The company is also tightening the reins on how information is shared internally, the people said. May face questions from lawmakers about how their past public statements on these issues square with the company’s internal assessments, according to people familiar with the matter. Some Facebook officials have become concerned that Mr. Since the Journal began publishing articles based on the documents, several lawmakers have expressed outrage at the revelations, and two senators have announced an investigation into Facebook’s internal research on how its Instagram service affects young users. Want an email alert for the next article in the Journal’s Facebook Files investigation? Sign up here and also get email alerts for major tech sector news in the future. The documents show that Facebook has often made minimal or ineffectual efforts to address the issues and plays them down in public. The vaccine documents are part of a collection of internal communications reviewed by the Journal that offer an unparalleled picture of how Facebook is acutely aware that the products and systems central to its business success routinely fail and cause harm.įacebook’s own research lays out in detail how its rules favor elites its platforms have negative effects on teen mental health its algorithm fosters discord and that drug cartels and human traffickers use its services openly. They used Facebook’s own tools to sow doubt about the severity of the pandemic’s threat and the safety of authorities’ main weapon to combat it.īy this summer, the prevalence of false and misleading vaccine information on Facebook prompted a public scolding from President Biden, who said the falsehoods were “killing people.” Zuckerberg’s effort, a cadre of antivaccine activists flooded the network with what Facebook calls “barrier to vaccination” content, the memos show. But the effort ended up demonstrating the gulf between his aspirations and the practical reality of the world’s largest social platform-where the company’s aims can bring it into conflict with its own users.ĭespite Mr. Zuckerberg’s faith that his creation is a force for social good in the world. “That’s a huge problem and we need to fix it,” they said.įacebook’s goal of protecting the rollout of the Covid vaccines, described in one memo as “a top company priority,” was a demonstration of Mr. Users were seeing comments on vaccine-related posts 775 million times a day, the memo said, and Facebook researchers worried the large proportion of negative comments could influence perceptions of the vaccines’ safety.Įven authoritative sources of vaccine information were becoming “cesspools of anti-vaccine comments,” the authors wrote. Zuckerberg made his announcement, another memo said initial testing concluded that roughly 41% of comments on English-language vaccine-related posts risked discouraging vaccinations. Ask your questions now and join them for a live Q&A at 1 p.m. Our reporters will discuss their findings from the WSJ’s Facebook Files investigation.
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