The Wall Street Journal's reporting into Facebook research prompts another response from the company.
I’ve been writing about tech, including everything from privacy and security to consumer electronics and startups, since 2011 for a variety of publications.
Facebook has published another response to The Wall Street Journal, and this time, it’s refuting the Journal‘s claim(Opens in a new window) that internal documents show it “knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls.”
“It is simply not accurate that this research demonstrates Instagram is ‘toxic’ for teen girls,” Facebook vice president and head of research Pratiti Raychoudhury says(Opens in a new window). “The research actually demonstrated that many teens we heard from feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced.”
Raychoudhury went on to respond to a number of the Journal‘s claims. In most cases she offered more context about some of the research cited in the relevant report, but she also shared one slide that was referenced in the Journal’s report but not published, as seen below. The overall message was clear: Facebook takes issue with this characterization of its research.
“Our internal research is part of our effort to minimize the bad on our platforms and maximize the good,” Raychoudhury says. “We invest in this research to proactively identify where we can improve — which is why the worst possible results are highlighted in the internal slides. That’s why the most important thing about this research is what we’ve done with it.”
She then cited numerous changes Facebook has made to Instagram—including policy updates meant to reduce the rate at which users are exposed to images of self-harm, resources devoted to body image issues, and anti-bullying features like Restrict, among other things—in response to the research cited in her blog post and in The Wall Street Journal‘s reporting.
The Wall Street Journal previously said that its reporting was based on internal documents, at least some of which have also been shared with the US government by a whistleblower, as well as “interviews with dozens of current and former employees.” Facebook has since claimed the Journal misrepresented the findings of its research, just like Raychoudhury does in the blog post.
But this back-and-forth won’t be limited to newspaper articles and corporate blog posts for long. Raychoudhury says that Facebook’s Global Head of Safety, Antigone Davis, will discuss these issues before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Sept. 30. Presumably more information about Facebook’s research (and its response to its findings) will be revealed then.
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I’ve been writing about tech, including everything from privacy and security to consumer electronics and startups, since 2011 for a variety of publications.
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