Facebook slams Wall Street Journal reports as ‘deliberate mischaracterisations’

The company’s vice-president of global affairs said the paper had not presented the whole picture on the ‘difficult issues’

Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs, has slammed the Wall Street Journal for reporting that the social media giant was aware of negative impacts of some of its products.

The newspaper’s work contained “deliberate mischaracterisations of what we are trying to do, and conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook’s leadership and employees”, the former British deputy prime minister said.

Reporting by the newspaper on what Facebook knew about the mental health impacts on teenage girls of its photo-sharing platform Instagram has led to outrage and calls for increased regulation.

The paper also reported that Facebook content moderation goes easy on politicians and celebrities even when they violate user guidelines, and said human traffickers and drug cartels take advantage of Facebook’s reach and growth in developing countries.

In a statement posted on Facebook’s corporate website on Saturday under the title “What the Wall Street Journal Got Wrong”, Clegg said the paper had not presented the whole picture on the “most difficult issues we grapple with as a company – from content moderation and vaccine misinformation, to algorithmic distribution and the well-being of teens”.

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