Sources: emergency meetings continue inside Facebook amid WSJ exposé, as some research staff decry Facebook's public response in group chats
Read in app Isaiah Poritz / OpenSecrets.org : Facebook maintained big lobbying expenses ahead of Senate hearing on teen social media use Robin Raskin / Techonomy : Instagram for Kids: Doomed from the Start Sarvesh Mathi / MediaNama : IG stands for Instagram, but it also stands for Instagreed: Senators grill Facebook in hearing Tweets: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Facebook employees freaking out that social media is bad for teens while it's just another Sunday at XBox Live, TikTok & Snapchat reminds me of Google employees staging walkouts over work considered mundane at Microsoft & Amazon. It's all about expectation setting or mis-setting Eric Morrow / @morroweric : Sen. Blumenthal asks Facebook “Will you commit to ending Finsta?” Facebook's safety chief has to explain that Finsta is slang for a fake account. https://twitter.com/... Cecilia Kang / @ceciliakang : Where are Mark and Sheryl? Zuckerberg hasn't posted in days Sandberg's post from 9/29 has scalding comments 👀 @Mosseri has been MIA since his week on Today Show and the Met Gala red carpet latest on internal turmoil by @MikeIsaac @sheeraf @RMac18 https://www.nytimes.com/... Grady Booch / @grady_booch : FaceBook is a profoundly unethical company and it starts at the top, with Mark. https://twitter.com/... John Panzer / @jpanzer : When you lay it out like this it sounds bad. https://twitter.com/... Damon Beres / @dlberes : I'm glad this piece got written and agree with the ultimate point (although the “we” at the end here feels a little flimsy), but ... https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Venkatesh Rao / @vgr : Damn. This is a siege https://twitter.com/... Rat King / @mikeisaac : Clegg posted the memo internally to employees on Friday evening, after the Times published a story about the past three weeks of emergency meetings and tumult at the company https://www.nytimes.com/... Martin Fowler / @martinfowler : 🔥from @gruber “Their research shows that Facebook is doing harm to society and harm to teenagers, but what makes them threaten to leave is having their work disparaged? What a magnet for sociopaths this company is.” https://daringfireball.net/... Donie O'Sullivan / @donie : In addition, Instagram does essentially push “Finstas” — I have been getting prompts from Instagram in the app recently to set up secondary accounts. Anyone else? https://twitter.com/... Jeff Kosseff / @jkosseff : My book about anonymous speech comes out in March, so we should have about 30 bills proposing real name requirements by June. https://twitter.com/... J.D. Vance / @jdvance1 : Embarrassing how the tech leaders run circles around so many senators. https://twitter.com/... Jeff Horwitz / @jeffhorwitz : This is unfortunate — execs who have traditionally defended research don't seem to be showing up. There are other ways the company could have responded to the reporting. This way seems to confirm that comms comes before work. https://www.nytimes.com/... Carole Cadwalladr / @carolecadwalla : Fascinating thread on a whole world of trouble & pain that Facebook is in. For so long, this company has faced no consequences. That maybe about to change https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : (set record) https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Cody Venzke / @venzkec : Awesome dunking on a clip w/o context. Right before this, Blumenthal notes that “finstas” are fake Instagram accts and outlines the financial incentive to turn a blind eye to multiple accts, regardless of the safety implications. Starts at 01:17:20: https://www.commerce.senate.gov/ ... https://twitter.com/... Chillian J. Yikes / @jilliancyork : Great piece and I agree with most of it, but I don't think the solution is merely “more and better” people - it's true diversity and radical inclusion, something Facebook has always failed at. https://twitter.com/... Jon Wiley / @jonwiley : A good piece that flags the problem with “engagement” as the top metric for optimization. I'd say that the performance management systems at technology companies - how companies measure and decide how to reward employees - is a) unexamined by lawmakers and b) the key to change. https://twitter.com/... Siddhartha Mahanta / @sidhubaba : The revelations of the @WSJ's Facebook Files series confirm what researchers and journalists have long suspected. There's an opportunity here for the company to change, if it seizes it, @Klonick writes: https://www.nytimes.com/... Adam McCue / @mccue : Great piece from someone who tells everyone she introduces me to that we met on LiveJournal. https://twitter.com/... Pia Gadkari / @piagadkari : Excited to see The Facebook Files making waves. If you want to catch up on the podcast series, you can listen 👇 https://open.spotify.com/... https://twitter.com/... @ultraviolet : We, as users of Facebook, have the power to change how @Facebook operates. Join UltraViolet, @kairos_action, @accountabletech, @dailykos, and more in our Facebook & Instagram logout campaign on November 10th >> https://thefblogout.com/ https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Martin Kessler / @martinkessler91 : “Whistle-blowing gets us halfway there. We have to do the rest.” https://twitter.com/... David Kaye / @davidakaye : this closer from @Klonick is spot on https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... @accountabletech : Facebook employees should be embarrassed. “In one group text message chain shared with The New York Times, Facebook data scientists and researchers discussed how they were being ‘embarrassed’ by their own employer.” https://www.nytimes.com/... Mike Butcher / @mikebutcher : Since Instagram has roughly 1 billion users, and Facebook knows - from its *own* research - that 3% of them are suffering mental health problems because of the app, that's around 30 million people. https://www.nytimes.com/... Richard Blumenthal / @senblumenthal : We now know while Facebook publicly denies that Instagram is deeply harmful for teens, privately Facebook researchers/experts have been ringing the alarm. 2/ Richard Blumenthal / @senblumenthal : Thread: If trending can get more people interested in discussing Facebook's heinous wrongs, let's talk about it. This month a whistleblower approached my office to provide reports & documents about Facebook & Instagram. What they reveal is damning. 1/ Roger McNamee / @moonalice : “If Instagram can cause 3 percent of our users to report strongly negative thoughts (depression, anxiety, self-harm), I think that's a problem worth looking into,” one employee wrote. Instagram has roughly 1 billion users, so 3% is 30 million kids. https://www.nytimes.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : In the transformation of tv, people often forget just how many people still tune in to 60 Minutes on NFL Sundays especially when they bridge to a topic of interest across generations. Instagram + whistleblower + scandal is gold for ratings, very bad for Facebook. @brianstelter https://twitter.com/... Richard Blumenthal / @senblumenthal : We all know that Facebook treated protecting kids with disregard. If it had protected kids, like it did its revenue growth, it would have done a whole lot more. Instead, Facebook has evaded, misled, & deceived. 7/ Richard Blumenthal / @senblumenthal : In truth, Facebook is using Big Tobacco's playbook. By hiding its own research on addiction & the toxic effects of its products, it has attempted to deceive the public & Congress about what it knows, while weaponizing childhood vulnerabilities against kids. 5/ Richard Blumenthal / @senblumenthal : Facebook has asked us to trust it, but after these evasions & revelations, why should we? It's clear that Facebook has done nothing to earn that trust. Not from us, not from parents, not from the public. 4/ Richard Blumenthal / @senblumenthal : Yesterday's hearing was a continuation of our legislative pursuits, but also a call to action for Facebook to get real—real fast—about change. Parents, the public, & Congress deserve the truth. We need accountability. 8 Richard Blumenthal / @senblumenthal : Facebook has chosen growth over children's mental health & wellbeing. Greed over preventing the suffering of children. 6/ Richard Blumenthal / @senblumenthal : We now know that Facebook routinely puts profits ahead of kids' online safety. We know it chooses the growth of its products over the well-being of our children. We now know it is indefensibly delinquent in acting to protect kids. 3/ Carole Cadwalladr / @carolecadwalla : Exactly! Excellent thread from Senator who led yesterday's hearing. https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Exactly. And even then it's a deceptive counter argument. Looking at the percent with those thoughts tracking back to Instagram is significantly higher. Think about what we rightly have done for lower percentages and older population from Covid. https://twitter.com/... @rmac18 : FB's top two execs have said nothing publicly about the crisis. Zuckerberg's only public comment about any reporting has been about his hydrofoil, while he's posted about new gadgets. Sandberg held a small business panel. How long can they remain quiet? https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... @robaeprice : Facebook is engulfed in scandal (again) over its products' impact on kids and Mark Zuckerberg wants nothing to do with it. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Kate Klonick / @klonick : I wrote @nytopinion about some of the long term takeaways for reform that came out of @JeffHorwitz's great Facebook Files series at @WSJ Special thanks to @alexstamos & @jilliancyork who both gave me great thoughts and/or quotes that unfortunately got cut https://www.nytimes.com/... Kovach-O-Lantern / @stevekovach : The senator is apparently talking about his “finsta” flub yesterday, which was one of the top trending Twitter topics. It was a funny moment for sure. But overall, the questioning from senators, including Blumenthal, in the hearing was the best we've seen yet. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The crisis began with the Journal’s report that Facebook’s own research identified harm to a sizeable share of Instagram users, particularly teen girls. Facebook then released annotated versions of two internal studies ahead of further publication, while the Journal published six documents underlying its reporting.
The new reporting puts Facebook’s internal response under strain: researchers are criticizing the company’s public framing in employee chats as senators scrutinize teen social-media safety and a whistleblower has supplied materials to Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
First-order effects
- Facebook’s communications leadership must manage a widening gap between its public rebuttal and employee concerns, while Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg remain publicly silent.
- Facebook researchers become an internal source of pressure on the company’s handling of the Instagram findings, rather than merely the authors of the underlying research.
Second-order effects
- Sen. Blumenthal and other senators gain a more concrete basis to challenge Facebook’s teen-safety claims, as internal research and the company’s annotations can be compared directly.
- Facebook’s selective document releases invite closer scrutiny of what the company chose to disclose after the Journal’s report on the research findings, increasing the reputational cost of a defensive response.
Third-order effects
- If internal safety research repeatedly becomes public only through leaks and press reporting, platform trust increasingly depends on disclosure practices as much as on the underlying product safeguards.
- Congressional attention to teen social-media safety may shift toward whether platforms’ internal evidence and external assurances align, making governance of research a policy issue alongside content and product design.
The trend: Platform safety controversies are moving from disputes over isolated harms to disputes over whether companies disclose and act on their own internal evidence.