Another mountain of formerly hidden Facebook internal research reveals that Facebook and Instagram were well aware of the fact that over 350 million users had reported engaging in compulsive and addiction usage, but the company ended up canning the team behind the findings. In the past month, multiple news sources with access to the leaked internal documents published reports about some extremely worrying decision-making processes at Facebook, which heavily sides with profit and bottom line over the physical safety and mental well-being of users.
One of the discoveries revealed that Facebook and Instagram kept a two-tier system of users for enforcing its content violation policies. One class included the "regular" users, while the second class of high-profile “whitelisted” accounts included politicians, celebrities and journalists. Many of these accounts reportedly posted fake news and misinformation that were allowed to linger on the platform longer than they should. This was just one of the many problems the company was struggling against. Some were then ultimately exposed via the leaked documents as well.
One revelation from the study included that Facebook and Instagram kept a two-tier system of users for enforcing its content violation policies. One class included the "regular" users, while the second class of high-profile “whitelisted” accounts included politicians, celebrities and journalists. Many of these accounts reportedly posted fake news and misinformation that were allowed to linger on the platform longer than they should. This was just one of the many problems the company was struggling against. Some were then ultimately exposed via the leaked documents as well. This means that Facebook and its child Instagram's solution to problem is burying them.
Users reported as part of the internal research "problematic usage habits" such as delaying sleep times and chronic insomnia due to prolonged usage of Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, they reported severe loss of sleep resulting from exposure to disturbing and/or violent content. Facebook allegedly worked on some of the problems in the long run, such as adding a sensitivity slider on Instagram to control the amount of sensitive content that appears on one’s feed but this measure does little to nothing to limit exposure or mitigate risk especially for vulnerable populations. Members of the company's “well-being team” estimated that about 12.5 percent of Facebook’s 2.9 billion users faced the aforementioned issues with compulsive and addictive usage, which translates to roughly 360 million people hooked to the FB platform alone (the data did not include the tally up for IG). As of September 2021, Instagram has 4.18 billion users.
The team found that the sense of lower well-being and problematic use was much higher in the case of Facebook and #Instagram compared to other social media platforms among users. Instagram grapples with similar problems that Meta (Facebook's new face) seemingly has no idea how to fix and no intention of doing so. Some of the users that engaged in the study reported that a barrage of notifications and auto-playing videos made it harder to put down their phones and log off of Facebook-- pointing to the one of the platform's intrinsic addictive design strategies.
Programmed like online casino games who target the pleasure pathways in the brain, Facebook is programmed to be addictive. Facebook has since reshuffled their "well being team" twice after 2017, and the resources allocated were sliced in half during the most critical time for social media companies to address a public health crisis revolving upon a spike in internet related mental health conditions, rising suicide rates linked to platform usage, and the online illicit sex & substance trades.
The well being team was eventually disbanded.
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