Fresh Evidence That Facebook Aligned Itself With Extremists to Generate Engagement and Revenue

A new bundle of reporting is out on what's being branded as the "Facebook Papers," a mountain of leaked internal company documents and communications currently being combed over by a variety of news outlets. There are several new revelations this time around, although we may be stretching the definition of "revelations" for anyone who has been paying attention.

The main takeaway is that inside Facebook itself, there appears to be a rapidly increasing gulf between topmost company executives and the rank-and-file employees who, like so many external company critics, are pretty certain that Facebook's efforts to monetize fringe paranoias are doing extraordinary damage to international democracy. NBC News brings us one facet of that story with reporting on the internal fury after anti-democratic, anti-American hoaxes spread via Facebook sharing led to actual violent insurrection inside the United States Capitol.

At issue is that Facebook executives know that the algorithms they use reward provocation, paranoia, and outright hoaxes. Facebook executives also know that the company's worldwide reach means it has become a go-to outlet for any propagandist seeking to quickly disseminate government-bending, society-bending hoaxes and/or bigotries. 

Internal company research and external scientific analysis alike have highlighted the problem, over and over; the only question is what obligation, if any, the company has to adjust its policies to not be a prime force for disinformation and violence.  The insurrection, however, was hardly the first time it became apparent that Facebook's obsession with growth via viral sharing was not-coincidentally turning the company into a prime disseminator of hate speech, extremism, dangerous hoaxes, and organized propaganda campaigns.

Those accusations are also being made by employees inside the company, and The Wall Street Journal focuses specifically on the example of Breitbart being chosen for the Facebook "News Tab," a decision that was eyebrow-raising from the moment it was made but which company executives have relentlessly defended with oft-nonsensical statements and protestations of neutrality. The Journal reports more broadly that the "documents also reveal that Facebook’s management team has been so intently focused on avoiding charges of bias that it regularly places political considerations at the center of its decision making."

Facebook has long acted as a prime enabler in the rise of white nationalism, continually boosting so-called "alt-right" figures while stoking the same anti-immigrant paranoias, anti-Black conspiracy theories, and other neo-Nazi tactics and tropes.  Conservative Facebook executives were mainstreaming the Breitbart site into the Facebook "news" domain for the same reason Breitbart itself was mainstreaming white nationalist voices and talking points: they wanted to. The extremism brought traffic, and money, and political clout.

Whether Facebook executives sought to snuggle with the extremist site because it offered a closer connection to ersatz Trump adviser Steve Bannon or simply felt kinship with the site continually promoting the supposed existential dangers of immigrants or the supposed conspiracies behind Black Americans protesting against police violence are still left to our imaginations, but Facebook's employees seem to have the same clarity that much of the rest of the nation has found, on the subject: If you align yourself with white nationalist rhetoric and white nationalist hoaxes, you have aligned yourself with white nationalism.