Democracy Dies in Darkness
Facebook under fire

‘Definitely not the results we want’: Facebook staff lamented ‘perverse incentives’ for media

In documents, employees fretted about ‘darker, more divisive content’ and boosting far-right sites

11 min
(Washington Post illustration; Facebook screenshots; iStock)
11 min
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In November 2018, the staff of Facebook’s fledgling Civic Integrity department got a look at some eye-opening internal research — presented under an image of two goats locking horns.

The report examined articles shared on Facebook from the New York Times, BuzzFeed, Fox News and a dozen other media outlets and found that the more negative-slanting comments a story drew, the more likely Facebook’s algorithms were to promote it widely.