With a transparency report this week, Facebook wanted to get rid of the image of spreading Covid lies. However, the group kept an earlier report for itself – because it would have agreed with the image.
Covid conspiracy theories, election campaign lies and now the vaccination doubts: Facebook had to grapple with disinformation on the platform last year. In its transparency report, which was presented for the first time on Wednesday, the group wanted to prove that most users use the platform for private content. Now it turns out: There was already a first version of the report. But it was deleted because it would have undermined the company’s message.
That comes from a report in the “New York Times”. A copy of the first report had been leaked to the newspaper. While the published report covers the period from April to June of this year, the first version covered the first three months of the year. And painted a very different picture than the report that has now been published.
Vaccination doubt as a top article
While in the published report actually harmless content such as cooking recipes or the UNICEF page determine the most visited content, in the first quarter a report came in first place, which fully corresponds to the cliché of Facebook as a promoter of vaccination doubts: It is a newspaper article, who tries to link the death of a Florida doctor directly to his Covid vaccination. 54 million US citizens alone had received the link from the network. In fact, it was investigated whether the man’s death could be related to his vaccination 14 days ago. The news that there was no evidence of this was shown to significantly fewer Facebook users.
The first quarterly report also made Facebook look worse for the most visited pages. According to the “Times”, the site “Trending World”, which actively disseminated narratives from the Qanon conspiracy scene, was in 19th place on the list. With 81.4 million users who had visited the site, it was only 300,000 visitors behind “Fox News” – after all, by far the most successful news channel in the USA.
+++ Read also: This document shows why Facebook and Co. are so dangerous – and it’s worse than we think +++
Fight for the image
According to the Times, the company decided not to publish the report after an internal debate. This is evident from internal emails. Faced with this, a spokesman for the group confirmed the decision. “We had considered publishing the report earlier,” said the spokesman. “However, we were aware of the attention he would get, as it was this week. So we wanted to implement another change in the system.” He did not comment on the changes. According to the spokesman, Marketing Director Alex Schultz wanted to publish the report, but ultimately agreed to the internal recommendation not to do so.
Facebook has been struggling with massive headwinds recently. Again and again, the group has to put up with allegations that disinformation is spread via the platform. US President Joe Biden even accused the company of being indirectly responsible for the deaths of people. With the transparency reports, which are now to appear regularly, the group wants to counteract this image. Critics doubt whether that is enough. “You cannot trust a report that is compiled by a company itself and is designed to give a certain narrative direction. Only the regulatory authorities can enforce this transparency,” explains Brian Boldand of the “Times”. His criticism is likely to hurt Facebook in particular: he worked as the Group’s vice marketing director until last year – and quit because of the lack of transparency.
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
