Harbath says that Kaplan’s “familyist” quip matches her recollection of how conservatives at Facebook viewed the project — as an effort by a group of left-wing engineers. “What I think Joel is trying to get hold of is this very small bit of base, trying to make sure we’re thinking about a whole range of political ideas and ideas,” she said. Even more fundamental to Kaplan and Zuckerberg’s opposition, Harbath said, is a growing belief that Facebook is not doing the job of solving America’s polarizing crisis. Although Common Ground has since been disbanded, Eat Your Veggies has survived – becoming a systemized process for all “major/sensitive news feed launches,” according to the Facebook Papers, a series of accounts whether leaked by Haugen, whistleblower.
There’s another reason Common Ground is important: It brings out Facebookers’ inner-competitive ideas about political justice. Again and again, data scientists and engineers have told me that, if a proposed model applies the rules of neutrality but flags conservative users rather than fundamentalists, freedom, then Kaplan or his team will effectively constrain it. Policy staff often request pilot reviews that simulate how the change will affect users and publishers according to political ideology. On Citizen Integrity, staff members advocated for “equality of process” against what they called “equality of outcomes” by the Policy team. “Policy under Joel has a completely different set of incentives,” said a Civic Integrity employee. Instead of giving an outcome-independent neutral standard to the left or right, the Policy team promoted a platform where “the standard,” said staff. To be result.”
Many in Policy, and other Kaplan defenders, vehemently oppose the view that they over-weigh political outcomes in the balance of their decisions. Guy Rosen, Facebook’s Vice President of Integrity, says that Policy processes for examining the outcome of a proposed change or launch are intended to promote rigor and scrutiny into discussions. product discussion. Only then, Rosen said, can Facebook properly defend its policies externally (a concern frequently raised within a company that has been brought before Congress more than 30 times). The idea that Kaplan brings water to conservatives “is bullshit,” said a former D.C. Policy officer, a Democrat, who instead remembers he posed “questions.” It makes sense for how a segment of the electorate that is important to Facebook would perceive something that we did.”
The clash of philosophies between the two sides will become a constant source of “very high tension” at Facebook during the Trump era, said a former employee of Civic Integrity. In the years to come, the Policy approach to equity will work to the benefit of some right-wing provocateurs in undeniable ways. When Kaplan tried to allow a subsidiary of Daily Caller to become a third-party credential-checking affiliate, Civic Integrity employees responded that the move would damage the program’s reputation. Process — Daily Caller is a frequent violator of misinformation, even when its subsidiary is accredited. But Kaplan persisted. (“How do we keep telling them no?” One employee recalled Kaplan saying, “They are a legitimate news site.”)
Internally, Facebook employees flagged the Policy team’s actions, which some consider particularly improper. In July 2020, an employee posted a notice to Facebook’s Workplace discussion board to warn colleagues about several instances of “bias in the enforcement of misinformation policies.” In a post reviewed by WIRED, the employee documented evidence that Breitbart was directly complaining to Policy team contacts to bypass penalties for misinformation. A Policy officer marked such a Breitbart appeal as “urgent”; Within hours, all of Breitbart’s disinformation on strike was removed. Among several other examples, the employee also recorded an Instagram post by Charlie Kirk, a 26-year-old podcaster and founder of Turning Point USA, which was rated as “partially false” by proofreaders. . After Kirk directly appealed the removal of the label, the label was flagged as “PRIORITY — ASKED JOEL”. Of the three dozen such escalations, a “significant majority” have come from conservative publishers, while none have come from ostensibly progressive, the employee wrote, asking, What has led to this disparity?”
Patterson told me that Facebook’s competent stance on conservatives created a feedback loop that encouraged them to “work on referrals”. “People on the right feel empowered to complain, because they know they will probably be on the right track,” she said. “People on the left don’t tend to do that.”
During the first half of the Trump administration, however, conservatives vigorously escalated accusations that Facebook was rigging against them. In June 2018, Kaplan and Harbath met with Kevin McCarthy, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, and then Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, who complained about the changes not fair to the platform. Kaplan countered, explaining that right-leaning content tends to violate community standards more. “This is not going to be a 50-50 situation,” Kaplan told them. In October 2018, ahead of the midterm elections, Kaplan personally approved the removal of 800 political news sites, spanning the left and right, for violating CIB policy.
