NEW: After the Facebook whistleblower went public, FB’s Washington team told some Republicans that she was trying to help Democrats. They told Dems that Rs would use this as a chance to talk about censorship. Their goal: divide Congress. wsj.com/articles/faceb… It’s one part of FB’s strategy to defend itself to the hilt & focus on future products after reams of documents were given to @wsj and later other outlets. “When our work is being mischaracterized, we’re not going to apologize. We’re going to defend our record,” @andymstone said.

QAnon has exploded in popularity on Facebook & Instagram since the lockdowns. @Storyful analyzed 10 large public QAnon groups on FB and found membership grew almost 600%. Some of they IG accounts they found quadrupled in following. wsj.com/articles/qanon… Yet another sign that QAnon — which believes a group of pedophiles rule the world & Trump is their messiah — is increasingly visible. Dozens of candidates espouse QAnon views. @MollyMcKew says we could have a “QAnon caucus” in the next Congress. wsj.com/articles/qanon…

New from @JeffHorwitz & me: Facebook spent years studying the its role in polarization, according to sources and internal documents. One internal slide laid out the issue like so. ”Our algorithms exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness.” wsj.com/articles/faceb… The concern predates the election. A 2016 slide shows showed extremist content thriving in more than one-third of large German political groups. “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools.” “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”

NEW from me: some light holiday reading about Joel Kaplan, one of the most controversial & influential executives at Facebook, & his growing ability to kill, postpone & shape $fb products that risk making conservatives angry. wsj.com/articles/faceb… For example: Until recently, $fb was exploring news-feed products to fight polarization. 1 reason it stalled: fears of anti-conservative bias after $fb research showed right-leaning users were less exposed to different points of view than those on the L. wsj.com/articles/faceb…