Facebook Whistleblower: "There Were Conflicts of Interest" In How FB Dealt With the Spread of Hate & Misinformation

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 Looks like being a social media platform "empowered" by politicians to be the gatekeeper of "good information" can be problematic when profits are on the line:

The identity of the Facebook whistleblower who released tens of thousands of pages of internal research and documents — leading to a firestorm for the social media company in recent weeks — was revealed on "60 Minutes" Sunday night as Frances Haugen.

The 37-year-old former Facebook product manager who worked on civic integrity issues at the company says the documents show that Facebook knows its platforms are used to spread hate, violence and misinformation, and that the company has tried to hide that evidence.

"The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook, and Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money," Haugen told "60 Minutes."

"60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelly quoted one internal Facebook (FB) document as saying: "We have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech, divisive political speech and misinformation on Facebook and the family of apps are affecting societies around the world."

The lesson, people: Doing bad things (or allowing bad things to happen) is usually cheaper/more profitable than doing good things. 

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