A whistleblower affidavit was submitted by a former Facebook employee. It accuses Facebook of prioritizing profits rather than their due diligence to combat hate, misinformation, or other threats to the public.
The new allegations, which were anonymously submitted under penalty of perjury, echo the claims made earlier this month by Frances Haugen (whistleblower), who gave a scathing testimony to Congress about Facebook’s moral failings.
The most dramatic part of the affidavit is where the ex-employe laments over Facebook’s inability quickly to stop racial killings and massacres in Myanmar in 2017. In 2017, military officials used Facebook to spread hate speech.
The whistleblower wrote that he had been a party at genocide while working for Facebook.
The new allegations were made after Frances Haugen (pictured) testified earlier this month before Congress about Facebook’s failings.
The anonymous whistleblower accused one of Facebook’s top communication officials, Tucker Bounds, pictured, of brushing aside an employee’s concern of misinformation
The anonymous whistleblower who worked on Facebook’s Integrity Team shared a story about a top official of the company who brushed aside concerns about election interference, according to the Washington Post.
As the company sought to quell political controversy following Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election, Tucker Bounds, a Facebook communications representative, allegedly said, “It will be flash in the pan.”
“Some legislators will get pissy. In a few weeks, they will move on to something else. We are doing fine, while we print money in our basement.
The whistleblower explained that Bounds’ view was common among the company leadership. Former employees also stated that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg knew about the problems.
Bounds denied the claim, and both he as Facebook chastised Washington Post’s reporting on the affidavit.
Erin McPike, a Facebook spokesperson, stated that it was a dangerous precedent to base an entire story on one source making many claims without any apparent corroboration.
Former employees said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, left, and COO Sheryl Sandberg were aware of Facebook’s failings but did little to fix the situation
Zuckerberg, seen testifying before congress in 2019, has stood by his company despite the leak of documents and testimony from former employees detailing the company’s wrongs
This is the first time that the company has been accused of such a thing since internal memos were released and testimony by Haugen.
Haugen and the whistleblower also submitted allegations to the Securities and Exchange Commission. This commission oversees all publicly traded companies.
The anonymous ex-employee in the SEC affidavit claims that Facebook officials routinely undermined efforts within Facebook to fight misinformation, hate speech, and out of fear of angering then President Donald Trump and his allies.
The former employee stated that Facebook’s Public Policy Team had once protected a ‘whitelist’ that exempted Breitbart and other Trump-aligned publishers, from Facebook’s regular rules against spreading fake News.
Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice-president of global policy, dismissed employee concerns about this policy.
Kaplan allegedly asked, “Do you want to start fighting with Steven Bannon?”
Former employees had previously criticised Kaplan for allegedly trying to protect conservative interests on Facebook. However, Kaplan denies that he ever showed bias.
“There has never been any whitelist that exempts publishers, such as Breitbart from Facebook’s rules against misinformation.”
The whistleblower also complained to Facebook that it was not aggressive enough in its response to Myanmar’s military officials using Facebook to spread hate speech during the massacres of the Rohingya ethnicity.
Facebook acknowledged that it failed to act quickly on the mass Rohingya deaths, but now the company says it doesn’t make such mistakes.
McPike stated in a statement that Facebook’s approach to Myanmar today was fundamentally different from 2017 and that any claims that we have not invested security and safety in the country are false.
The whistleblower accused Facebook of failing properly to police secret groups created on the website.
According to the former employee, the secret groups enable ‘terrifying behavior’ and are poorly controlled. They then stated that Facebook groups have become havens for criminals.
These are the claims of Gretchen Peters of the Alliance to Counter Crime Online. She has filed a series if complaints against Facebook for its alleged failures since 2017.
They include allowing terrorist content to be published, drug sales, misinformation to flourish, and allowing for hate speech and other forms of expression to flourish. Investors are not adequately warned about the potential risks.
‘Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives repeatedly claimed high rates of success in restricting illicit and toxic content — to lawmakers, regulators and investors — when in fact they knew the firm could not remove this content and remain profitable,’ Peters said in a new complaint filed on Friday.
Haugen (pictured at the Congress testimony on October 5), who claims that Facebook puts profit before people, released earlier this month tens to thousands of pages of internal research documents. She secretly copied them before she quit her job as a member of the company’s unit for civic integrity.
The complaints come after the Haugen’s testimony before Congress in early October, where she claimed Facebook promoted divisiveness as a way to keep people on the site, with Haugen saying the documents showed the company had failed to protect young users.
It also showed that Instagram had a negative effect on young girls’ bodies. The company even tried to come up with ways to appeal toddlers through ‘exploring playdates to grow’.
“The company’s leadership knows how Facebook and Instagram can be safer, but they won’t make necessary changes because they have placed their enormous profits before the people. Haugen indicated that Congress should act during a hearing.
Haugen, who anonymously filed eight grievances against her former employer with US Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month, said to 60 Minutes: ‘Facebook has repeatedly shown that it prefers safety over profit.
She claimed that a 2018 Facebook change prioritizing divisive content, which led to Facebook users arguing, had resulted in increased user engagement.
This helped bosses to sell more online ads, which in turn has seen the social media giant’s valuation surpass $1 trillion.
‘You force us into taking positions that are not in our best interests, and that are detrimental to society. We know that if these positions are not taken, we will lose in the social media marketplace,” Haugen said.
She also blamed Facebook, which she said was responsible for the January 6 Capitol riot.
The senator is now asking Zuckerberg to testify before a panel investigating Facebook’s Instagram and its effect on young people. He has already heard harsh criticisms from a former employee.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. heads the Senate Commerce Subcommittee. He sent Wednesday a strongly worded email to the Facebook founder asking him to testify about Instagram’s effects on children.
Blumenthal wrote to Zuckerberg, stating that “Parents across America are deeply troubled by ongoing reports that Facebook knows Instagram can cause destructive, lasting harms to many teenagers and children, particularly their mental health and well-being.”
“Those parents and the twenty million teens who use your app have a right for the truth about Instagram’s safety.
Blumenthal told Zuckerberg that in the wake of Haugen’s testimony, Blumenthal said, “Facebook representatives, including you, have doubled-down on evasive responses, keeping hidden many reports on teen healthcare, offering noncommittal, vague plans for action at a unspecified time downthe road, and even turning personal attacks on Ms. Haugen.’
Blumenthal offered, however, that either Zuckerberg, or the head at Instagram, Adam Mosseri could appear before his committee.
Zuckerberg said that it was urgent and necessary for him or Mr. Adam Mosseri, to testify in order to correct the record and provide parents and members of Congress with a plan on how he is going to protect our children.
A Facebook spokesperson, based in Menlo Park (California), confirmed Blumenthal’s receipt, but declined to comment.
Haugen, who backed her statements with tens, of thousands of pages worth of internal research documents she secretly copied prior to leaving her job in the company’s civic integrity unit and compiled before leaving, accused Facebook of prioritizing safety over safety, and being dishonest in its public fight for hate and misinformation.
Haugen stated in her testimony that Mark is the one who should be held accountable. “Mark is the only one who is currently responsible for his actions.”