Things are going well on Facebook: the company increased its sales again between July and September. And by a whopping 35 percent compared to last year. This increased the turnover to 29 billion dollars and the profit amounts to 9.2 billion dollars. Facebook is currently active in more than 190 countries and content is published in more than 160 languages.
Nevertheless, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his company are heavily criticized. The reason: the Facebook files. Internal, explosive documents that became public.
What are the Facebook files?
The documents leaked to the media include internal studies, employee chat histories, emails and presentations. All information that was not intended for the public.
Why are the Facebook files so explosive?
Specifically, it’s about fake news and hatred. Facebook has been criticized for this for a long time. The internal documents show that even the company’s own employees repeatedly warned and criticized the fact that the group would do too little to counter false information, agitation and depictions of violence. But nothing happened. Instead, it remained complicated for users to report controversial posts.
The reports are also about the fact that Facebook quickly relaxed the measures against misinformation after the US presidential election, thereby leaving room for Donald Trump and his supporters to make allegations about election fraud. On January 6, supporters of the elected president stormed the US Congress in Washington.
And not only that: According to a report by the Washington Post, Zuckerberg is said to have complied with a demand by the authoritarian government of Vietnam to limit “subversive” contributions.
How did the internal documents get public?
Former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen compiled the internal documents and then leaked them to the media. The whistleblower accuses the company of putting profit above people’s safety and accepting devastating consequences for people, democracy and society.
Haugen is not alone in this. Many are upset. Including US Senator Richard Blumenthal. His reaction after viewing the documents: “These shocking documents prove that the Facebook leadership has chronically ignored serious internal alarm signals and put profit above the people.”
Does Switzerland appear in the Facebook files?
No. In Switzerland, according to their own information, the Tamedia research desk and “Das Magazin” were able to study the so-called Facebook files. Evaluations specific to Switzerland are not included, it said.
And how did Facebook react?
Zuckerberg has firmly denied the allegations. “I believe that we are seeing a coordinated effort to use leaked documents to paint the wrong picture of our company,” said the Facebook founder in a conference call on Monday. As has often been the case, he argued: “The social networks are not the main culprit for these problems and cannot solve them on their own.”
And anyway, you would invest a lot of money in security. “Yes, we are a company and we make profits, but the idea that we achieve this at the expense of the safety and well-being of users misunderstands where our business interests lie,” said a Facebook spokesman. The truth is that they have invested $ 13 billion and employ 40,000 people to keep users safe.
The US Congress is now dealing with the internal documents. The pressure on Mark Zuckerberg is growing. (jmh / AFP / SDA)