Facebook accuses media of 'misrepresenting' leaked data

Facebook's Twitter-handle Facebook Newsroom has accused the media of running an "orchestrated campaign' against the company as the Wall Street Journal continued to publish leaked files from Facebook's dossiers. The 'Facebook Files' and allegations of former employee Frances Haugen have proved troublesome for the company which is now being accused of putting profits before user welfare.

"A curated selection out of millions of documents at Facebook can in no way be used to draw fair conclusions about us. Internally, we share work in progress and debate options. Not every suggestion stands up to the scrutiny we must apply to decisions affecting so many people," the company tweeted. "To those news organizations who would like to move beyond an orchestrated 'gotcha' campaign, we are ready to engage on the substance. - John Pinette, VP Communications."

Pinette also said that the company did expect media to hold them accountable but not deliberately 'misrepresent' key decisions made by Facebook that affected millions of users. The most recent WSJ expose revealed that Facebook's own engineers had doubts about the effectiveness of AI in dealing with fake news, graphic violence and hate speech on the platform. This is one of Facebook's commitments to its users.

"Right now 30+ journalists are finishing up a coordinated series of articles based on thousands of pages of leaked documents. We hear that to get the docs, outlets had to agree to the conditions and a schedule laid down by the PR team that worked on earlier leaked docs," one tweet reads.

"Facebook's AI can't consistently identify first-person shooting videos, racist rants and even, in one notable episode that puzzled internal researchers for weeks, the difference between cockfighting and car crashes," the latest WSJ report says.

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