I'm going to share this once more, because I don't think enough people in my life have engaged with this story, and the stunning, terrifying photography it contains.
This is what it was like in New York briefly last year... but it seems to be happening across the country, and at even greater scale.

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More from @justinhendrix

27 Apr
1/ Senator @ChrisCoonsforDE refers to @_KarenHao @techreview reporting around how incentives work at Facebook with regard to growth metrics, asks platforms whether they provide such pay incentives. Bickert say they are "not simply" incentivized for engagement.
2/ Culbertson says they have no incentive to drive unhealthy engagement. Veitch says responsibility is YouTube's primary concern (?!?).
3/ @BenSasse says the statements from the platforms about incentives is irreconcilable with their business model. Bickert: "For us, the focus is always on the long term." Refers to decision on 'meaningful social interactions' that did reduce amount of time spent on Facebook.
Read 5 tweets
26 Apr
Facebook Stopped Employees From Reading An Internal Report About Its Role In The Insurrection. @buzzfeednews just published it for the world to read: buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma… via @RMac18 @JaneLytv @CraigSilverman
Facebook saw a high membership overlap between Stop the Steal and Proud Boys and militia groups.
Facebook concluded "designation differences" in its own policies stopped it from enforcement against Stop the Steal and Storm the Capitol groups.
Read 8 tweets
21 Apr
1/ This is very good and I wish I had written it. key bit: "Without any independent access to internal data, outsiders can’t know how much of a difference Facebook’s break-glass measures make, or where its dials usually sit. But Facebook has a reason for announcing these steps."
2/ Bickert's statement suggests not just a turning of knobs and dials but also a surge of human attention. This begs the question- why not, as Evelyn says, keep the dials tuned for disaster all the time- but also, why not scale up the human effort much more substantially?
3/ Facebook does not want to acknowledge that it has to employ nearly as many people to deal with the toxic sludge and externalities of its platform as it does to run its core business- it keeps them on contract. ~58k employees vs ~35k outsourced mods.
Read 4 tweets
19 Apr
Why Political Sectarianism Is a Growing Threat to American Democracy: The country is increasingly split into camps that don’t just disagree on policy and politics — they see the other as alien, immoral, a threat, says @Nate_Cohn: nytimes.com/2021/04/19/us/…
Read 9 tweets
13 Apr
Stop & Frisk was ruled illegal by the courts. But researchers at @SAFElab say police are now engaged in a virtual version on social media- with serious policy gaps and abuses that cause real harms to Black and Brown people. Recommendations for reform:
techpolicy.press/recommendation…
"This virtual Stop and Frisk policing includes the active creation of online accounts and profiles using faux identities as well as buying data and analysis tools from third parties."
"This draws attention to the imperative demand for legislation which regulates social media tech companies and would also include protections against racially disparate treatment of Black, Indigenous, and communities of color (BIPOC) by law enforcement online."
Read 4 tweets
12 Apr
1/ For the Guardian, @juliacarriew has a deeply detailed, highly damning whistleblower account of Facebook's failure to protect democracies around the world, replete with details on fake engagement with politicians and campaigns on nearly every continent.
theguardian.com/technology/202…
2/ The piece builds on earlier reporting by @CraigSilverman, @RMac18 and @PranavDixit in Buzzfeed about evidence collected on Facebook’s failure to combat political manipulation campaigns by Sophie Zhang, who departed the company acrimoniously after 2.5 years.
3/ One interesting detail is communications related to Facebook's prioritization of political manipulation targeting the US and Western Europe- confirming a phenomenon many around the world have worried about.
Read 5 tweets

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