Deciphering the Language of Data: Insights From Whistleblower’s Release

The Facebook Papers revelations have sent a seismic shock through the tech world. Despite the leaked documents confirming what many have thought about the social media platform for years, having those thoughts and fears confirmed is entirely different.

Facebook is desperate to downplay the content of the leak, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggesting the documents are just a coordinated attack on the network.

However, the Facebook Papers are much more than that, as you’ll see with some of the major revelations found in the trove of documents.

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What Are the Facebook Papers?

We’ve already coveredwhat the Facebook Papers are in more detail , but in short,Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen turned over heaps of internal Facebook documents to news outlets, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and Congress.

On Monday, October 25, 2021, at 7am, the news outlets began publishing the information found in the leaked data, delivering unparalleled insight into the inner workings of Facebook.

7 Key Revelations From the Facebook Papers

Given the number of documents turned over to the media, it took a coordinated effort between multiple organizations to comb through and deliver detailed analysis. But, now, there are several major revelations into practices at Facebook regarding human rights, political violence, hate speech, harmful content, and other damning portrayals writ large.

Although the following isn’t a comprehensive list, these are some of the most poignant issues uncovered by the Facebook Papers.

1. The company consistently fails to remove harmful content. Despite Mark Zuckerberg testifying that Facebook removes 94 percent of hate speech, internal documents reveal that the company only removes around 5 percent of all hate speech.
2. After the November 2020 US presidential election, Facebook removed many of the safeguarding practices aimed to stop misinformation and political violence spreading on its platform, likely directly contributing to the January 6, 2021 riots. By the time Facebook realized what was about to happen, it was too late to reapply the same safeguarding practices.
3. Worldwide, Facebook has massive issues with hate speech, particularly in areas with tense civil situations, but the company cannot stop the spread or direction of hate speech and calls for violence against individuals quickly enough. Adding to this, in pursuit of relentless growth, Facebook begins operations in these countries without considering the political and societal impact of its platform, despite massive warnings and evidence from elsewhere in the world.
4. The company only begins addressing issues once a full-blown crisis is in order, and it’s almost too late to act.
5. Facebook also has an issue with policing non-English languages. Its safeguarding systems can detect English, but outside of North America and Northern Europe, language detection and development are severely lacking. In areas like Myanmar and Ethiopia, where massive civil unrest has seen thousands of deaths, documents showed that the company had no language screening capabilities in 2020, meaning outside of on-platform reporting and administration, people could post freely.
6. Facebook didn’t know how to deal with election misinformation that didn’t explicitly break its platform rules yet was consistently flagged as “harmful” content. In addition, employees consistently raised alarms about content that remained on the platform, with many feeling their reports fell on deaf ears.
7. At one point, Facebook became aware that Filipina maids were being sold on its platform. Apple threatened to remove Facebook and Instagram over modern slavery exploitation but backed down after Facebook removed thousands of accounts relating to the issue. However, human rights activists note that there are still hundreds of accounts selling maids, complete with pictures, ages, and prices.

As above, this isn’t the full scale of the Facebook Papers but offers an eye-opening introduction to what’s really going on at Facebook.