Internal Facebook Chats Show Politics Trumps All
26th October 2021
The controversy stems from the News Tab. Facebook’s News Tab aggregates news articles from various outlets and presents them to users within the app and on desktop. Internal chats indicate that Facebook employees worked to control the narrative on controversial political issues like the Jan. 6 riot.
Some employees targeted Breibart, a right-wing media platform. “Get Breitbart out of News Tab,” one message read.
“My argument is that allowing Breibart to monetize through us is, in fact, a political statement,” another message added. “It is an acceptance of extreme, hateful and often false news used to propagate fear, racism and bigotry. On a daily basis, it publishes articles that I believe insult our values as a company.”
“The fact that we have a partner manager program for misinformation escalations at all is disheartening to me,” yet another message continued.