The story that emerged today tells us that during the US presidential elections of 2020, Facebook had strengthened the “surveillance” teams to check the posts that incited violence and reported fake news. This wall, however, was erected until the vote. After November 3, however, the guard would be lowered. And on January 6, the day of the now famous Capitol Hill clashes, the social network tried to intervene quickly to reactivate the emergency measures, But it was too late.
At 2:00 p.m. on January 6, when rioters began clashing with police on the steps of the Capitol and breaking down the doors and windows of the US Senate, Facebook had not yet activated any measures to contain the posts, according to leaked documents. that meanwhile were going viral and inciting an attack on the Capitol.
Facebook has specified that it has disabled some key features, such as live videos blocked by artificial intelligence systems. But in a complaint to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Frances Haugen argued that some measures were taken “only after the insurgency broke out.” Another internal Facebook document, first reported by the BuzzFeed website, shows that groups like “Stop the Steal” have been able to achieve very important growth rates. And about 30% of the invitations came from just 0.3% of accounts, such as those of far-right activists Ali Alexander and Amy Kremer. And several documents have shown that Facebook employees themselves have expressed concern about the failure to report and prevent coordinated efforts such as in the case of “Stop the Steal”.