FACEBOOK: A NEW WHISTLEBLOWER BLESSES THE SOCIAL NETWORK

 Times are tough for digital giant Facebook. Already splashed by whistleblower and former company product manager Frances Haugen, a new testimony corroborates the words of the one who wants to bring down Mark Zuckerberg.

The one who had testified for three hours before the US Senate on October 6, after resigning last spring and taking with her thousands of classified documents, was joined by a new whistleblower, who confided at the Washington Post. Formerly in charge of "the civic integrity of the platform", the man explained in his deposition to the SEC (and signed on October 13), having attended a meeting in 2017 about the Russian interference in the US presidential elections, and a member of the communications team, Tucker Bounds, reportedly said: “It will be flash in the pan. Elected officials will moan. And in a few weeks, they will be on to other things. In the meantime, we're printing some money in the basement and it's okay. "

This deposition increases the “Facebook files” provided by Frances Haugen. The latter indeed show that after 2017, history seems to have repeated itself in 2020, as part of the American election, and show that decision-makers at Facebook neglected efforts to fight disinformation and other hate speech by line under the leadership of Donald Trump, then President of the United States. While the ballot had just taken place, an analyst let his colleagues know in early November that 10% of political content viewed by American users of the platform were messages assuring that the vote had been rigged.

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A DIFFICULT DEFENSE

Unfounded insinuations that would participate in exacerbating tensions, until the invasion of the Capitol, January 6, 2021, with 5 deaths.

For now, the US company has explained that the claims of the two whistleblowers were false. As for the Washington Post article, Facebook spokeswoman Erin McPike deemed them "below the standards of the Washington Post, which for the past five years has only written after investigating the merits and finding sources. multiple. "

The "supervisory board" of Facebook, responsible for ultimately managing disputes over content moderation, nevertheless admitted, in a report on transparency, that the platform had "failed" to him. “Provide relevant information” on several occasions.