Facebook Has No Clue How to Solve Its Image Problem, Leaked Doc Shows

Despite what the corporate’s inventory costs may inform you, Facebook is an organization with a picture drawback. At finest, critics warily regard Facebook as an organization that ruthlessly strips customers for his or her knowledge so it will possibly curbstomp opponents in more and more hostile methods. At worst, individuals name the corporate a threat to democracy itself. And whereas the case in opposition to Facebook continues to develop, staff are left scrambling to determine how the hell it will possibly win again the general public—and arising fairly empty-handed.

At least, that’s what’s instructed by some inner analysis achieved in September of final 12 months that tried to measure Facebook’s “perceived legitimacy” within the eyes of the general public and with stakeholders. The full doc, which you’ll learn here, quizzed a handful of reporters, common customers, and (weirdly sufficient) actors about their basic perceptions of Facebook.

The outcomes have been just about what you’d count on: belief within the firm was low, confusion concerning the firm’s content material moderation processes was excessive, and no person believed Facebook was motivated by something however fats stacks of money. The researcher’s deliberate strategy for fixing this PR disaster? “Build trust through product experiences,” get extra individuals of shade on employees, and, uh, not a lot else.

“Users don’t trust us to do the right thing because they believe we prioritize revenue and growth over safety and society,” defined an unnamed member of an inner Facebook “Legitimacy Team” whose acknowledged mission is to, nicely, improve the corporate’s legitimacy within the eyes of the general public.

While the analysis occurred greater than a 12 months in the past, we’ve heard that very same narrative echoed again and again by the supply of those paperwork—Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen—just this month. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in the meantime, balked on the thought despite all conceivable proof pointing to that being the case and the corporate reportedly mulling an entire title change.

“Because users don’t trust FB due to past incidents, they don’t believe we have good intentions or motivations when it comes to integrity efforts,” the report reads. “Users don’t perceive our content regulation system as legitimate because they don’t trust our motivations.”

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Ignoring the truth that Facebook is an organization and corporations usually exist to show a revenue, the report goes on to notice that customers “perceive [Facebook’s] systems to be ineffective and biased toward minority groups,” citing the experiences of Facebook customers which might be LGBTQ+, together with individuals of shade and different marginalized teams. The report states that these customers really feel “FB is censoring or over-enforcing on minority groups,” and described being banned from the location “for speaking out to their communities about their lived experiences.”

While Zuckerberg and his ilk have reportedly spent a very long time ignoring the very obvious undeniable fact that its hate-speech sniffing programs are likely to unfairly goal marginalized teams, the corporate has since come round on the concept, hey, perhaps it ought to do one thing concerning the challenge. Last December, the corporate began an inner effort to overhaul the moderation programs concerned, however this report (rightfully!) acknowledges this may not be sufficient.

“Many participants acknowledged much of this enforcement is done by automation and algorithms,” the report reads. At the identical time, they “believe that the people who have built the algorithms are at best naive and at worst racist.” (Spoiler: Both can be true!)

Facebook didn’t but reply to a request for remark concerning the inner report.

Artificial intelligence—and the algorithms that run massive chunks of Facebook’s moderation efforts—are continuously constructed by white guys, with white man biases. The report recommends bringing extra members of “minority groups” to the desk when constructing out its algorithms to mitigate baked-in bias, together with “[conducting] audits of actions” taken on content material from individuals of shade. Two excellent concepts! Unfortunately, all of it goes downhill from right here.

Most of the opposite recommendations for restoring belief within the firm contain few specifics. Recommendations like “continue to invest in restoring trust in the FB brand,” and “build trust by ensuring what we ship shows care,” for instance, are simply hand-wavey nonsense. When the surveyed customers mentioned that an organization of Facebook’s behemoth measurement and scale ought to put extra of its assets in direction of moderation, the report brushed the entire thought of cash apart, focusing as an alternative on, um, how powerful content material moderating is.

“The narrative that content regulation is difficult and complex might not land well with users,” the report reads. “Instead, we should understand if focusing on highlighting what we are doing to address problems would be more effective.”

How? With the identical weirdly aggressive PR tactics taken by Facebook’s public-facing employees? With the identical buzzwordy weblog posts and deceptive firm insurance policies? I don’t know, and the report doesn’t say. But it certain appears like Facebook’s plan to struggle again in opposition to all of this unhealthy press is to only… carry on doing what it’s at all times achieved.

This story relies on Frances Haugen’s disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which have been additionally offered to Congress in redacted type by her authorized group. The redacted variations obtained by Congress have been obtained by a consortium of reports organizations, together with Gizmodo, the New York Times, Politico, the Atlantic, Wired, the Verge, CNN, and dozens of different retailers.