Do your own research

The scale of the document dump coming out of Facebook is such that it seems a little ungenerous to describe it as the action of a whistle-blower, given that the individual concerned has gone in with the equivalent of the full brass section of a decent-sized marching band. In a calamitous moment for what’s left of Facebook’s reputation, internal documents have been handed to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the US Congress and the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), and the WSJ’s series on “the Facebook Files” makes for damning reading.

The leaker’s motivation may not be entirely altruistic, given that the SEC pays whistle-blowers between 10% and 30% of any fines awarded as a result of their information, and last October it paid one person a cheeky $114m award, so there may well be a chunky payment in the offing given that Facebook paid a $5bn fine over privacy violations two years ago.

The overall impression is that Facebook is well aware of the damage its apps are doing in undermining democracy, damaging teenage mental health and spreading antivax propaganda, but has very little inclination or ability to do anything to sort them out.

Evidence has emerged of a “white list” of about 6-million prominent figures who are not subjected to any content moderation.

But it is probably the internal Instagram research on the damage the app does to teen girls’ mental health that will prove the most controversial, particularly as it seems to be in direct contradiction to public positions taken by Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri.