Edited by: TJVNews.com
In the social media battles of 2021, none has been more prominent than that of Facebook. Whistleblower Frances Haugen spilled the truth and the dirty little secrets that go on behind the scenes at the company.
The New York Post reported that Haugen has leaked internal documents this year showing Instagram’s negative effects on teen mental health, struggles to crack down on human trafficking and role in amplifying lies about political issues,
According to a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg exhorted his employees not to issue any apologies or show any regrets about Facebook’s less than redeeming character to legislators in Washington as they attempted to discredit the testimony offered by Haugen, as was reported by the NY Post.
During 2021, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook’s new name would now become Meta. The WSJ reported that staff in the Washington, DC office of Facebook attempted to portray Haugen as a Democratic activist who wanted to discredit Facebook in order to boost the party. The staff wanted to stop both Democrats and Republicans from uniting against Facebook and reached out to Republicans with their erroneous claim against Haugen.
Playing both sides of the aisle, the Post reported that Meta operatives reportedly warned Democrats that Republicans would use Haugen’s leaks to blast the company’s decision to ban posts in support of Kyle Rittenhouse who was acquitted earlier this year of murder and attempted murder charges in Kenosha.
In the past when Facebook was called on the carpet for selectively banning certain political views from being posted, both Zuckerberg and Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg had taken the route of offering apologies and promising to make significant modifications to the social media platform, as was reported by the Post.
The WSJ reported that longtime board members including venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Marc Andressen have egged Zuckerberg on, as was reported by the Post.
In August of 2021, the Associated Press had reported that in 2020, Zuckerberg had donated $400 million to help fund local elections. Those on the political right were suspicious of the donations as they believed Democrats in 2020 benefited from Zuckerberg’s money. The AP reported that Conservatives have long accused the tech mogul’s social media platform of censoring right-wing voices as part of its campaign against misinformation.
Zuckerberg’s money was largely distributed through a nonpartisan foundation that had liberal roots, as was reported by the AP. Conservative groups cite analyses that the money went disproportionately to Democratic-leaning counties in key states such as Florida and Pennsylvania.
Jessica Anderson, executive director of the conservative group Heritage Action told the AP, “People saw that, and looked around, and they were increasingly concerned about why would you have a billionaire funding our elections through the backdoor.”
Ben LaBolt, spokesman for Zuckerberg told the AP: “When our nation’s election infrastructure faced unprecedented challenges last year due to the pandemic, Mark and Priscilla stepped up to close a funding gap and granted $350 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonpartisan, 501 (c)(3) organization. Mark made clear this was a unique effort to address the unprecedented challenge of the pandemic and his preference for elections to be publicly funded.”
