platform. according to local activists and free speech advocates. that decision, and mark zuckerberg s reportedly personal involvement in it, that is just one of the mounting revelations that has come out of what s being called the facebook papers, a trove of documents provided by facebook whistleblower to a consortium of news outlets around the world. it s been making headlines all weekend and into today. there s dozens of stories that have derived from these documents, dozens of stories, and multiple news outlets, nationwide and worldwide. and i m sure we re going to get a lot more stories out of these documents in the coming days. one of the more harrowing pictures that is starting to form already revolves around what appears to be a fairly routine test to see where it s algorithm is leading its users. in the summer of 2019, a researcher at facebook made a dummy account, a fake account for a person named carol smith. this fake carol smith persona was set up sort of generically.
recommendations to join the qanon groups, within a week, carol smith s feed was filled with hate speech, and disinformation. that researcher published the story of that dummy account s journey in a 2019 internal report of facebook called carol s journey to qanon. but even after that was found and reported inside facebook by their own researchers, nothing happened. at least not a lot happened that we can tell, and that was not a stand alone incident. an incredibly similar thing happened with the dummy account in india this 2019. instead of a conservative mom being told to go full qanon, though, in this piece, the dummy account was a 21-year-old indian woman set up as a generic account set up without expressing much interest in anything, quickly flooded with quite disgusting, lurid, antimuslim hate speech and propaganda. the facebook researcher said the
it s been making headlines all weekend and into today. there s dozens of stories that have derived from these documents, dozens of stories, and multiple news outlets, nationwide and worldwide. and i m sure we re going to get a lot more stories out of these documents in the coming days. one of the more harrowing pictures that is starting to form already revolves around what appears to be a fairly routine test to see where it s algorithm is leading its users. in the summer of 2019, a researcher at facebook made a dummy account, a fake account for a person named carol smith. this fake carol smith persona was set up sort of generically. a politically conservative mom from north carolina, from wilmington, north carolina, she expressed in her facebook profile as she signed up an interest in politics and parenting and christianity and
carol s journey to qanon. but even after that was found and reported inside facebook by their own researchers, nothing happened. at least not a lot happened that we can tell, and that was not a standalone incident. an incredibly similar thing happened with dummy account in india this 2019. instead of a conservative mom being told to go full qanon, though, in this piece, the dummy account was a 21-year-old indian woman set up as a generic account set up without expressing much interest in anything, very quickly being flooded with quite disgusting, quite lurid, anti-muslim hate speech and propaganda. the facebook researcher who built that account said, quote, the test feed s news feed is a constant barrage of misinformation, violence, and gore. again, just by following facebook s recommendations. now, in response to these test cases, facebook has pointed to
followed just a few other facebook accounts, including fox news and president trump, and that s it. just sort of a bare bones profile, and this fake account, this carol smith account never expressed any interest in conspiracy theories of any kind. but nevertheless it only took two days that facebook recommended that that person, care smith, should join groups dedicated to qanon, that democrats are a secret cabal of satan worshipping pedophiles and will be executed in a mass public execution at guantanamo, really, carol, so soon, and even though the researcher running the fake account did not engage with those groups, with those recommendations to join the qanon groups, within a week, carol smith s feed was filled with groups and pages that violated facebook s own rules because they were filled with hate speech and disinformation. that researcher published the story of that dummy account s journey in a 2019 internal report of facebook called