Facebook keeps researching its own harms — and burying the findings A series of leaked internal reports shows Facebook knows far more than it lets on. That’s by design. Facebook knew that teen girls on Instagram reported in large numbers that the app was hurting their body image and mental health. It knew that its content moderation systems suffered from an indefensible double standard in which celebrities were treated far differently than the average user. It knew that a 2018 change to its news feed software, intended to promote “meaningful interactions,” ended up promoting outrageous and divisive political content. Facebook knew all of those things because they were findings from its own internal research teams. But it didn’t tell anyone. In some cases, its executives even made public statements at odds with the findings.

D J

4 years ago

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Facebook keeps researching its own harms — and burying the findings
A series of leaked internal reports shows Facebook knows far more than it lets on. That’s by design.

Facebook knew that teen girls on Instagram reported in large numbers that the app was hurting their body image and mental health. It knew that its content moderation systems suffered from an indefensible double standard in which celebrities were treated far differently than the average user. It knew that a 2018 change to its news feed software, intended to promote “meaningful interactions,” ended up promoting outrageous and divisive political content.

Facebook knew all of those things because they were findings from its own internal research teams. But it didn’t tell anyone. In some cases, its executives even made public statements at odds with the findings.

www.washingtonpost.com

Facebook keeps researching its own harms — and burying the findings

From its early days, Facebook has employed data scientists across various teams to study the effects of its products, and taken their findings seriously at the highest levels. In 2008, for instance, CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed off on the introduction of a “like” button only after its data scientists found in a test that it made users more likely to interact with one another’s posts, a story recounted by longtime Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth in a 2010 Quora post. In 2015, members of the company’s news feed ranking team explained to me how they rely on a dizzying array of surveys, focus groups and A/B tests to measure the impacts of any proposed change to the algorithm along multiple dimensions. Most of those findings were never publicized, but they factored heavily in the company’s decisions about which changes to implement.

D J

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