Whistleblowers tell of how decisions were made to allow harmful content on Meta’s Instagram and TikTok
Social media giants Meta and TikTok are both accused of taking risks with safety guardrails in order to engage users with content.
Over a dozen whistleblowers have come forward to explain how harmful content was allowed on feeds, in order to compete for users’ attention, the BBC reported.
A Meta engineer told the publication that senior management told them to allow ‘borderline’ harmful content including conspiracy theories and misogynistic content in order to compete with TikTok.
“They sort of told us that it’s because the stock price is down,” the engineer said.
Former Meta researcher, Matt Motyle, alleges that Instagram Reels, the company’s short-form video arm, was launched without sufficient guardrails.
Internal research determined that higher rates of bullying, harassment, hate speech, and violence or incitement were found within comments.
Content creators were allowed by the algorithm to pursue a “path that maximises profits at the expense of their audience’s wellbeing” and the “current set of financial incentives our algorithms create does not appear to be aligned with our mission” – one internal study found.
Revenue at risk
The competition between Meta and TikTok appeared to have led the two platforms to chase engagement at the detriment of their users. Motyl explained the approach was to prioritise speed over safety, with a “common trade-off between protecting people from harmful content and engagement”.
“Meta’s products are used by north of three billion people and the more time they can keep you on there, the more ads they sell, the more money they make. But it’s very important that they get this stuff right, because when they don’t, really bad things happen,” he said.
The report also outlined a shift away from monitoring harmful content, as business positioning changed, a former Meta engineer claims.
“You’re losing to TikTok and therefore your stock price must suffer. People started becoming paranoid and reactive and they were like, let’s just do whatever we can to catch up. Where can we get like 2%, 3% revenue for the next quarter?” he told the BBC.
Meta and TikTok under fire already
This follows reports that as much as 10% of Meta’s ad revenue is earnt from scams, with an internal projection revealing a potential $16bn originating from the sale of banned goods and scam products.
Leaked documents revealed that over the last three years, Meta “failed to identify and stop an avalanche of ads” that exposed billions of users to “fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and the sale of banned medical products”.
TikTok has also come under fire from the European Commission (EC) which found the firm could be in breach of the Digital Services Act in a preliminary investigation due to its addictive design. This includes features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, highly personalised recommendation systems, and push notifications.
The current measures on TikTok, particularly the screentime management and parental control tools, “do not seem to effectively reduce the risks” of addictive behaviour because they are “easy to dismiss and introduce limited friction”, the EC wrote.
Affiliate Leaders reached out to TikTok, Meta, YouTube, and X – but none were willing to provide comment at the time of publishing.
