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Facebook seeks to defend itself after scathing reports

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Let's compare:

According to the WSJ:

FB knew and knows, "in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands;" Also researchers inside Facebook-owned Instagram had found the photo-sharing platform was harmful to a "sizable percentage" of young people, especially teenage girls, but "played down the app's negative effects;" Also FB insiders said a change to Facebook's algorithm in 2018 - designed to improve the platform by building on people's relationships with family and friends - had the opposite effect; Also FB staff had reported concerns about human trafficking and incitement to violence, and contained claims the company's response had been "in many instances…inadequate or nothing at all;" Also FB's “cross check” or “XCheck” – allows a “secret elite that’s exempt” from many of the platform’s rules that have to be obeyed by ordinary people.

Got it. Now FB:

The stories contained “deliberate mischaracterizations of what we are trying to do, and conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook’s leadership and employees.” At least according to former UK Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg (former DPM in 2010 after his party accepted a coalition deal with the Conservatives, who resigned after the 2015 general election), who became VP of Global Affairs for Facebook. He goes on:

“This impugns the motives and hard work of thousands of researchers, policy experts and engineers at Facebook who strive to improve the quality of our products, and to understand their wider (positive and negative) impact. “It’s a claim which could only be made by cherry-picking selective quotes from individual pieces of leaked material in a way that presents complex and nuanced issues as if there is only ever one right answer,” he wrote.

WSJ versus FB's Clegg & Zuch?

Sorry, must give this round to WSJ! FB lost me early on when they started sounding like a cross between the CCP's foreign ministry and the North's own beloved KCNA.

Good news for FB: they have Clegg to blame and act as designated goat in case the hurting before regulators gets too bad.

Links:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039

https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/what-the-wall-street-journal-got-wrong/

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Almost forgot about FB versus AlgorithmWatch, which attracted additional EU scrutiny:

Berlin-based AlgorithmWatch decided to speak out after Facebook stopped researchers at New York University from studying the social network’s political advertising practices.

FB says it is inaccurate.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/facebook-accused-of-stopping-watchdogs-research-into-instagram

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Just hot air. As long at their stock price is strong they could care less

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Facebook is seen as a joke; it's "fact checking" is way overboard, labeling obvious spoof videos and others as false, while at the same time allowing advertisements by scam artists, spammers, phishing memes, etc.

It's main base is people who lack the sense to migrate to better platforms.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

get rid of it, & other social media as well

3 ( +6 / -3 )

FB is a cancer on civil democratic society.

I resisted government regulation but I don’t know how democracy survives when a private company willingly spreads knowingly false conspiracies on behalf of a foreign power (or a domestic extremist organization) for money.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

Now a days FB is just waste of time

4 ( +4 / -0 )

I resisted government regulation but I don’t know how democracy survives when a private company willingly spreads knowingly false conspiracies on behalf of a foreign power (or a domestic extremist organization) for money.

Press freedom is the answer, not censorship. Let opposing points of view have their own social media outlets. The competition of ideas is healthy. Rumors, conspiracy theories and outright lies have been published for as long as the have been people. We will never be rid of them and shouldn't even try. The only acceptable standard is the freedom to say what you want, no matter how much it upsets someone else. As Voltaire is reported to have said "I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Btw, you cannot have a democracy and simultaneously impose restrictions on what media of any kind may say. Period. It is just not possible. Free speech and a free press are fundamental rights. Period. No government has the right to restrict either. Period. Once you step over the line of any level of government imposing rules on what media may say, you have left democracy behind and are becoming a totalitarian police state. In a democracy there is and should never be this idea that somehow people have to be protected from what some view as objectionable ideas or words. As adults you have to figure out for yourself what is true and what is not. When a government starts telling you what is true and what is not you end up with something like the CCP or the old USSR. Personally I would greatly prefer the lie spewing loudmouths to continue to spew lies knowing that the opposing view is also being told, than have any level of government determine what can be said in the media.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

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