Facebook apologizes to Wall Street Journal for mischaracterizing

Reuters - Facebook Inc on Saturday called a Wall Street Journal series of articles about the social media company as containing deliberate mischaracterizations and said the articles conferred false motives to Facebook's leadership and employees. The Wall Street Journal, citing a review of internal company documents that included research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management, said that although Facebook researchers have identified the platform's ill effects, the company failed to fix them.

The Wall Street Journal articles say that Facebook exempted heavy-profile users from some or all of its rules, played down the negative effects on young users of its Instagram app, made changes to its algorithm that made the platform angrier and had a weak response to alarms raised by employees over how the platform is used in developing countries by human traffickers?

Nick Clegg, Facebook Vice President of Global Affairs, writing in a post https:about.fb. com news 2021 09 What-the-wallstreet journal had got - wrong, said the Wall Street Journal's stories conveyed deliberate mischaracterizations of what we are trying to do and gave egregiously false motives to Facebook Management and Employees. Clegg referred to just plain false an allegation that Facebook conducts research and then ignores it systematically and willfully if the findings are inconvenient for the company. Clegg said that Facebook understands the significant responsibility that comes with operating a global platform and takes it seriously, but we fundamentally reject this mischaracterization of our work and impugning of the company's motives. Clegg defends Facebook's handling of posts about COVID -19 vaccine and said that the intersection between social media and well-being remains an evolving issue in the research community.