Boards are notorious for group think and spinelessness. In Facebook’s case, a board could make a difference.
Documents reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this week revealed a secret system at Facebook to coddle the posts of politicians and celebrities, as well as internal stats on the full extent of psychological harm that Instagram causes teen girls. Both issues were long suspected. Both are now backed by startling evidence.
What they boil down to is this: Facebook, like the oil and tobacco companies of years ago, has been far too secretive about the impact of its products on human life.
When U.S. Senators asked Facebook last month about Instagram’s impact on teen mental health, the company did not answer. The reason is likely because its internal stats looked so bad: A third of teenage girls who already felt negatively about their bodies felt worse when they went on Instagram, according to the Journal’s reporting, which cited documents from a person seeking federal whistleblower protection. Facebook has also deflected public questioning of XCheck, the internal system that allowed more than 5 million elite users like celebrities and politicians to skirt Facebook’s content rules.
On the one hand, Facebook could see this as just another PR nightmare that will eventually blow over, barely denting its growth in users and revenue. After all, with regulators focused on Facebook’s corporate behavior and governments on social media more broadly, who will actually do...
Read Full Story: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-15/facebook-s-oversight-board-should-step-up-and-reform-the-social-media-giant
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