Facebook had it rough last week. Leaked documents—many leaked documents—formed the backbone of a string of reports published in The Wall Street Journal. Together, the stories paint the picture of a company barely in control of its own creation. The revelations run the gamut: Facebook had created special rules for VIPs that largely exempted 5.8 million users from moderation, forced troll farm content on 40 percent of America, created toxic conditions for teen girls, ignored cartels and human traffickers, and even undermined CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s own desire to promote vaccination against COVID.
Now, Facebook wants you to know it’s sorry and that it’s trying to do better.
“In the past, we didn’t address safety and security challenges early enough in the product development process,” the company said in an unsigned press release today. “Instead, we made improvements reactively in response to a specific abuse. But we have fundamentally changed that approach.”