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There was a great investigation from the NY Times that dived deep into this exact topic. Facebook execs freaked out that their search engine for ad marketers wa

There was a great investigation from the NY Times that dived deep into this exact topic. Facebook execs freaked out that their search engine for ad marketers was being used to identify the Top 10 most popular posts of the day. No surprise but all of the most shared posts were all from Fox News or similar far right leaning authors, and that made the executives freak out. The old guard of the company was fighting for transparency but they lost the fight. The overwhelming consensus was letting researchers have access to their data would only cause negative PR and had to be stopped. Great article and definitely worth a read. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data....

papito 5y ago
This is a recurring theme there. A bunch of employees find something utterly disturbing, sound the alarm bells, and then nothing. Changing the platform in ways that affects the bottom line is a no-go. These problems won't even be surfaced to Zuckerberg and Sandberg - and will be promptly ignored if they are. Facebook can be a better place. They changed the feed algo right after the 2020 U.S. election, and for a month even the insiders called it the "nice feed" (or something like that). But that didn't last long because calm users don't rage-click. When these problems get out of control, you get the standard line of "we are giving people new ways to connect". The concern that some people "connect" to gather at the Capitol to hang the Vice President is rather secondary.