Tonight, frontline's investigation in the facebook continues. There is absolutely no company who has had so much influence on the information that Americans consume. He's the man who connected the world but at what cost polarization was the key to model. The global threat. This is an information ecosystem that just turns democracy upside down the 20 16 election facebook getting over a billion political and the company denials the idea that big news on facebook influence the election anyway, I think it's a pretty crazy idea. Facebook ceo Mark zuckerberg will test and I'm responsible for what happens here is facebook ready for the midterm elections. Lot of questions Heading into this midterm midterm elections on my still have questions. If we're gonna make sure that in 20 eighteen and 20 20 this doesn't happen again tonight on frontline part, two of the facebookdilemma Frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you, thank you and by the Corporation for public broadcasting. Major support is provided by the John dean and catherine t macarthur foundation committed to building a more just verdant and peaceful world more information is available at dot org the Ford foundation working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide at Ford foundation dot org additional support is provided by the foundation committed to excellence in journalism the Park foundation Dedicated to heighten public awareness of critical issues, the John and helen glistening your family trust supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires the wind coat foundation and by the frontline journalism fund with major support from Jon and jo Ann or an additional support from Chris and lisa kingdom's Hey everyone we're live from my backyard where I am smoking a brisket and some ribs and getting ready for the presidential debate tonight. Some of the questions for tonight's today will be formed by conversations happening on facebook. 39 percent of people get their election news and decision making material from facebook, facebook getting over a billion political campaign post. I love this all the all the comments that are coming in it's like um I'm sitting here. Smoking. These meats and um and just hanging With eighty five thousand people who are hanging out with me in my backyard make no mistake, everything Is that state I will be Hillary Clinton And I hope that all of you get out and vote this is gonna be an important one Tonight's broadcast will also include facebook which has become a gathering place for political conversation Facebook is really the new town Hall better conversations happen on facebook, just for about hope for about Facebook is the ultimate across the facebook is otherly dominating. This new Mobile digital economy and they've been measuring political conversation on facebook, but things like the most likes interactions shares Thank you for giving me the opportunity to in my view, clarify 20 16 is the social election facebook getting over a billion political campaign post 20 16 began as a banner year for Mark zuckerberg his company has become one of the most popular and profitable in the world. Despite an emerging deliver that, as it was connecting billions, it was in flaming divisions. People really for man. He's tribal identities on facebook where you will see people getting in the big fights we've been investigating warning signs that existed as facebook, group and interviewing those inside the company who were there at the time we saw a lot of our numbers are growing like crazy as did the rest of the media and the news world in particular um and so So as a product designer when you see your products being used more you're, happy, it's where we're seeing conversation happening about the election, the candidates, the issues amid all this political activity on facebook. No one use the platform more successfully than donald trump's digital media director brad Parker scale. I ask facebook I'm gonna spend a hundred million dollars your platform to send me a manual. They say we don't have the manual say what's me. Human manual them and what is the manual Vibe yoga manual for your car if you didn't have that for your car, there are other things you never learn how to use your car right ice. Pena hundred million dollars on the platform, the most in history. It made sense for them to be there to help us make sure that we spent it right and did it ride with custom audiences. You can get your ass to people. You already know who, on facebook, little one facebook's representative showed them was how to harness its powerful advertising tools to find and target new and receptive audiences now I'll talk to my added friends of people who, like my page, but I recognized was the simple process of marketing and I need to find the right people And the right places show them the right message. Micro targeting allows you to do is say these are people that most likely to show up to vote these are the right audiences. We need to show the numbers we're showing the consumer side that people were spending more and more hours of their day and see me facebook content so if you have any best place to show your content, would be there. It was a place for their eyes, were that's what they're reading your local newspaper doing things and so we can get our message injected inside that stream and it was a stream which was controlling the eyeballs of most places that we needed to win It wasn't just politics by this time facebook was also dominating the news business. 62 percent of Americans say they get their news from social media sites like facebook. More than a dozen developers have worked with us to build social news. Apps all with the goal of helping you discover and read more news Bay facebook's massive audience and taste media organizations to publish straight into the company's news, feed making it one of the most important distributors of news in the world. I'm personally really excited about this. I think that it has the potential to not only rethink the way that we all read news But to rethink the allot of the way that the whole news industry works, but unlike traditional media companies, facebook didn't see itself is responsible for ensuring the accuracy of news and information on its site. The responsibilities that they should have taken on our what used to be called editing and editors has certain responsibilities for what was gonna show up on the first page versus the last page the relative importance of things that don't relate purely to money and don't relate purely to popularity, so they took a Over the role of editing, without ever taking on the responsibilities of editing instead, facebook's editor was it's algorithm designed to feed users, whatever was most engaging to them Inside facebook, they didn't see that as a problem was there realization inside facebook as to what the responsibilities would be of becoming the main distributor of nudes I'd own think there was a lot of thinking about that. That idea I don't think there was any any thought that the news content in particular had had more value or had more need for protection than any of the other pieces of content on facebook Andrew anchor was in charge of facebook's news products team and is one of eight former facebook insiders who agreed to talk on camera about their experiences. I was surprised by alot of things when I joined facebook and as someone who grew up in the media world expected to be more of a sense of how people interact with media and how important media can be to certain people's information diet We have a video from be there from hi. I'm a question about the role of facebook in the media. Do you see cousin ager. Thank you very much know You know we're technology, company, but we're not a media company. The fact that so many big well-known news brands really pushed into facebook pretty aggressively. Legitimize this place to get kind of information and I think that also strangely created the opportunity for people who weren't legitimate as well, because if the legitimate players are there and you're, not legitimate, all you need to do is set up a website and then shared links to it and your stuff on facebook is gonna look similar enough that you just got in a huge leg up Is the most corrupt attend the 20 16 campaign heated up. What I've heard comments from my opponent reporter Craig, silverman, was sounding alarms that facebook's newsfeed with spreading misinformation. What he called fake news Fake news just seem like the right term to use and I was trying to get people to pay attention. I was trying to get journalists to pay attention. I was trying to also get facebook and other companies like to pay attention to this. As well. Silverman traced misinformation back to some unusual places We started to see the small cluster of websites being run the vast majority from one town in macedonia to how popular is it about two kinds of people. Maybe 200 people I'm making fake news websites. Yes, most of them didn't really care about who won the election. They were in this for politics. If you put ads on these completely fake websites and you got a lot of traveling from facebook that was a good way to make money. There are some people who may like 200 If something like the 200000 yes, I remember one guy think he was 15 or 16 years old telling me you know Americans want to read about trump so I'm writing trump stuff trump earned the money we saw a macedonian publishing Hillary, Clinton being indicted the pope endorsing trump Hillary Clinton selling weapons to isis getting close to or, above the million shares likes comments that's, an insane amount of engagement it's more for example, then when the New York times has the scoop about donald trump's tax returns. How is That the kid in macedonia can get an article that gets more engagement than the scoop from the New York times on facebook, ahead line during the campaign was pope endorses trump which was not true, but it went viral on facebook was it known within facebook that that gone viral um I'm sure was, I didn't necessarily know how viral gone and I certainly didn't believe anybody believed it, but would that have been a Red flag inside the company that something that's patently false is being propagated to millions of people on the platform. I think If you ask the question that way, it would have been but I think, when you ask them the next question which is the harder and the more important question was which is so what do you do about it. You then very quickly get in the issues of not only free speech but to what degree is it anybody's responsibility as a technology platform are the distributor to start to decide when you've gone over the line between something that is clearly false um from something that may or may not be perceived by everybody to be clearly falls and potentially can do damage over Of course, the 20 16 election it was a lot of news about misinformation. I mean there was famously that the pope endorses trump do you remember that absolutely. I wasn't working on these issues at the time, but um but absolutely it remember I am test alliance was chief of staff to facebook's number two sheryl sandberg and is now in charge of fighting misinformation. She is one of five current officials, facebook put forward to answer questions was there any kind of sense, live like all my goodness facebook is getting polluted with misinformation. Someone should do something about this there's. Certainly wasn't. There are people who are thinking about it, but I don't think there was a real awareness of internal Or, for external e was the scope of the problem and the right course of action. How could it be surprising that if you're becoming the world's information source, that there may be a problem with misinformation, the certainly awareness that there could be problems related to newshour quality of news and I think we all recognize afterwards that of all of the threats that we were considering, we focus a lot on threats that were misinformation and it under invested in this one But there was another problem that was going on attended on facebook beyond misinformation. One of the big factors that emerged in the election was what what started to be called hyperpartisan facebook pages These are facebook pages that kinda lived and died by really getting up that partisanship we're right. They're wrong, but not even just that it was also they're terrible people and where the best and the facebook pages were getting tremendous engagement ' million migrants are coming over the Wall and they're gonna, like rape, your children, you know that stuff is doing well and the stuff that was true would get far less shares The development of these hyper partisan sites, I think turn the informational commons into this trash fire and there's some kind of parable in that for the broader effects of facebook that the very things that divide us most cause. The most engagement Which means they go to the top of the newsfeed which means the most people see them. This worried and early facebook investor who was once close to zuckerberg I'm an analyst by training and profession and so my job is to watch and interpret at this point I have a series of different examples that suggest to me that there's something wrong systemically with the facebook algorithms and business mom and effect polarization was the key to the model. This idea of appealing to people's lower level emotions, things like fear and anger to create greater engagement And in the context, facebook more time on site, more sharing and therefore more advertising value. I found that incredibly disturbing. 10 days before the election. Mcnamee wrote zuckerberg then sandberg about his concerns me. What I was really trying to do was to help Mark and cheryl get this thing right and the responses were more or less. What I expected, which is to say that what I have seen were isolated problems and that they had address to each and every one of them. I thought Facebook get stand up and say we're going to reassess our priorities were gonna assess the metrics in which we run the company to try to take into account the fact that our impact is so much greater now than it used to be and that has facebook as a company with billions of users. We have influence on how the whole social fabric works, that No one 's had I've just received a From Secretary Clinton, Clinton has called trump to concede the election to Clinton campaign is uh really ' somber mood hear the crowd here at trump campaign. It trump's targeted ads on facebook paid off did things like facebook, help. One of the nastiest election leading to complains that facebook help tilt the election facebook collected donald trump that's big, which the trump campaign dismissed as anger over the results. There has been mounting criticism of facebook and no one ever complained about facebook for a single day until donald trump is President the only reason Everyone's upset about this is that donald trump is President and use the system that was all built by liberals when I got on Tv and told everybody after my interview, what we do facebook, it exploded the funny thing is the Obama campaign used. It then went on Tv and newspapers and they put on the front of magazine and the left and the media called him geniuses for doing that the accusations that voting news stories help donald trump win the presidency trump's victory put facebook on the spot facebook, even promoted fake news into it's trending cat on two days after the election at a tech conference in northern California, zuckerberg spoke Publicly about it for the first time when you know one of the things post election you've been getting a lot of push back from people who feel that you didn't filter out enough fake stories right. You know I've seen some of the stories they were talking about around this election. There is a certain profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason why someone could've voted the way they did is because they saw some fake news. You know, personally, I think The the idea that in a fake news on facebook of which you know it's a it's a very small amount of of the content, uh influence that the election and anyway I think is pretty crazy, idea right and it's. If I have been sitting there in an interview, I would have said you're lying when he said we have no impact on the election that I remember reading that in furious. I was like are you kidding me like. Stop. It like you cannot say that and not be lying Of course they had an impact it's obvious. They were the most important distribution news, distribution, there's, so many statistics about that, like I don't know what how you could possibly make that claim in public and it was such a cavalier attitude that if you're in a period man, I texted everybody, there saying you kidding me is he not recognizing the importance of his platform in our democracy at that point. Yes, I think he didn't understand what he had built or didn't care to understand or wasn't paying attention and doesn't think they really do wanna pretend as they're getting on their private Planes, as they're getting going to their beautiful homes as their collecting billions of dollars, they never want to acknowledge the power their powerful and they have. They don't thank you so much for being here. Thank you guys. I think it was very easy for all of us, cinema Park to not necessarily understand how valuable facebook could become don't think any of us Mark included, appreciated how much of an effect we might have had and I don't even know today two years later, almost two years later that we really understand how much of a true You effect we had, but I think more importantly, we all didn't have the information to be saying things like that at the time. My gases is that Mark now realize that there's, a lot more to the story than he or any of us could have imagined at that point Barely two months later, in Washington and even more serious situation was developing intelligence agencies were investigating Russian interference in the election and whether social media had played a role. Classical propaganda of disinformation, fake news is that continue. Yes in my view, we only scratch the surface say. We those a assemble the intelligence community set that we published on the sixth of January 20 17 meaning in And in my office, but I will tell you frankly, that I didn't appreciate the full magnitude of until well after Amid growing screws to me, zuckerberg set out on a cross-country trip, he publicized by streaming on facebook so I've been going around to different States. Iran, my personal challenge for the year to see how different communities are working across the country, but while he was on the road the news was getting worse, the us intelligence community officially is blaming Russian President Vladimir food ordered and influence campaign aimed at the presidential election Circus chief of security, Alex demos, I've been asked to see what he could find on facebook servers. We kicked off the big look into the fake news phenomenon, specifically what component of that might have a Russian part in it's origin. They traced this information to what appeared to be Russian government linked sources so what was it like bringing that news to others in the company and up to Mark and cheryl for instance, uh. You know we had a big responsibility and security team to to educate the right people about what happened without Being kind of overly dramatic kinda hard as a security person to balance that right, like everything seems like an emergency to you, um but in this case it really was right. This really was a situation in which uh we saw the tip of the iceberg. We knew there some kind of iceberg beneath it stainless expanded his investigation to look at how the Russian operation may have also used facebook's targeted advertising system so what we did is we then decided we're gonna look at all advertising and see if we can find any strange patterns that might link them to Russian activity So we listed huge personal company You kind of doing everybody into one big unified team so you have people in the world working 70 eighty hour weeks billions of dollars. Bad's hundreds of millions of pieces of content ends by kind of a painstaking process of going through thousands of thousands of false positives uh eventually found this large cluster that we're able to link to the Internet, research agency of saint petersburg It was one of the same groups that have been using facebook to spread disinformation in Ukraine. Three years earlier this time using fake accounts, Russian operatives had paid around 100000 dollars to run ads. That promoted political messages and enticed people to join facebook groups. But they don't research agency, wants to do is they wanna create the appearance of legitimate social movements so they would create for example, April immigration group and anti immigration group and both of those Groups would be almost temperatures of what those tooth sides think of each other and their goal of running ads where to find populations of people who are open to those kinds of messages to get them into those groups and then to deliver content on a regular basis to drive them. Apart. Really with the russians are trying to do is to find these fault lines in us society and simplify them and to make Americans not trust each other in September 20 17 nearly a year after the election, zuckerberg announced on facebook, what the company had found we're actively working with the us government and it's ongoing investigations into Russian interference. We've been investigating this for many months now and for awhile. We have found no evidence of fake accounts linked to Russian link to Russia running ads and we recently uncovered this activity. We provide that information to the special Council. We also brief Congress and this morning Directed our team to provide the ads. We found to Congress as well. We do know that facebook related post touched about a hundred and 50 million Americans that were post. That originated either through Russian fake accounts or through paid advertising from the russians. But the paid advertising was really ' relatively small piece of the overall problem. Much bigger problem was the ability for someone to say they were James in Washington dc, but it was actually boris in saint petersburg, creating a fake persona that would generate followers and then they would see the With the fake information and the false news and the political content one account was set up to try to rally the Muslim community in Texas and another was an attempt to kinda rally. The right wing in Texas. They created an event Protest with both sides protesting against each other at the mosque in Houston in 20 16. This is America. We have the right to speak out What, for the good work in Houston place you could have had the kind of horrible activity take place then and there, that I saw unfortunately take place in charlottesville in my state last year. So the real human consequences of some of these of some of this abuse um we've been very lucky that it hasn't actually cost people's lives, facebook also found that the russians had used the site orchestrate approach, trump rally outside of the cheesecake factory in Florida and to promote Anti trump protest in New York city just after the election We're on the threat and I meet The details of facebook's internal investigation set off alarm bells in Washington were such a right target for that sort of thing and the russians know that so the residents exploit that business. That polarization because they had they had messages for everybody. You know White lives matter. Why supremacist gun control advocates gun control, opponents didn't matter. They had messages for everybody did you think that was a pretty sophisticated campaign. It was and I believe the russians did a lot to get people out to vote that wouldn't have and helped others the appeal Of donald trump and the role that social media played in that was why I was huge me. It's it's really quite both ingenious and evil to to attack a Democratic society in that manner. But there are warning signs along the way and the trajectory of the company the company has been dealing with it. Negative side effects of its product for years right when you have to billion people on a communication platform there's, a infinite number of potentially bad things can happen the tough part is trying to decide where you're going to put your focus But by 20 17 facebook was being accused of not focusing on other serious issues and developing fragile democracies where the company has expanded his business countries like the Philippines, for almost all Internet users around facebook and problems have been mounting in a year. I probably met with more than 50 different officials um high ranking officials, including Mark zuckerberg. I wanted them to know what we were seeing. I wanted them to tell me what they thought about it and I wanted them to fix it. Maria Oh who runs a prominent news website says she had been warning facebook since 20 16. That President rodrigo de territory was using a network of paid followers and fake accounts to spread lies about his policies and attack is critic us branded his wore a crime under international law, especially critics of his brutal war on drugs, which has taken estimated 12000 lives, human rights watch has called government sanctioned butchery President detected was targeting Anyone who questions the drug for anyone who question that leads to extra judicial killings. Anyone on facebook who question that would get brutally batch Or protected by the constitution, we've been stripped of those productions online recipe herself would eventually come under attack if they were attacks on the way I look the way I sounded that I should be read that I should be killed. We gave it a name. Patriotic trolling online state sponsored hate that is meant to silence meant to intimidate so this is an information ecosystem that just turns democracy upside down and we're alive Prevalence where lies are truth She traced the disinformation to a network of 26 fake accounts and reported it to facebook at a meeting in Singapore in August of 20 16. What are you asking them to do exactly. What every new schoop does, which is take control and be responsible for what you create. Were you given an explanation as to why they weren't acting No I think facebook walk in to the Philippines and they were focus on growth. What they didn't realize is that countries like the Philippines Country's where institutions are week where corruption is rampant, these countries don't have the safeguards and what happens when you bring everyone onto a platform and do not exercise any kind of rules right. If you don't implement those rules beforehand, you're going to create chaos. There's, a problem in the Philippines we've heard about it from people on the ground. There that facebook has been to some degree weaponized by the regime. There. What are you doing to to stem this problem in the Philippines, one thing we're trying to Do anytime that we think there might be a connection between violence on the ground and online speech. The first thing for us to do is actually understand. The landscape, Monica Baker is facebook's head of global policy and work for the Justice Department in Southeast Asia. There's, a fundamental question which is what should our role be and as we're identifying misinformation should we be telling people what were finding should be removing that content should be down raking, that content and we now have a team that is focused on how to deal with exactly that sort of situation in April Facebook created the news, verification program and higher dresses Organization as one of its fact, checkers though she says the problems are ongoing. The company ultimately took down the accounts for us identified and just last week removed dozens, more. I think what is happening is that this company is way in over it's head in terms of his responsibilities, its way in it over it said in terms of what power it holds the idea isn't that is just like you magically add facebook in horrible things happen, but you have facebook because it's effective gasoline To simmering fires Elsewhere in the region, but this uh in sighting hatred and violence against Muslims through social media and may facebook was also being used to fan of nick tensions with even more dire consequences. Violence between voters and Muslims is continuing misinformation disinformation rumors extremist propaganda, all kinds of bad content for several years, David madden attack entrepreneur living in as well as journalists and activist I've been warning facebook Look that the Muslim minority that I was being targeted with hate speech side godwill below like you, would see the use of memes of images. Things that were degrading and dehumanizing targeting the Muslim community to be the me mentally can write her out of my to the warning signs have been present as far back as 20 14 when a fake news stories spread on facebook reports later proved to be false. That's moving man had raped to put this woman was shared on facebook and angry about About 400 surrounded the sanitation shooting and throwing bricks and stones to people died in the incident won buddhist and one Muslim were killed in riots today, I was really concerned that the seriousness of this was not understood and so I'm ada presentation and facebook headquarters in may of two thousand 15. I was pretty explicit about the state of the problem. I drew the analogy with what happened in wonder where radios had played a really key role in the execution of his genocide and so I said Facebook runs the risk of being in me and mom what radios were in the wonder that this platform could be used to ferment height and to inside, for islands. What was the reaction to that at facebook. I got an email shortly after that meeting, to say that would be disgusted that meeting has been shared internally and apparently taken very seriously the violence intensify massive wave of violence that displace over a hundred and 50000 people And in early 20 17, madden, another local activist had another meeting with facebook. The objective of this meeting was was really to be crystal clear about just how bad the problem was and that the processes that they had in place to try to identify and pull down problematic content. They just weren't working and we would deeply concerned that something even worse was gonna happen imminently lose Meeting I think I think that the main response from facebook was, will need to go away ending into this and come back with something substantive. The thing was it never came how do you know that we can look at the evidence. On-the-ground what we've seen here tells us the story of ethnic cleansing of driving Muslims outside mosque The UN would call the violence and genocide and found social media and facebook in particular at bladed significant role the ultra nationalist buddhist of their own. Facebook's and really exciting alot of violence and hatred against ethnic minorities. Facebook has now turned into a beast than what it was uh originally intended to be used. I'm curious. What it's Like when the UN comes out with a report that says that facebook, playday significant role in the genocide, what's that, like for you running content policy and facebook, well, this would be important to me, even if I didn't work at facebook. Given my background, my background is, as a federal prosecutor and I work specifically in Asia and specifically on violent crimes against people in Asia, so something like that really hits home to me facebook was warned as early as 20 15 about the potential for a really dangerous situation in man or what went wrong. There. Why was it so slow. We met with civil society The organizations in me and more far before 20 15 this is an area where we've been focused eyes think what we've learned over time is it's important for us to build the right technical tools that can help us find some of this content and also work with organizations on the ground in a real-time fashion. We are in the process of building those relationships around the world on a much deeper level so that we can stay ahead of any kind of situation like that in the past year facebook says it's taken down problematic accounts and man mana hired more language experts and improved it's Should there be any liability or any legal accountability for a company like facebook when something so disastrous goes wrong on your platform. There's. All sorts of accountability, but probably the group that holds us the most accountable for the people using the service. If it's not a safe place for them to come and communicate they're not going to use it. We are working here in menlo Park and Palo Alto California to the extent that some of these issues and problems manifest in other countries around the world. We didn't have sufficient information When the pulse um on what was happening in Southeast, Asia, naomi light is facebook. Second, longest serving employee and so one change that we've made along with hiring so many more people is that a lot of these people are based internationally and can give us that insight. That we may not get from being here at headquarters. I'm trying to understand you know that the choices that are made do you regret choices going backward decisions that were made about not taking into account risks are not measuring risks yeah. I definitely think We regret not having 20000 people working on safety, secure insecurity back in the day. Yes, so I regret that we were too slow that it was one of those things even considered at the time to kind of amp up safety and security, but there was some reason not to we're, not really I mean. We had a safety and security team. I think we just thought it was sufficient. I just it's not that we were like wow. We could do so much more here and decided not to it think we I just didn't Again, we were just a bit idealistic facebook has created this platform that, in many countries not just me online has become the dominant information platform and it has out sized influence in lots of countries that comes with a lot of responsibility Using social media, rumors of alleged Muslim broke doing spread fast. Many of those countries are wrestling with some pretty big challenges, tensions between groups within countries and we have seen this explode into what Mark zuckerberg would called real world. What others we just called violence or death in many other markets we're seeing it right now in India follow became addictive of india's fake news we've seen examples of this in places like Sri Lanka keep the violence from spreading it's also shut down facebook with me on Example should be sounding an alarm at the highest level of the company that this requires a comprehensive strategy But it would be far from man and a very different kind of problem that would cause an international uproar over facebook. Cambridge, analytic and it's mining of data on millions of Americans, for political purposes. Cambridge is alleged to have used all this data from tens of millions of facebook users can dental Cambridge face down of it was a scandal over how facebook failed to protect users data exposed by crystal blower named Christopher wiley. He was able to come forward as I can prove this. He said that facebook knew that the political consulting firm he worked for Cambridge analytica I've been using the person All data of more than 50 million users to try to influence voters at Cambridge, analytica. We are creating the future of political campaigning. This is a company that specializes and we'll advertise itself as specializing in rumor campaigns, political campaigns have changed seeding. The Internet with misinformation putting the right message in front of the right person at the right moment that's the power of data every voter and you can listen you figure out who are the people who are most susceptible of dot, about personality so you know exactly Go to target with exactly what type of message the firm had gained access to the data from a third party without facebook, permission. The overwhelming majority of people who had their data collected did not know when data leaves facebook. Server's. There is no way for facebook to track that data to know how that data is being used or to find out how many copies there are facebook eventually changed its data sharing policies and ordered Cambridge analytica to delete the data we know that facebook I'm known about this for at least two years after He came forward they've been the firm from their site and announced they were ending another controversial practice, working directly with companies known as data brokers But the uproar was so intense that in April 20 eighteen Mark zuckerberg was finally called before Congress And become a reckoning over facebook's conduct, its business model and its impact on democracy We welcome everyone today's hearing on facebook's social media, privacy and the use and abuse of data and now turn to you. So proceed, sir, we faced a number of important issues around privacy, safety and democracy and you will rightfully have some hard questions for me to answer facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company and it's facebook is grown. People everywhere have gotten a powerful new tool for making their voices heard and for building communities and businesses, but it's clear now that We didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well and that goes for fake news for foreign interference in elections and hate speech. As well as developers and data privacy. We didn't take abroad enough view of our responsibility and that was a big mistake and it was my mistake and I'm sorry if, like me, you're, following the stuff you see years and years and years of people begging and pleading with the company saying please pay attention to us that every channel people can find and Basically, being ignored, we hear you your concern. We apologize of course, we have a responsibility. Will do better and the public record here is that they are a combination of unable and unwilling to grasp and deal with this complexity. You may decide our facebook may decide. It needs to police the whole bunch of speech um that I think America might be better off not having police by one company that has a really big and powerful platform, senator. I think that this is a really hard question And I think it's one of the reasons why we struggle with it. These are very, very powerful corporations. They do not have any kind of traditional Democratic accountability and while I personally know a lot of people making these decisions. If we set the norms that these companies need to decide what who does not have a voice online eventually, that is going to go to a very dark place when companies become big and powerful there's. Eight instant either regulate or break up Alright, I think we're fighting ourselves now position where people feel like something should be done. There's, a lot of questions. What should be done but there's no question that something should be that you don't think you have a monopoly alright. Certainly doesn't feel like that to me okay. You know there's, a lot of problems here, but all these problems get worse 11 company has too much power too much information over to many people after years of unchecked growth the top now is increasingly about how to reign in facebook already Europe there's, a new Internet privacy law aimed at companies like facebook inside the company, the people we spoke to insisted that facebook is still a force for good has there ever been a minute where you question the mission you know internally whether anyone is taking a second to step back and say alright, has this blinded us in some way have you had a moment like that um. I still continue to firmly believe in the mission but in terms of stepping back in terms of reflecting absolutely, but that isn't on the mission the reflection is really about how can we do better Minimizing bad experiences on facebook, why wasn't that part of the metric earlier in terms of how do you minimize the harm you know. It's possible that we could have done more sooner and we haven't been as fast as we needed to be that line was repeated by all the current officials facebook put forward to answer questions we've been too slow to act on it think we were too slow didn't see it fast enough. We were too slow marcus said this that we have been slow one of my greatest regrets in running the company is that we were slow and identifying the Russian information operations in 20 16 and we're gonna take a The number of measures from building and deploying new tools that take down fake news to grow in our security team to more than 20000 people, the goal here is to deep dive on the market, nuances there the company says it's now investing resources and talent to tackle a range of problems from the spread of hate speech to election interference, even if we can't you fact checking if we can do more work around the problematic aspect of it. This is part of the team tackling the spread of misinformation around the world, led by Texas alliance the elections, integrity The framework for how they're thinking about secondary languages in each country and effect from the misinformation side with mostly prioritize primary languages, it's a problem. The company admits it is a long way from solving the next thing is about the project. I think the main blocker here is potentially getting uh the fact that can cover the entire region ui came into this job, asking myself how long is it gonna take us to this office and the answer is Is this isn't a problem that you solve it's a problem that you contain. Awesome next segway into upcoming launches in advance of next week's. Midterms facebook has mobilized the election team to monitor false news stories and elite fake accounts that may be trying to influence voters with no glacier runs the team they're gonna be actors that I'm gonna try to manipulate that public debate and how do we figure out. What are the techniques they were using and how do we make it much harder Is there gonna be real time monitoring on election day of what's going on on facebook and how our you can actually find things that may sow distrust in the election. Absolutely we're gonna have a team on election day focus on that problem and one thing that's useful here is we've already done. This in other elections and your confidence you can do that here I think that yes, I'm confident that we can do this year pressure says his team continues to find foreign actors using the platform to spread this information rot was revealed to be a new player in world wide disinformation campaigns and on top of this and less than two weeks ago, federal prosecutors announced they found evidence that Russian operatives have been trying to interfere in next week's election. What is the standard that the public should hold facebook to in terms of solving some of these seemingly enormous Problems I think the standard in the responsibility um what I'm focused on is amplifying good and minimizing the bad and we need to be transparent about what we're doing on both sides and you know I think this is an ongoing discussion. What's in ongoing discussion. How we're doing on minimizing the bad but we're dealing with such consequential issues right we're talking about integrity of our elections were talking about in some cases playing a role in the genocide and ongoing conversation means what exactly about that about a standard for success here I think you know this is the number one priority for the company Mark has been out there. Sheryl is out there you're talking to me and a bunch of the other leaders that's what we mean by having an ongoing conversation. This is something that we need to as you said, this is serious. This is consequential. We take this extremely like. We understand this responsibility and it's not going away tomorrow. Do you think facebook has earned the trust to be able to say trust us we've got this I'm not gonna answer that I'm sorry that's just I mean that You can make that decision for themselves. I don't know what do you trust them. It trust the people who, I worked with and I think there's some good people who are working on this, that doesn't mean I don't think we should pass laws to back that up. It has not been a good week for facebook, social, media giant for facebook the problems have been multiply. Your setback for facebook the social media, just of cyber attack affecting nearly 50 million faces you continues to crack down on fake political and uh. This accusations of political but Mark zuckerberg's quest to connect and change the world continues Hey welcome to the page This has been an intense year Ike ant believe we're only four months in After all, these scandals, facebook for office is still going up right. So they don't really have a huge incentive to change the core problem which is their business model. We're announcing a new set of features coming soon. They're not going to touch his tongue as they're doing so well financially and there's. No regulatory oversight and consumer backlash doesn't really work because I can't leave facebook all my friends and family around the world are there you Might not like the company you might not like its privacy policies. You might not like the way it's algorithm works. You might not like its business model but what do you gonna do now. There's. No guarantee that we get this right. This is hard stuff. We will make mistakes and they will have consequences and we will need to fix them as he has since the beginning, he sees facebook his invention, not as part of the problem, but the solution so if you believe, like I do That giving people a voice is important, that building relationships is important. That creating a sense of community is important and then doing the hard work of trying to bring the world closer together is important and I say this we will keep building Next time, this is just the beginning. The White power movement flows, underground. What do you think was going on in this House. They were making bombs there's, new year plan off the Coast of Florida and I'm planning on firing the corner of nuclear materials at that frontline and propublica investigate they're actively recruiting military members. Does that surprise. You. I'm telling you something the Fbi should be here me Go to Cbs dot, org slash frontline to read more about facebook from our partner, Washington post reporter Dan increased to facebookdilemma is, can they solve this serious problem and later this month as part of frontline's transparency project. What I'm focused on is amplifying good and minimizing the bad sticky quotes from the interviews and the fans in context. This isn't a problem that you saw it's a problem that you contain connect to the frontline community at dot org slash frontline Frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you, thank you and by the Corporation for public broadcasting. 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