Requested by CNN about Sandberg’s quote and whether or not she stood by it, a Fb spokesperson pointed to the larger context round Sandberg’s quote. She had been noting that Jan. 6 group occurred largely on-line, together with however not restricted to on Fb’s platforms, the spokesperson stated.
One among Haugen’s central allegations concerning the firm focuses on the assault on the Capitol. In a SEC disclosure she alleges, “Fb misled traders and the general public about its function perpetuating misinformation and violent extremism regarding the 2020 election and January sixth rebel.”
Fb denies the premise of Haugen’s conclusions and says Haugen has cherry-picked paperwork to current an unfair portrayal of the corporate.
“The duty for the violence that occurred on January 6 lies with those that attacked our Capitol and people who inspired them. We took steps to restrict content material that sought to delegitimize the election, together with labeling candidates’ posts with the most recent vote rely after Mr. Trump prematurely declared victory, pausing new political promoting and eradicating the unique #StopTheSteal Group in November,” Fb spokesperson Andy Stone advised CNN Friday.
“After the violence on the Capitol erupted and as we noticed continued makes an attempt to prepare occasions to dispute the result of the presidential election, we eliminated content material with the phrase ‘cease the steal’ below our Coordinating Hurt coverage and suspended Trump from our platform.”
“Our enforcement was piecemeal”
“Hindsight is 20:20,” the creator or authors of the evaluation, who should not identifiable from what was offered, write. “[A]t the time it was very troublesome to know whether or not what we have been seeing was a coordinated effort to delegitimize the election, or whether or not it was protected free expression by customers who have been afraid and confused and deserved our empathy. However hindsight being 20:20 makes it all of the extra vital to look again to study what we are able to concerning the progress of the election delegitimatizing actions that grew, unfold conspiracy, and helped incite the Capitol rebel.”
The evaluation discovered that the insurance policies and procedures Fb had in place have been merely less than the duty of slowing, a lot much less halting, the “meteoric” progress of Cease the Steal. As an example, these behind the evaluation famous that Fb handled each bit of content material and individual or group inside Cease the Steal individually, relatively than as half of an entire, with dire outcomes.
“Nearly the entire quickest rising FB Teams have been Cease the Steal throughout their peak progress,” the evaluation says. “As a result of we have been every entity individually, relatively than as a cohesive motion, we have been solely capable of take down particular person Teams and Pages as soon as they exceeded a violation threshold. We weren’t capable of act on easy objects like posts and feedback as a result of they individually tended to not violate, even when they have been surrounded by hate, violence, and misinformation.”
This strategy did finally change, in response to the evaluation — after it was too late.
“After the Capitol rebel and a wave of Storm the Capitol occasions throughout the nation, we realized that the person delegitimizing Teams, Pages, and slogans did represent a cohesive motion,” the evaluation says.
This was not the one means wherein Fb had didn’t anticipate one thing like Cease the Steal, or wherein its response was missing.
Fb has for a while now had a coverage banning “coordinated inauthentic habits” on its platforms. This ban permits it to take motion towards, as an example, the Russian troll military that labored to intervene with the 2016 US election by accounts and pages set as much as look as in the event that they have been American However, the evaluation notes with emphasis, the corporate had “little coverage round coordinated genuine hurt” — that’s, little to cease individuals organizing below their actual names and never hiding their intention to get the nation to reject the outcomes of the election.
Cease the Steal and Patriot Social gathering teams “weren’t instantly mobilizing offline hurt, nor have been they instantly selling militarization,” the evaluation says. “As a substitute, they have been amplifying and normalizing misinformation and violent hate in a means that delegitimized a free and truthful democratic election. The hurt existed on the community stage: a person’s speech is protected, however as a motion, it normalized delegitimization and hate in a means that resulted in offline hurt and hurt to the norms underpinning democracy.”
The evaluation does observe, nonetheless, that after Fb noticed the outcomes of Cease the Steal on January sixth and took motion, it was capable of deploy measures that stymied the expansion of each Cease the Steal and Patriot Social gathering teams.
Fb’s Stone advised CNN, “Fb has taken extraordinary steps to handle dangerous content material and we’ll proceed to do our half. We additionally intently labored with regulation enforcement, each earlier than January sixth and within the days and weeks since, with the aim of guaranteeing that info linking the individuals chargeable for January sixth to their crimes is accessible.”
Pulling levers
Haugen started gathering proof concerning the firm earlier than she finally left the tech big final Could. To cut back the possibility of getting caught taking screenshots of inner Fb programs, she used her telephone to take images of her laptop display screen.
Because the rebel was underway in Washington and Fb was making an attempt to get a deal with on the state of affairs, Haugen was snapping footage, documenting the corporate’s response.
One of many paperwork she captured, titled “Capitol Protest BTG [Break the Glass] Response,” was a chart of measures Fb may soak up response to the January sixth assault. The chart seems to have been ready beforehand; on the time Haugen photographed it, rather less than two hours after the Capitol was first breached, the corporate had instituted a few of these measures whereas others have been nonetheless into consideration. Among the many potential actions listed within the chart have been demoting “content material deemed prone to violate our neighborhood requirements within the areas of hate speech, graphic violence, and violence and incitement.”
The web page labeled these as “US2020 Levers, beforehand rolled again.”
These “levers,” as Fb refers to them, are measures — guardrails — that the corporate put in place earlier than final yr’s Presidential election in an try to gradual the unfold of hate and misinformation on the platform. Fb has not been clear in its public statements about what measures it did roll again after the election and why it did so at a time of tumult when the sitting president was calling the outcomes of the vote into query.
However in response to the “Capitol Protest BTG response” doc, the guardrails Fb reimplemented on January sixth included lowering the visibility of posts prone to be reported and freezing “commenting on posts in Teams that begin to have a excessive price of hate speech and violence & incitement feedback,” amongst others.
Within the SEC disclosure, Haugen alleges that these levers have been reinstated “solely after the rebel flared up.”
Requested concerning the selections to dial the levers again after which push them out once more, Stone stated, “In phasing in after which adjusting further measures earlier than, throughout and after the election, we took into consideration particular on-platforms alerts and knowledge from our ongoing, common engagement with regulation enforcement. When these alerts modified, so did the measures.”
A by line
When Fb executives posted messages publicly and internally condemning the riot, some workers pushed again, even suggesting Fb may need had some culpability.
“There have been dozens of Cease the Steal teams energetic up till yesterday, and I doubt they minced phrases about their intentions,” one worker wrote in response to a submit from Mike Schroepfer, Fb’s chief expertise officer.3
One other wrote, “All due respect, however have not we had sufficient time to determine methods to handle discourse with out enabling violence? We have been fueling this hearth for a very long time and we should not be stunned it is now uncontrolled.”
Different Fb workers went additional, claiming selections by firm management over time had helped create the circumstances that paved the best way for an assault on the US Capitol.
Responding to Schroepfer’s submit, one staffer wrote that, “management overrides analysis primarily based coverage selections to raised serve individuals just like the teams inciting violence right this moment. Rank and file staff have accomplished their half to determine adjustments to enhance our platforms however have been actively held again.”
One other staffer, referencing years of controversial and questionable decision-making by Fb management round political speech concluded, “historical past won’t decide us kindly.”
