they actively made decisions not just to profit from some of this bad information that it was putting out, but they had algorithms that directed innocent people who were not actively looking for qanon and conspiracy theories to those pages. the problem with this whole thing is that facebook has created a worldwide network that connects 3 billion people to each other with no walls or safeguards of any kind. they then have an advertising system that is designed to essentially engage people with outrage and fear, and in the process, what happens is it takes fringe ideas like qaon, like antivaccine and white supremacy and the like and it takes them ask drives them into the mainstream and because it was so profitable, facebook was faced with a dilemma. it could do the right thing which was to stomp it out or it could continue to promote the stuff which is what it actually did and it was complicated by
the fact that president trump was, you know, driving his fans to maga with exactly the same conspiracy theories that had historically been at the fringe, and so their political interest was tied to the economic interest and it drove it like crazy. in preparing for this conversation you and i were texting and there s this other stuff and it s the stuff that we know about and the popular stuff and it s easy to understand and there are disclosures from texas and california that you suggest might have evidence of criminal behavior getting all of the way to the top of facebook management. see, ali, the issue that we ve got going on here is that facebook has been unpatrolled forever. as a consequence they lost sight of where the legal lines were and there are cases in california and an attorneys general case led by the texas ag that is about price fixing related to google and facebook and there were disclosures on both of those cases friday and in one case it has to do with
revenue recognition and it has to do realistically with the way that facebook, the way that facebook treats advertisers the, and it s historically confessed to overstating how many people saw the ads. we also know that there are issues with the number of people on facebook, that number may also be inflated. for the securities and exchange commission all of these are potential felony indications so there needs to be an sec investigation to figure out whether revenue for the companies is correct. in texas the case is about price fixing and advertising and this is google and facebook working together and it s really a very disturbing situation because there are emails that appear to be in the highest ranks of facebook related to what was a conspiracy, that needs to be taken to the federal government
matters if voting rights are be on obliterated and we ll see if there s any hope of passing voting rights and you ve seen the voter suppression laws. we ll talk to the family of a maude arbery how flawed the process is because it excludes people of color. we ll have a lot coming up, but ali, my new obsession is the new hit show reservation dogs. i am so obsessed and bingeing it. i m on episode 3, no spoilers. the actress will be on about talking about the groundbreaking show. the cast is all indigenous and so is the crew when it makes a difference when it comes to the content. you see what happens when people get out of the way and let people of color create and that s all coming up at 10:00 a.m. on the cross connection. maybe tiffany will come on here and tell me about some of
the fallout continues for facebook as new documents provide by whistle-blower frances haugen detailed the extent of the company s initiative on implementing safeguards on its platform. multiple news outlets reported last night that employees raised flags, and internal research shows that facebook s algorithm represented qanon on to unsuspected yierzs yet facebook continued to make some questionable decisions. as the washington post notes in its reporting that the company rolled back some of what it implemented during the election season. it had grown weary of the team s criticisms of the company according to former employees. anger amongst the company s employees boiled over after