Facebook Quarterly Harms Report Q2 2021 | by Real Facebook Oversight Board | Jul, 2021 | Medium

Real Facebook Oversight Board's 8-page "Q2 Facebook Harms Report ... deep-dive into Facebook’s impact on democracy, privacy, and human life this financial quarter" sets out:

• "serious problem with disinformation" which they actively choose to do nothing about
• how they let Trump's affiliate PACs to raise money on Facebook, and allowed him to announce "his potential reinstatement ... despite inciting an insurrection"

Solutions include "systemic change", but "Facebook can ... mitigate...:

• Disable post engagement on proven disinformation superspreaders;
• Uprank quality news sources by reprioritizing reputability in the news algorithm."

They're unsurprisingly critical of the official Facebook "so-called Oversight Board ...[which]... punted the decision [re: Trump] back to Facebook... [so] a platform that has actively profited from the former President’s actions was given the decision on whether to allow him to return to it".

There's also coverage of the "covid19 disinformation dozen", which makes this problem "far easier to combat it than Facebook admits...83.4% of #1 Posts [via Kevin Roose's @FacebooksTop10] are from disinformation superspreaders". This despite the fact that Facebook can and has handled this - Nov 7 they tweaked their algorithm "to promote high-quality, reputable news sources... it worked", but only until Nov 10, when they reverted.

Conclusion: "the decision to allow less reputable sources to dominate “news” is an active business choice... It’s time Facebook stopped making disinformation dollars."

Meanwhile:

• they're lobbying up: "on July 20, 2021, it was advertising 1300 positions globally ... “public policy manager” ... response to the call by governments around the world to introduce statutory regulation of Facebook".
• they're still profiting from Trump, whose PAC is running ads for his rallies.

Interestingly, Facebook's labels seem to amplify misinformation: "Trump’s posts with labels earned roughly 2.6 times more average interactions per post than his posts overall".