Internal docs show how antivax activists flooded vaccine content on Facebook with negative comments, despite Zuckerberg's push to promote COVID-19 vaccines
Internal company documents suggest that the company plays down awareness of its flaws. Kara Swisher / New York Times : The Endless Facebook Apology Katie Canales / Insider : Apple reportedly threatened to boot Facebook from the App Store over human trafficking concerns Mike Peterson / AppleInsider : Apple threatened to pull Facebook from the App Store over human trafficking Nick Heer / Pixel Envy : Facebook's Design at Scale Means Every Decision Has Extraordinary Consequence Andrew Hutchinson / Social Media Today : The ‘Facebook Files’ Investigation Highlights Key Concerns in the Platform's Approach Brett Molina / USA Today : Mark Zuckerberg's vaccine push undermined by own Facebook platform, report says Tom McKay / Gizmodo : Internal Facebook Documents Show How Badly It Fumbled the Fight Against Anti-Vaxxers: Report Tweets: Andy Stone / @andymstone : As the Wall Street Journal itself makes clear, we have a team of experts who help us uncover patterns of harmful behavior so we can disrupt it. We've got arguably more experts and resources dedicated to this work than any other consumer technology company in the world. Justin Scheck / @scheckwsj : FB knew human traffickers used its sites to sell people. It took limited action against them until Apple Inc. threatened to remove FB and IG from its app store w/ @newley @JeffHorwitz https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ Alex Kantrowitz / @kantrowitz : Facebook's response to all of this? Less internal transparency! https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Josh Barro / @jbarro : I'm confused by the implied conceit that you could have a platform for mass interpersonal communication where people only say good things and not bad things. At least when @mattyglesias complains about Facebook he says the solution is to close it. https://www.wsj.com/... Christopher Mims / @mims : Facebook is so inherently broken that even as the company sought to fulfill Zuckerberg's goal to get more people vaccinated, swarms of comments from anti-vaxx posters overwhelmed even authoritative sources — per Facebook's own research https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : This insight from a frustrated former Facebooker goes a long way toward explaining why so many of Facebook's seemingly well-intended reforms turn out to backfire spectacularly: real change would require value judgments FB is unable or unwilling to make. https://warzel.substack.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Evan Greer / @evan_greer : actually i think that this largely misses the point and reinforces a false narrative. the problem is that it's actually genuinely impossible to effectively make those decisions about what is “good” & “bad” at the scale of billions of pieces of content in dozens of languages, etc https://twitter.com/... Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : Good lord. https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : @evan_greer I think you make a good point, though I'd argue our perspectives are more compatible than they first seem. i.e., the “inherently fucked” business model may help to explain why Facebook is “unable or unwilling” to construct its products around a vision of what's good and bad. Evan Greer / @evan_greer : This doesn't mean Facebook is “right” & we should just leave them alone or that they're “doing the best they can” or whatever. It means their entire biz model (of harvesting our data & using it to algorithmically amplify and suppress content for engagement) is inherently fucked Elizabeth Warren / @senwarren : Instead of trying to address the proliferation of false and divisive content on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg continues to look the other way. No company should be too big to be held accountable for spreading misinformation, toxicity, and violent content. https://www.wsj.com/... @migueldeicaza : Facebook is a trash company, with garbage morals and principles - it needs to be dismantled and its rotten corpse fed to the vultures. We knew Facebook was a trash fire, but the new Facebook Files reporting from the WSJ show that it is explosive shit on fire. https://twitter.com/... Pierre Asselin / @pierasselin : @ScheckWSJ ... I just can't say enough good things about this series. All of you are doing amazing work. This reads like a dystopian novel. Facebook implants platforms in countries without any concern for the collateral damage, and no infrastructure to prevent it. Grady Booch / @grady_booch : Facebook is a profoundly unethical company, and it starts at the top with Mark. It is also apparently a profoundly incompetent company. https://twitter.com/... Cathy O'Neil / @mathbabedotorg : As I say in my algorithmic auditing business, the work of auditing algorithms is having the difficult conversation about values that the people were attempting to avoid when they put the algorithm into place. There's no way to audit an algorithm without talking about values. https://twitter.com/... @techemails : Mark Zuckerberg emails Anthony Fauci February 27, 2020 https://twitter.com/... Jeff Horwitz / @jeffhorwitz : Some @Facebook folks have told me we should pay more attention to how the interplay between social media and cable TV news affected the public discussion of Covid vaccines, including on the company's platforms. It's not something that belonged in this story, but they're right. Joe Bernstein / @bernstein : A fascinating nugget from the outstanding Facebook series, which goes to the question of whether people are persuaded by the prevalence of bad information, or turned off by it. Facebook's desperate attempts to goose engagement suggest, to me, the latter https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Gilad Edelman / @giladedelman : Lots of good stuff here, but IMO the framing gets way ahead of the evidence. So pro-vaccine posts get flooded with anti-vaxx comments. But is there any reason to think FB comments heavily affect people's beliefs? Let alone enough to “hobble” FB's effort? https://www.wsj.com/... Josh Barro / @jbarro : @mattyglesias Also, that the “good” information source Facebook tried to steer people toward is the WHO should be a clue that the societal information problem here is way bigger than an algorithm. https://twitter.com/... Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : As always, there are underlying societal problems at the heart of this. The challenge: Which problems are just FB shining a light on societal problems? Which problems are FB exacerbating underlying societal problems? Which problems are FB *creating* underlying societal problems? https://twitter.com/... Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : the hits keep on coming, none of which is a surprise:"We created the machine and we can't control the machine." How Facebook turned into a tool for Covid-19 vaccine opponents, dashing Mark Zuckerberg's ambition to support the rollout. https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ Michael Gartenberg / @gartenberg : The more I read The Facebook files the more horrified I get at what's going on there. Makes me wonder if this is just the tip of the iceberg floating on the surface and what's underneath Will Oremus / @willoremus : This WSJ series is a great reminder that if you work for a company that is sitting on information that you are convinced the world deserves to know, you are not helpless. You can contact a journalist you trust—ideally via secure channels—about making that information known. Dan Gillmor / @dangillmor : WSJ's deep reporting shows that the covid cult effectively used Facebook's capabilities in their campaign to torpedo vaccinations and spread the virus. https://www.wsj.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : There was a lot new, but the most significant contribution imo was showing that FB's own research supports conclusions that critics have long suspected but struggled to prove without access to internal data—and which FB execs in some cases have denied. https://twitter.com/... Tommy Vietor / @tvietor08 : “In the weeks before Mr. Zuckerberg made his announcement, another memo said initial testing concluded that roughly 41% of comments on English-language vaccine-related posts risked discouraging vaccinations.” https://www.wsj.com/... Jodi Kantor / @jodikantor : The @WSJ saved the most damning part of their series, about how Zuckerberg wanted to provide reliable vaccine information but lost control of his own creation, for last. https://www.wsj.com/... Ed Bott / @edbott : Every time I consider rejoining Facebook, something like this pops into my TL and the nausea prevents me from going through with it. https://twitter.com/... @pinboard : This is not unique to the WSJ, but part of a dismaying industry standard in journalism. For example, the New York Times ran a flagship series on privacy, complete with earnest editorial calling for regulation, that was stuffed with ad trackers. https://twitter.com/... @pinboard : Facebook makes an attractive and compelling villain, but the problem is systemic, and hiding this fact only makes large news sites' relationship with readers more adversarial. It's like telling grapes all about how evil Ernest and Julio Gallo are while you pick them. @pinboard : The people who built this extractive and exploitative system of delivering online journalism are the ones now who weep the loudest about the spread of misinformation, and why people don't trust them as much as they should. @om : Somehow reading the @wsj story about Facebook vindicates what been writing/saying for almost a decade. It feels me sadder because we are now permanently caught in this vortex of misinformation, lies & mental pollination. Even they don't know how to stop the monster they unleashed Mike Caulfield / @holden : A while back, for my own benefit, I started to conceptualize platform companies as large governmental bureaucracies, where there isn't a single entity but a bunch of warring factions, and this @WillOremus develops my thinking on that. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Tim Marchman / @timmarchman : Maybe the best person to run the trillion-dollar surveillance machine isn't the guy who has spent his entire adult life in a bubble he built as a post-adolescent to protect him from reality. https://www.wsj.com/... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : Even authoritative sources of vaccine information were becoming “cesspools of anti-vaccine comments,” the authors wrote. “That's a huge problem and we need to fix it,” they said. https://www.wsj.com/... Jemima McEvoy / @jemimacmcevoy : Nugget from WSJ's Facebook story today: Mark Zuckerberg wrote to Dr. Fauci asking if he could personally fund vaccine trials. https://www.wsj.com/... Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel : It can feel performative when people say things like ‘Facebook is not compatible with democracy.’ But I do believe that Facebook, at its current scale and in its current design, is not really compatible with humanity. https://warzel.substack.com/ ... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Let's be clear here. This is UNICEF having to buy advertising from Facebook in order to offset antivax comments on their pages. Advertisers and publishers have dealt with this but it's horrific when you think of the millions of people dead globally. /7 https://twitter.com/... Poppy Alexander / @poppyalexander : How many more horrible stories are going to come out about FB employees raising alarms over horrific crimes committed on the platform before the company starts listening to its own whistleblowers? https://twitter.com/... David Carroll / @profcarroll : Meanwhile, 41% of the 755M daily vaccine related comment impressions on Facebook are anti-vax as the market for counterfeit vaccination cards surges.🤔 https://t.co/AkNbHZ9RWU https://t.co/8JR5TBEZxT Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Important thing to understand on Facebook. It's stock is only down 2-3% in a week from hell with its CEO on front of WSJ for everything from covering up and hiding findings on their role in aiding teenage harm, revenge porn, protecting elites, lengthening pandemic, et al. /1 https://t.co/U0RvwaZSJm Jesse Eisinger / @eisingerj : This WSJ Facebook series definitely proves how little Zuckerberg & the company care about causing devastating harm as long as there's profit in it. One of the most important series on an American corporation in years. https://www.wsj.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Someone on Facebook's team didn't revolt when they decided to leave the maximum comments at 300 PER HOUR PER PERSON on authoritative health source pages. For how long? Why weren't these tactics in place before the pandemic? /9 https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : OK, I'm getting a bit outraged here. Rather than sell advertising to UNICEF to offset antivax trolling, Facebook could have done this much earlier ⬇️ It isn't “breaking glass” as they call it. It's &;@$ing information architecture, common sense and human decency over profits. /8 https://twitter.com/... Charles Arthur / @charlesarthur : Again: #SocialWarming in action. The algorithm amplifies, those with the least information but the biggest motivation swamp the informed content. Because Facebook, like Google, selects on popularity, not accuracy. (Read my book for more on that.) https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : Users were seeing comments discouraging vaccinations on vaccine-related posts 775 million times a day, the memo said, and Facebook worried the large proportion of negative comments could influence perceptions of vaccine safety https://www.wsj.com/... Alex Howard / @digiphile : Too big to succeed. https://www.facebook.com/... https://twitter.com/... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : Our latest story in the Facebook investigation series: Facebook researchers warned that comments on vaccine-related posts—often factual posts of the sort Facebook sought to promote—were filled with antivaccine rhetoric aimed at undermining their message https://www.wsj.com/... Nilay Patel / @reckless : Facebook is a designed product; you could design it another way. But this is how Facebook wants it! Nilay Patel / @reckless : Facebook's greatest trick is convincing people other social networks don't exist https://twitter.com/... Andrew Restuccia / @andrewrestuccia : “....another memo said initial testing concluded that roughly 41% of comments on English-language vaccine-related posts risked discouraging vaccinations. Users were seeing comments on vaccine-related posts 775 million times a day...” https://www.wsj.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : @samschech ... “In the weeks before Mr. Zuckerberg made his announcement, another memo said initial testing concluded that roughly 41% of comments on English-language vaccine-related posts risked discouraging vaccinations.” https://www.wsj.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : @CCDHate @Imi_Ahmed Facebook executives are openly discussing whether they created a monster, per the Wall Street Journal. https://twitter.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : Hard to argue that Joe Biden's statement that social media is “killing people” wasn't entirely accurate- easier to argue it was likely an understatement. https://www.wsj.com/... @jaspar : anyone that's ever worked for even 5 seconds on a news page in facebook could've 100% predicted this https://twitter.com/... @amnestytech : More from @WSJ - @Facebook 's own tools undermined Mark Zuckerberg's goal to support the vaccine roll-out. An internal memo reported that even authoritative sources of vaccine information were becoming a “cesspool of anti-vaccine comments” #FacebookFiles https://www.wsj.com/... Marietje Schaake / @marietjeschaake : Blinding hubris, hoping good intentions magically turn into good outcomes without governing for it (but oh, stop democratic governments from ‘regulating the internet’ please): How Facebook Hobbled Mark Zuckerberg's Bid to Get America Vaccinated ↘️ https://www.wsj.com/... Katie Martin / @katie_martin_fx : but, ya know, apart from that... https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Lachlan Markay / @lachlan : Excited to announce my new biotech startup, Frnknstn https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : WSJ Facebook Files Part V: “Company documents show antivaccine activists undermined the CEO's ambition to support the rollout by flooding the site and using Facebook's own tools to sow doubt about the Covid-19 vaccine” @samschech @JeffHorwitz @EmilyGlazer https://www.wsj.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : AI is so powerful https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Emily Glazer / @emilyglazer : NEW: How Facebook hobbled Mark Zuckerberg's bid to get America vaccinated. Company documents show how anti-vaccine activists used Facebook's own tools to sow doubt about the Covid-19 vaccine, with @samschech and @JeffHorwitz. https://www.wsj.com/... Tim Murphy / @timothypmurphy : idk, maybe this website shouldn't have been allowed to become “the entire internet” https://www.wsj.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : Based in this reporting: hard to argue that Joe Biden's statement that social media is “killing people” wasn't entirely accurate- easier to argue it was likely an understatement. https://twitter.com/... Steve Kovach / @stevekovach : Not surprising Facebook sees the WSJ series as a leaking-to-the-media problem. Not a we're-harming-people problem. https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Kevin Roose / @kevinroose : They've gotta call the mercy rule at some point. https://www.wsj.com/... Matt Rosoff / @mattrosoff : “Facebook is acutely aware that the products and systems central to its business success routinely fail and cause harm.” https://www.wsj.com/... Sam Schechner / @samschech : Mark Zuckerberg made Covid vaccines a top company priority. But Facebook failed to stop a cadre of users from flooding the platform with what internal researchers described “cesspools of anti-vaccine comments.” New from @JeffHorwitz, @EmilyGlazer and me: https://www.wsj.com/... Sherrilyn Ifill / @sifill_ldf : Another devastating story about Facebook. You think you know the worst of it, but there's always more. https://www.wsj.com/... Dustin Volz / @dnvolz : this is a horrifying detail about Facebook being aware of a drug cartel's gruesome content on its platforms and failing to stop it despite being told by its own staff the material was a problem and that the cartel was evading its existing ban https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Alex Kantrowitz / @kantrowitz : “The fear was that eventually users might stop using Facebook altogether.” This was the most interesting sentence in the @WSJ's series about Facebook this week. We learned what Facebook does with its survival at stake. This week on @BigTechnology: https://bigtechnology.substack.com/ ... Rep. Ken Buck / @repkenbuck : Facebook knowingly provided a safe haven for sex traffickers and criminal organizations. Big Tech is more interested in the financial profits generated by their users, than in the people these companies were created to help. https://www.wsj.com/... Chris Vickery / @vickerysec : Ultimately, I view the WSJ article as a highly deceptive puff piece for Facebook. “Oooooh look at this really outrageous, but not technically illegal, thing that Facebook has been doing! Focus your hatred and energy on this easily dodge-able issue right here!” Rebecca Ballhaus / @rebeccaballhaus : More astonishing revelations in the latest #facebookfiles installment, including that for Ethiopia—where armed groups have used FB to incite violence—the company doesn't have enough employees who speak the relevant languages to monitor the situation. https://www.wsj.com/... @samidh : Today's WSJ reporting was especially difficult for me to read because it touches on a topic that probably “kept me awake” more than anything else when I was at FB. And that is, how can social networks operate responsibly in the global south? https://www.wsj.com/... 🧵... Dustin Volz / @dnvolz : New @WSJ Facebook Files article just dropped: Human traffickers, a drug cartel and prostitution rings have used Facebook for recruitment—abuses flagged by its employees that in some cases the tech giant made little effort to stop, internal documents show https://www.wsj.com/... Newley Purnell / @newley : Human traffickers, a drug cartel and prostitution rings have used Facebook for recruitment—abuses flagged by its employees that in some cases the tech giant made little effort to stop, internal documents show. With @ScheckWSJ @JeffHorwitz #FacebookFiles https://www.wsj.com/... Andy Stone / @andymstone : As we told the Journal, we continue to invest in AI to help us improve our enforcement against these organizations at scale. In instances of imminent harm, we may also provide relevant information to law enforcement, in accordance with applicable law and our terms of service. @jimstewartson : This story is not about trafficking, although that is very significant, it's about Facebook systematically allowing its platform to be used for violence, suppression and large-scale crime. Just a reminder, still on the Board — Peter Fucking Thiel. #PFT https://www.wsj.com/... David Carroll / @profcarroll : What if Facebook should not exist? What if Facebook is actually a terrible idea? What if extracting data and attention out of nations at any cost is causing a net harm to humanity despite executives paid generously to insist otherwise? What if Mark Zuckerberg is a failed emperor? https://twitter.com/... Priyanjana Bengani / @acookiecrumbles : Also, there's something incredibly depressing about only 13% of the content moderation efforts being expended outside the US when ~10% of Facebook's users are in the US & Canada, and the rest are elsewhere. https://www.businessofapps.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Priyanjana Bengani / @acookiecrumbles : Apple threatening to remove Facebook's apps from the App Store after a BBC story on ‘maids for sale,’ and that spurring Facebook into action as it could have “potentially severe consequences to the business” is staggering. (This whole piece is tbh) https://www.wsj.com/... @rmac18 : The WSJ led by @JeffHorwitz has been publishing amazing Facebook stuff all week, but I think this is the most important story thus far. FB screws up in the US, but its global screw ups are often so much worse and impactful. And they often go uncovered. https://www.wsj.com/... Christopher Mims / @mims : An internal Facebook investigator found a Mexican drug cartel was using Facebook to recruit, train and pay hit men. Facebook declined to stop them posting on the site or Instagram. And it's hardly the only example, says @WSJ's ongoing investigation: https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : All of the @WSJ stories in the Facebook Files series have been great, but I think this may be the most damning one yet. It chronicles a persistent inequality in how the company approaches content moderation in the US versus everywhere else. It's gross. Robert McMillan / @bobmcmillan : Another day, another blockbuster @Facebook scoop with @JeffHorwitz's name on it. https://www.wsj.com/... Nate Sibley / @natesibley : “A Mexican drug cartel was using Facebook to recruit, train and pay hit men. The behavior was shocking and in clear violation of Facebook's rules. But the company didn't stop the cartel from posting on Facebook or Instagram...” https://www.wsj.com/... Dustin Volz / @dnvolz : “Scores of internal Facebook documents reviewed by @WSJ show employees raising alarms about how its platforms are used in some developing countries ... They also show the company's response, which in many instances is inadequate or nothing at all.” https://twitter.com/... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : One document suggested the company should use a light touch with Arabic-language warnings about human trafficking so as not to “alienate buyers”—meaning Facebook users who buy the domestic laborers' contracts, often in situations akin to slavery. https://www.wsj.com/... @amnestytech : NEW: Latest #FacebookFiles @WSJ report how @Facebook has rapidly expanded across the world - without caring about the consequences. Former VP says company treats harm in developing countries as “simply the cost of doing business”. https://www.wsj.com/... Joseph Cotterill / @jsphctrl : How to write an intro. (The rest is devastating too.) https://www.wsj.com/... Eric Garland / @ericgarland : Facebook went easy on the Sinaloa Cartel using its service even after they were caught doing, y'know, drug cartel stuff. Shut. The. Company. Down. https://www.wsj.com/... Jason Dean / @jasonrdean : Human traffickers, a drug cartel and prostitution rings have used Facebook to recruit. Employees flagged the abuses but the company sometimes did little in response @ScheckWSJ & @JeffHorwitz with the latest #TheFacebookFiles story https://www.wsj.com/... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : An internal Facebook report said actors including some states were frequently promoting violence, exacerbating ethnic divides and delegitimizing social institutions. “This is particularly prevalent—and problematic—in At Risk Countries,” the report says. https://www.wsj.com/... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : The developing world already has hundreds of millions more Facebook users than the U.S.—more than 90% of monthly users are outside the U.S. and Canada. Nearly all Facebook's new users are coming from developing countries https://www.wsj.com/... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : Facebook treats harm in developing countries as “simply the cost of doing business” in those places, said Brian Boland, a former Facebook Vice President. Facebook has focused its safety efforts on wealthier markets with powerful governments and media https://www.wsj.com/... Jim Carlton / @jimcarltonsf : Another day, another damning revelation against Facebook by @jeffHorwitz Facebook Employees Flag Drug Cartels and Human Traffickers. The Company's Response Is Weak, Documents Show. - WSJ https://www.wsj.com/... Adam Smith / @asmith83 : There are dozens of Facebook stories with quotes from spokespeople that are basically, “yes we fucked up that time, but it won't happen again.” https://www.wsj.com/... Rebecca Ballhaus / @rebeccaballhaus : “Most of our great integrity work over the last 2 years doesn't work in much of the world,” a Facebook team wrote in a December planning document. In some high-risk places like Ethiopia, the team wrote, “we're largely blind to problems on our site.” https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook had already pledged to curb vaccine misinformation by reducing the visibility and recommendations of anti-vaccine pages and groups. Its own later research nevertheless identified substantial harm from vaccine content that still complied with its rules.
The newly documented comment tactics expose a gap between Zuckerberg's vaccine-promotion priority and the platform's enforcement model. They also follow internal findings that a 2018 engagement-focused change worsened interactions rather than improving them.
First-order effects
- Facebook's vaccine-promotion posts became venues where antivaccine activists could attach negative comments and sow doubt, undercutting the intended public-health message.
- Zuckerberg's stated vaccine priority now conflicts with internal evidence that Facebook's moderation did not prevent coordinated negative engagement around those posts.
Second-order effects
- Facebook must address comment-level coordination alongside its earlier page-, group-, recommendation-, and ad-focused vaccine measures, rather than treating policy-violating posts as the sole enforcement target.
- The finding strengthens the significance of Facebook's internal research on harmful rule-compliant content, making the boundary between permitted speech and platform-amplified harm harder to maintain.
Third-order effects
- If this pattern holds, platform safety systems will be judged not only on whether they remove prohibited content but on whether product features let coordinated actors overwhelm authoritative information through otherwise permitted engagement.
- The Facebook documents point toward a broader shift from content-by-content moderation to assessing how ranking, comments, and engagement incentives shape information environments.
The trend: Social-platform moderation is moving from policing individual posts toward addressing coordinated engagement tactics and harm that can occur within formal rules.