Facebook denies ‘divisiveness’ allegations

San Francisco: Facebook has defended itself against a report that it shelved internal research indicating that it was dividing people instead of bringing them together.

The social media network’s algorithms are aimed at getting users to spend more time on the site. But they “exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” a slide from a 2018 presentation by a Facebook research team stated, according to the report in the Wall Street Journal.

It warned that if left unchecked Facebook would feed users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform.”

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg and other executives sidelined the research, however, based on concerns it was too paternalistic or would result in product changes that would rankle politically conservative users, the Journal reported.

The company’s integrity vice-president, Guy Rosen, slammed the Journal story, saying the newspaper “willfully ignored critical facts that undermined its narrative”.

“The piece uses a couple of isolated initiatives we decided against as evidence that we don’t care about the underlying issues and it ignored the significant efforts we did make,” Rosen said in an online post.

“As a result, readers were left with the impression we are ignoring an issue that in fact we have invested heavily in.”

The Journal report also cited a 2016 study at Facebook which showed that, among German political groups, “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools.”

“Our recommendation systems grow the problem,” the report said. For years Facebook has faced criticism for allowing hatred to flourish on the network globally.