Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Facebook is a basically unprecedented piece of technology. Every month, a single platform gives over 2.5 billion people a specially curated selection of advertisements, status updates from friends and family, and automated suggestions for making new connections. Critics often focus — fairly — on that combination of scale and automation, arguing that Facebook’s algorithms promote false news and extremist content.
But a feature story from The New Yorker paints a slightly different picture of Facebook’s problems — one that’s not simply rooted in its design or size. Building on extensive earlier reporting of Facebook’s moderation efforts, author Andrew Marantz talks to former employees about why hate speech and misinformation can spread on…