Facebook executive criticises report claiming the platform has multiple flaws but does little fix it

Facebook has criticised a recent series of reports by the Wall Street Journal that claimed that the social media major is aware of multiple problems across its platforms that cause harm to users, but does very little to fix those problems.

This week, the Journal published a series of detailed stories on Facebook, based on its review of internal documents. The Facebook Files series concludes that the company’s platforms have multiple flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands.

The reports included details about the XCheck program. As per the Journal's report, certain celebrities were exempt from Facebook's standard moderation rules. It also provided a detailed look into internal research that showed that the social media major's photo-sharing platform Instagram is harmful to the mental health of teenagers, especially young girls. Another article highlighted how its algorithm meant to increase engagement actually made users angrier.

The stories also provided insights into employees’ concerns about how its platforms may be used in human trafficking. It also detailed how CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s initiative to promote Covid-19 vaccines led to anti-vax activists flooding the platform with content meant to act as a “barrier to vaccination."

In a blog post, Nick Clegg, Vice President of Global Affairs criticised the series while acknowledging the importance of certain issues as highlighted in the report.

"A series of articles published by the Wall Street Journal has focused on some of the most difficult issues we grapple with as a company — from content moderation and vaccine misinformation, to algorithmic distribution and the well-being of teens," Clegg wrote.

"These are serious and complex issues, and it is absolutely legitimate for us to be held to account for how we deal with them. But these stories have contained deliberate mischaracterizations of what we are trying to do, and conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook’s leadership and employees," Clegg added.

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Clegg denied the fact that Facebook ignores the research that is inconvenient for the company.

"At the heart of this series is an allegation that is just plain false: that Facebook conducts research and then systematically and willfully ignores it if the findings are inconvenient for the company," Clegg wrote.

"The fact that not every idea that a researcher raises is acted upon doesn’t mean Facebook teams are not continually considering a range of different improvements. At the same time, none of these issues can be solved by technology companies alone, which is why we work in close partnership with researchers, regulators, policymakers and others," Clegg further wrote.

The tech giant has "fundamentally rejected" certain claims terming it as a "mischaracterization" of its work.

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