The technocratic language Facebook uses in its takedown reports hides the human trauma caused by material that exists only because Facebook made it possible
These reports obscure a torrent of hate speech and other toxic content — If — you've never read a Facebook … Tweets: @neilturkewitz , @sagelazzaro , @jackiehluo , @funnymonkey , @tressiemcphd , @ozm , @neilturkewitz , @dgolumbia , @hypervisible , @hypervisible , @hypervisible , @dellcam , @dlberes , @dlberes , and @hypervisible Tweets: Neil Turkewitz / @neilturkewitz : @hypervisible And the worst part is that this is generally framed as a core part of internet freedom, and championed by self-perceived progressives who like to suggest they care about human rights. Just not about humans apparently. Sage Lazzaro / @sagelazzaro : “These numbers are deceptive because Facebook's team often speaks of solving a problem it directly created. It would be as if a meat-packer was both intentionally poisoning its meat while also releasing stats about making the meat safer.” Great @ozm read: https://onezero.medium.com/... Jackie Luo / @jackiehluo : there's something specific about tech contrarianism re: social issues in how it regresses discourse, anchoring debate around the same age-old prejudices that have reigned for centuries, but at the same time sees itself as contributing bold, interesting, novel ideas Bill Fitzgerald / @funnymonkey : “there's too much toxic content for Facebook to ever really see it all” On the toxic sludge that is content on Facebook, and how Facebook's tries to obscure the reality that millions of people see and suffer because of Facebook's failures. https://onezero.medium.com/... Tressie McMillan Cottom / @tressiemcphd : You cannot have a stable nation-state and have Facebook. Gotta choose. https://twitter.com/... OneZero / @ozm : In other words, there's too much toxic content for Facebook to ever really see it all (hello, scale) so Facebook has a formula for determining the amount based on random sampling. https://read.medium.com/GpRD70F Neil Turkewitz / @neilturkewitz : @funnymonkey @hypervisible “Facebook hosts, recommends, and amplifies hate as part of its business model while also touting its success at taking that hate down.” An arsonist that sells insurance. Is that what they mean by multi-sided markets? @YaelEisenstat @ubiquity75 @Moonalice @FrankPasquale David Cheems Golumbia / @dgolumbia : Look at the world before Facebook & today. anyone being fair has to admit: #Facebook can say in all good faith that the world has turned much less fascist & much kinder & more tolerant since it came around. its claims to build community rest on a rock-solid base Doomscrolling Eternal / @hypervisible : Again, notice the language here. Facebook is often not a bystander; they are an accomplice. https://twitter.com/... Doomscrolling Eternal / @hypervisible : Yet, some people somehow think it's more important to be “fair” to an internet platform than to the people who are harmed by that platform. And to them, I say “fuck you.” (end of extended subtweet) Doomscrolling Eternal / @hypervisible : So, a thing that didn't make it into my essay—when people talk about the effects of something like Facebook, they often like to use the “when the ship was invented, so was the shipwreck....” formulation. Dell Cameron / @dellcam : been thinking a lot about how easy it was for facebook to offer its chief critics wheelbarrows full of money to accept illusory roles at the company and become accessories to history's biggest driver of racism and hate https://twitter.com/... @dlberes : No one writes about Facebook like @hypervisible does https://onezero.medium.com/... @dlberes : “Most businesses don't release reports saying 'we didn't poison' this many people, or ‘we traumatized 5% fewer people’ during Q3 of this year.” Doomscrolling Eternal / @hypervisible : “Most businesses don't release reports saying 'we didn't poison' this many people, or ‘we traumatized 5% fewer people’ during Q3 of this year.” But Facebook does. https://onezero.medium.com/... Expand More For Next Unexpand More For Next
The takedown report — Facebook's main public accountability artifact — gets reframed from a neutral audit into a rhetorical shield, forcing the company to defend not just its enforcement numbers but the language it uses to present them.
Critics like Neil Turkewitz and @hypervisible gain a concrete target: the gap between volumetric 'content removed' metrics and the documented reach of harmful material, which the troll-farm report shows was mostly consumed by users who never opted in.
Second-order effects
Press and researchers shift toward demanding internal-data access over published summaries — the pattern already visible when Kevin Roose's CrowdTangle engagement tweets worried Facebook's own News Feed team enough that they disputed his numbers rather than publish comparable ones.
Regulators and oversight bodies face growing pressure to require harm-weighted disclosure, since the corpus shows Facebook's own internal findings repeatedly outpacing what its public reporting conveys.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, platform accountability moves from throughput transparency (how much was taken down) to distribution liability (what the system amplified and who absorbed it) — a structural shift with direct implications for how Section 230-style debates get framed.
The deeper arc, as Techdirt's read of the Facebook Files suggests, is less about evil or incompetence than hubris: an organization convinced it can metricize its way back under control, which makes every glossary choice in a takedown report a governance decision.
The trend: Platform accountability is migrating from volume-based transparency reports toward harm-based disclosure, driven by leaked internal data that keeps contradicting the official metrics.
@hypervisible And the worst part is that this is generally framed as a core part of internet freedom, and championed by self-perceived progressives who like to suggest they care about human rights. Just not about humans apparently.
“These numbers are deceptive because Facebook's team often speaks of solving a problem it directly created. It would be as if a meat-packer was both intentionally poisoning its meat while also releasing stats about making the meat safer.” Great @ozm read: https://onezero.medium.c…
there's something specific about tech contrarianism re: social issues in how it regresses discourse, anchoring debate around the same age-old prejudices that have reigned for centuries, but at the same time sees itself as contributing bold, interesting, novel ideas
“there's too much toxic content for Facebook to ever really see it all” On the toxic sludge that is content on Facebook, and how Facebook's tries to obscure the reality that millions of people see and suffer because of Facebook's failures. https://onezero.medium.com/...
In other words, there's too much toxic content for Facebook to ever really see it all (hello, scale) so Facebook has a formula for determining the amount based on random sampling. https://read.medium.com/GpRD70F
@funnymonkey @hypervisible “Facebook hosts, recommends, and amplifies hate as part of its business model while also touting its success at taking that hate down.” An arsonist that sells insurance. Is that what they mean by multi-sided markets? @YaelEisenstat @ubiquity75 @Moonalic…
Look at the world before Facebook & today. anyone being fair has to admit: #Facebook can say in all good faith that the world has turned much less fascist & much kinder & more tolerant since it came around. its claims to build community rest on a rock-solid base
Yet, some people somehow think it's more important to be “fair” to an internet platform than to the people who are harmed by that platform. And to them, I say “fuck you.” (end of extended subtweet)
So, a thing that didn't make it into my essay—when people talk about the effects of something like Facebook, they often like to use the “when the ship was invented, so was the shipwreck....” formulation.
been thinking a lot about how easy it was for facebook to offer its chief critics wheelbarrows full of money to accept illusory roles at the company and become accessories to history's biggest driver of racism and hate https://twitter.com/...
“Most businesses don't release reports saying 'we didn't poison' this many people, or ‘we traumatized 5% fewer people’ during Q3 of this year.” But Facebook does. https://onezero.medium.com/...
None of the shooter's accounts were reported by users prior to the shooting. We have found no evidence that suggests the shooter followed the Kenosha Guard Page or that he was invited on the Event Page they organized. 3/n
A Black man was shot 7 times in the back with his kids nearby. In the same city, an armed white teen who claimed to be part of a militia interacted with police before murdering two protestors & walking away. This is what racist law enforcement looks like. https://www.jsonline.com…
@brianfishman @benedictevans Why does Facebook always have a new policy only after things go south? If the company were a responsible member of the community it would handle influence campaigns, fake news, QAnon, militias and other terrible groups before they become huge and infl…
Twitter's algorithm has deemed that footage of the Kenosha shooter along with a caption glorifying his actions is “business news.” This is a prime example of algorithms rewarding polarization (and just plain stupidity.) https://twitter.com/...
Thorough, shocking reconstruction of the Facebook and Reddit activity that occurred in the hours before yesterday's Kenosha murders. These individuals knew what they were doing. Superb work by @acarvin/@DFRLab. https://medium.com/...
The shooting at Tuesday's protest feels like a taster of what may happen after US election. And guess who's implicated? Several people reported posts for inciting violence. Facebook refused to act. Until afterwards. When it deleted the evidence https://www.theverge.com/...
Facebook chose not to act on militia complaints before Kenosha shooting “Multiple users reported the account for inciting violence, but were told it did not violate platform policy” https://www.theverge.com/...
I actually don't care about quirky reporting about social media influencers when this is the actual reality of most platforms. Let people spread radical ideas, wait for violence or harassment or threats, then delete. This is the story. Fuck a TikTok mansion. https://twitter.com/.…
THREAD: Facebook has once again found itself at the center of a radicalized movement that ended in murder. From white supremacist to boogaloo to militia groups, Facebook has served as a primary organizing mechanism, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, was no different. https://twitter.com/..…