Facebook is not new to controversies and this time, it is under the spotlight, albeit for not so gratifying reasons.
In a recent espouse reported by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), employees of the Mark Zuckerberg owned social media enterprise have effortlessly made moves to restrain right-wing platform, in the process disregarding manager’s objections to prevent any future political clash on its platforms.
There have been recent concerns on Facebook’s seeming bias in political news amid worries the social media giant is inversely dealing with news outlets based on their political stance, prompting in-house debates between Facebook managers and employees.
The Wall Street Journal’s report highlighted Instances of Facebook aversion to Breithbart News, with the employees of the company pursuing the ‘News Tab’ function of the website, where certain information concerning protests from George Floyd’s death were yanked off.
“I can also tell you that saw drops in trust in CNN 2 years ago: would we take the same approach for them too?” a senior researcher responded after following an employee’s question about removing Breitbart from Facebook.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s Vice President, Global affairs, had notified employees that “we need to steel ourselves for more bad headlines in the upcoming days, I’m afraid.”
The statement from Clegg may be seen as part of proofs to the positive of how Facebook has been exhibiting partiality and elevating political views at the detriment of the other on its platform, and adds to the accusation if favours profit at the expense of its users.
Perhaps, it appears new voices are rising against the California-based social-networking giant alleged misconduct to its teeming users, with a new whistleblower coming out on Friday, to inform the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about Facebook’s endless disregard for worries surrounding the spread of hate speech, together with rolling out false information out of phobia for jeopardized monetary growth.
Although the Whistleblower’s identity was not yet revealed, the testimony by the person was submitted under oath, with the individual further adding in the testimony that a Facebook communications official known as Tucker Bunds, perceived hate speech as a “flash in the pan” and went further to say that even though “some legislation will get pissy,” Facebook is “printing money in the basement”.
This would be coming on the heels of a previous TechBooky’s report where a former Facebook employee, who first came out as a Whistleblower had accused the company of favouring profit at the expense of its user’s well-being. Frances also in her testimony to SEC urged other employees to come forward to testify against Facebook’s practice of enlarging its financial growth at user’s expense.