Facebook Condemns And Says WSJ Report Has Wrong Motive

JAKARTA - Facebook Inc on Saturday, September 18, condemned a series of articles from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) about the social media company's platform that it said contained "deliberate mischaracterization". Previously, the WSJ also reported that Facebook has double standards for some of its user accounts.

Facebook instead called the WSJ article "providing the very wrong motives for Facebook's leadership and employees."

In a report in The Wall Street Journal, citing a review of internal company documents that included research reports, online employee discussions, and draft presentations to senior management, said that although Facebook researchers had identified the "platform adverse effects", the company failed to remedy them.

The Wall Street Journal article said that Facebook excluded high-profile users from some or all of its rules, played down the negative effect on young users within its Instagram app, made changes to its algorithms that made the platform "further angry," and had a weak response to the proposed warning. by employees about how the platform is used in developing countries by people smugglers.

Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president of global affairs, wrote in a blog post, saying the Wall Street Journal story "contains a deliberate mischaracterization of what we are trying to do, and provides a very wrong motive for Facebook leadership and employees."

Clegg called it "absolutely false" stating the allegation that "Facebook conducts research and then systematically and deliberately ignores it if its findings are uncomfortable for the company."

Facebook, Clegg said, understands the "significant responsibility that comes with operating a global platform" and takes it seriously, but "we fundamentally reject the mischaracterization of our work and cast doubt on the company's motives."

Clegg defended the way Facebook handled posts about the COVID-19 vaccine and said that "the intersection between social media and well-being" remains a growing problem in the research community.