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Facebook And The Fallout

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg vowed to "step up" to fix problems at the social media giant, as it fights a snowballing scandal over the hijacking of personal data from millions of its users.
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg vowed to "step up" to fix problems at the social media giant, as it fights a snowballing scandal over the hijacking of personal data from millions of its users.

Facebook spokesperson Nick Clegg spent a large part of his Sunday trying to do damage control:

If you were just to – across the board remove the algorithm, the first thing that would happen is that people would see more not less hate speech; more not less misinformation; more not less harmful content. Why? Because those algorithmic systems are precisely designed like a great for the giant spam filter, to identify and deprecate and downgrade bad content.

The social media giant is reeling after the devastating testimony provided by a former Facebook employee to Congress last week.That’s what we’re seeing in public.

According to The New York Times, a huge internal effort is underway at the company to manage the fallout too.The Times says execs have held emergency briefing sessions.

Memos have been sent to its workforce. One of them provided tips on how employees should respond if asked questions about recent events by “friends and family.”

How are the public and the company’s workforce going to hold Facebook accountable?

Copyright 2021 WAMU 88.5

Rupert Allman
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