The Worm Turns Slowly  ⚐

“With so many internal forces propping up the production of hateful and violent content, the task of stopping hate and violence on Facebook starts to feel even more sisyphean than it already is,” the employee wrote in their “badge post,” a traditional farewell note for any departing Facebook employee. “It also makes it embarrassing to work here.”

Yikes.

More stunning, they estimated using the company’s own figures that, even with artificial intelligence and third-party moderators, the company was “deleting less than 5% of all of the hate speech posted to Facebook.”

Yikes. Yikes.

I’ve talked to a number of people who’ve given up using Facebook over the last year. I haven’t found a single one who regrets it. For the few good things that Facebook does (I do think community groups and affinity groups that let you stay connected are admirable), it is clearly a net drain on society.