Explained: All about Facebook's biggest controversy since Cambridge Analytica

Facebook treated high-profile users differently from ordinary users in terms of rule enforcement, by exempting them from some or all of its rules.

In recent years, social networking giant Facebook has frequently run into a series of controversies across the world. However, its latest controversy could just be the biggest crisis it has faced since the Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018.

What is the latest controversy about?

Over the past month, Facebook has been under fire following the leak of thousands of internal documents to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Wall Street Journal by a whistleblower, which revealed that the firm was aware of the negative impact its products cause but has largely ignored them.

On October 3, Frances Haugen, a former lead product manager on Facebook's civic misinformation team, revealed her identity as the whistleblower behind this leak. At Facebook, she worked on issues related to democracy and misinformation and later counter-espionage before leaving the firm in May 2021.

The scale of this controversy is evident from the fact that the company paused the development on Instagram Kids last week and has also been on a PR offensive with detailed rebuttals in recent weeks.

The development also comes at a time when the social networking giant is under intense scrutiny across several countries including India over the outsized reach and influence it has over people, alleged abuse of its dominant position, misuse of user data and the spread of misinformation on its platform among others.

What is the crux of the problem?

In 2018, Facebook rolled out major changes to its News Feed algorithm, wherein the firm said it was prioritizing posts that drive conversations and meaningful interactions between people and show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.

"To do this, we will predict which posts you might want to interact with your friends about, and show these posts higher in feed," Facebook said at the time.

However, internal researchers at Facebook discovered that this algorithm change made the content on the platform more divisive and negative. The company found that the best engagement came from content that is hateful, divisive and polarising, said Haugen in an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes.

According to the Wall Street Journal, data scientists worked on several potential changes to reduce the tendency of the new algorithm to promote divisive content, but cofounder Mark Zuckerberg resisted some of these changes since they may hurt user engagement.

"There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money" Haugen told 60 Minutes.

In a statement, Facebook said it continues to make "significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true".

What about the controversy around Instagram? Why did they pause Instagram Kids?

Internal Facebook research had shown that Instagram was more harmful than other social media platforms for some teenage girls. It made one-third of girls feel worse about their bodies, who also blamed Instagram for increased anxiety and depression, the company said in internal presentations as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Facebook executives have always publicly denied that Instagram has any negative effects on young users. On September 26, Facebook noted that body image was the only area in the above-mentioned research where teen girls said Instagram made it worse and in the remaining 11 of 12 well-being issues, the service made them "better rather than worse".

It also made public an annotated version of a few slides from the original research, where it discredited some of the findings from its internal researchers and also said the size of the study was limited.

This revelation, however, led to a US senate subcommittee grilling Facebook executive Antigone Davis on Instagram’s impact on young users, including their mental health, on October 1. Haugen is set to testify in the hearing before the US senate subcommittee on October 5.

On September 27, Instagram paused its plan to launch a version of its app for kids under 13, called "Instagram Kids", following widespread criticism from various stakeholders. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said they will expand these tools to teen accounts (aged 13 and above) on the video and photo sharing platform enabling parents to oversee their children’s accounts.

"This will give us time to work with parents, experts, policymakers and regulators, to listen to their concerns, and to demonstrate the value and importance of this project for younger teens online today" Mosseri said in a blogpost.

He said that kids are already online and misrepresenting their age to download apps that are meant for those who are 13 and above.

"We firmly believe that it’s better for parents to have the option to give their children access to a version of Instagram that is designed for them — where parents can supervise and control their experience — than relying on an app’s ability to verify the age of kids who are too young to have an ID" he said.

Instagram's plan to attract preteens: That said, Facebook's interests to acquire kids as potential users doesn't seem to be restricted to Instagram Kids and its existing Messenger Kids product. The firm aims to create more products for them over the next three years and has also commissioned strategy papers to study long-term business opportunities from these potential users, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The social networking giant has also explored whether they can engage kids during playdates, it said.

Mosseri told the publication that "it's not a secret that social-media are trying to understand how teens and preteens use technology. Like all technology companies, of course, we want to appeal to the next generation, but that’s entirely different from the false assertion that we knowingly attempt to recruit people who aren’t old enough to use our apps."

As for playdates, Facebook said the language it used was an "insensitive way to pose a serious question and doesn’t reflect our approach to building the app"

What were the other allegations?

Facebook's VIP users: Facebook treated high-profile users differently from ordinary users in terms of rule enforcement, by exempting them from some or all of its rules.

The programme called XCheck, was initially meant to reduce false positives for moderation issues on high profile accounts, but instead has allowed these accounts to post updates that violate its guidelines. XCheck had at least 5.8 million users in 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal report.

Less safety investments in emerging countries: During her interview wih 60 Minutes, Haugen said the social networking giant is not investing enough in safety in emerging countries, since the economics doesn't work out.

"Facebook makes different amounts of money for every country in the world, but it costs just as much if not more to make the safety systems for that language as it did to make English or French. So the economics just doesn't make sense for Facebook to be safe in a lot of these parts of the world" she said.

Facebook failed to reduce vaccine hesitancy: In March, Mark Zuckerberg had announced a global campaign to push around 50 million people closer to getting Covid-19 vaccines. However, according to The Wall Street Journal, anti-vaccine activists undermined Facebook's efforts to provide reliable vaccine information through the firm's own tools.

Facebook spokesperson Aaron Simpson told the publication that the documents show the "company's routine process in navigating tough challenges."

“Narrowly characterizing leaked documents doesn’t accurately represent the problem, and it also ignores the work that’s been underway to make comments on posts about Covid-19 and vaccines safer and more reliable.”

Facebook's role in January 6 Capitol riots: Haugen said Facebook prematurely dissolved its Civic Integrity unit that worked on issues related to elections including misinformation weeks after the 2020 elections, which contributed to the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

"When they got rid of Civic Integrity, it was the moment where I was like, 'I don't trust that they're willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.'" she said.

However, ahead of the interview, Facebook Vice President of global affairs Nick Clegg told CNN that it was ludicrous to blame the riots on social media.

What next?

Apart from testifying before the US Congress, Haugen's attorney John Tye told Reuters that some of the internal documents were shared with attorney generals of several US states including California, Vermont, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Nebraska.

Haugen has filed at least eight complaints with the SEC through her lawyers, which point out the discrepancies between the company's internal research and public statements on various issues such as hate speech and mental health, she said in an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes.

Haugen is also expected to appear before the British parliament later this month and is keen on speaking with lawmakers in Asian countries, Tye told the publication.

As for Facebook, the firm's top executives and its “strategic response” teams have held a series of emergency meetings in the past few weeks to tackle the growing furore from various quarters including its own employees, according to The New York Times. Both Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have been publicly quiet on this matter so far.

Facebook's controversies in India

In India, Facebook-owned WhatsApp is facing a probe by India's antitrust regulator CCI into the app's contentious privacy policy update. In April, the Delhi High Court had dismissed pleas by Facebook and WhatsApp challenging CCI's order. In August, the court said it will hear the appeals of Facebook and WhatsApp challenging this dismissal on October 11.

Last year, Facebook was also caught in a controversy over allegations of political bias and not acting on hate speech posts by BJP leaders, while the ruling party had accused the platform of censoring nationalistic content. Ankhi Das, the erstwhile public policy head who was in the eye of the political storm, quit in October 2020. That position was recently filled again with the appointment of the career bureaucrat Rajiv Aggarwal on September 20.