Thread by @YaelEisenstat

1/ As I’ve long said, Facebook’s business decisions to prioritize some actors’ speech over others’ should concern us all. Lots of detail from internal sources in @JeffHorwitz piece. This was part of what I tried to address when I worked there (a thread). wsj.com/articles/faceb…

2/ Despite both internal + external pressure to stop granting special treatment to political figures or other money-making "influencers", and despite knowing XCheck was highly problematic, FB continued to grow the program. FB's fingers on the scale of whose "speech" we see/hear.

3/ Exempting politicians from the rules is dangerous to open democratic debate. It's well documented, including in @sheeraf & @ceciliakang's "The Ugly Truth", that I was pushed out of FB for questioning why we didn't hold political advertisers to the same fact-checking rules...

4/ I'm not the only one who felt this double standard was both dangerous and antithetical to the core of what Facebook professes to be. This excerpt makes that clear. I also wrote about what my team tried to do with existing FB tools, but were denied, here:washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/1…

5/ Even the person heading Facebook's elections integrity efforts on the civic integrity team (including while I was there) seems to agree, according to a comment he posted:

6/The piece also shows how FB misled the so-called "Oversight Board". Re: @Klonick's important question below: From its creation, I & others warned that despite reputable members, we shouldn't grant it the legitimacy of a true oversight mechanism as it was created & funded by FB.

7/ In summary: This piece adds to a growing body of work w/ internal receipts about FB's most egregious political decisions. So while I & others are sometimes portrayed as "disgruntled", I won't stop speaking out about the things I saw there that I feel are harmful to democracy.