'Carol's Journey': What Facebook knew about how it radicalized users

[Nevilledog]

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Brandy Zadrozny
@BrandyZadrozny
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New internal documents show Facebook has long known—via years of experimentation and research—that its algorithms and recommendation systems push users to extremes.

To researchers they gaslit, “Facebook literally helped facilitate a cult."

'Carol's Journey': What Facebook knew about how it radicalized users
In the summer of 2019, a new Facebook user named Carol Smith signed up for the platform, describing herself as a politically conservative mother from Wilmington
nbcnews.com
3:50 PM · Oct 22, 2021

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-knew-radicalized-users-rcna3581

In the summer of 2019, a new Facebook user named Carol Smith signed up for the platform, describing herself as a politically conservative mother from Wilmington, North Carolina. Smith’s account indicated an interest in politics, parenting, and Christianity, and followed a few of her favorite brands, including Fox News and then-President Donald Trump.

Though Smith had never expressed interest in conspiracy theories, in just two days Facebook was recommending she join groups dedicated to QAnon, a sprawling and baseless conspiracy theory and movement that claimed Trump was secretly saving the world from a cabal of pedophiles and Satanists.

Smith didn’t follow the recommended QAnon groups, but whatever algorithm Facebook was using to determine how she should engage with the platform pushed ahead just the same. Within one week, Smith’s feed was full of groups and pages that had violated Facebook’s own rules, including those against hate speech and disinformation.

Smith wasn’t a real person. A researcher employed by Facebook invented the account, along with those of other fictitious “test users” in 2019 and 2020, as part of an experiment in studying the platform’s role in misinforming and polarizing users through its recommendations systems.

*snip*

[ProfessorGAC]

1. Interesting Article

Not shocked, but nice to see it framed.
I find it most interesting that everything they do to fix problems appears to be after the situation has turned from flicker to inferno.
Not exactly an example of preventative action.

[tanyev]

2. Kick.

[leighbythesea2]

3. The part

About expect to see online involvement in nefarious groups turn into to offline action. Of couse. And we did see it.
They don't seem to be able to do anything effective with the internal research.

[dalton99a]

4. "Meanwhile we are printing money in the basement and we are fine."

In the affidavit, copies of which were provided to The Verge, the whistleblower alleges, among other things, that a former Facebook communications official dismissed concerns about interference by Russia in the 2016 presidential election, assisted unwittingly by Facebook. Tucker Bounds said, according to the affidavit, that the situation would be “a flash in the pan. Some legislators will get pissy. And then in a few weeks they will move on to something else. Meanwhile we are printing money in the basement and we are fine.”

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/22/22741024/facebook-new-whistleblower-allegations-sec

[Nevilledog]

5. Kick