Facebook froze as anti-vaccine comments swarmed users

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Leaked Facebook documents show the platform ignored some of its own researchers' suggestions for tackling vaccine misinformation, an AP review finds. TheFacebookPapers

“These people are selling fear and outrage,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early investor in Facebook who is now a vocal critic. “It is not a fluke. It is a business model.”

Employees at the company reacted to the study with exuberance, according to internal exchanges included in the whistleblower’s documents. “Our ability to detect in comments is bad in English — and basically non-existent elsewhere,” another internal memo posted on March 2 said. “Very interested in your proposal to remove ALL in-line comments for vaccine posts as a stopgap solution until we can sufficiently detect vaccine hesitancy in comments to refine our removal,” one Facebook employee wrote on March 2.Instead, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on March 15 that the company would start labeling posts about vaccines that described them as safe.

 

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“Why would you not remove comments? Because engagement is the only thing that matters,” said Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an internet watchdog group. “It drives attention and attention equals eyeballs and eyeballs equal ad revenue.” Facebook

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