TechDigest- Facebook prematurely turned off safeguards designed to thwart misinformation and rabble rousing after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in last year’s elections in a moneymaking move that a company whistleblower alleges contributed to the deadly Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol.

The whistleblower, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, also asserted during an exclusive interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that a 2018 change to the content flow in Facebook’s news feeds contributed to more divisiveness and ill will in a network ostensibly created to bring people closer together.

Despite the enmity that the new algorithms were feeding, Facebook found that they helped keep people coming back — a pattern that helped the Menlo Park, California, company sell more of the digital ads that generate most of its advertising.

“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” said Haugen, who joined Facebook in 2019 after working at other Silicon Valley companies such as Google and Pinterest. “”And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.”Facebook’s annual revenue has more than doubled from $56 billion in 2018 to a projected $119 billion this year, based on the estimates of analysts surveyed by FactSet. Meanwhile, the company’s market value has soared from $375 billion at the end of 2018 to nearly $1 trillion now.

Even before the full interview came out, a top Facebook executive was deriding the whistleblower’s allegations as “misleading.”

“Social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out,” Nick Clegg, the company’s vice president of policy and public affairs wrote to Facebook employees in a memo sent Friday. “But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization.”

The “60 Minutes” interview intensifies the spotlight already glaring on Facebook as lawmakers and regulators around the world scrutinize the social networking’s immense power to shape opinions and its polarizing effects on society.

The backlash has been intensifying since The Wall Street Journal’s mid-September publication of an expose that revealed Facebook’s own internal research had concluded the social network’s attention-seeking algorithms had helped foster political dissent and contributed to mental health and emotional problems among teens, especially girls. After copying thousands of pages of Facebook’s internal research, Haugen leaked them to the Journal to provide the foundation for a succession of stories packaged as as the “Facebook Files.”

►Facebook leak: Facebook officials knew Instagram can have negative mental health impacts for teens, report claims

►Facebook Senate hearings: Facebook grilled at Senate hearing over Instagram’s effect on teen mental health

Although Facebook asserted the Journal had cherry picked the most damaging information in the internal documents to cast the company in the worst possible light, the revelations prompted an indefinite delay in the rollout of a kids’ version of its popular photo- and video-sharing app, Instagram. Facebook currently requires people to be at least 13 years old to open an Instagram account.

Clegg was already trying to contain the fallout in 1,500-word memo warning Facebook employees that the whistleblower interview may subject them to more hard questions from family and friends about the social network’s corrosive side effects.

Then on Sunday morning, Clegg appeared on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” program in another pre-emptive attempt to soften the blow of the bombshell dropped on “60 Minutes.”

“Even with the most sophisticated technology, which I believe we deploy, even with the tens of thousands of people that we employ to try and maintain safety and integrity on our platform,” Clegg told CNN, “we’re never going to be absolutely on top of this 100% of the time.” He said that’s because of the “instantaneous and spontaneous form of communication” on Facebook, adding, “I think we do more than any reasonable person can expect to.”

Haugen, 37, has filed at least eight complaints with U.S. securities regulators alleging Facebook has violated the law by withholding information about the risks posed by its social network, according to “60 Minutes.” Facebook in turn could take legal action against her if it asserts she stole confidential information from the company.

“No one at Facebook is malevolent,” Haugen said during the interview. “But the incentives are misaligned, right? Like, Facebook makes more money when you consume more content. people enjoy engaging with things that elicit an emotional reaction. And the more anger that they get exposed to, the more they interact and the more they consume.”

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TECH DIGEST – Twitter announced Monday it has suspended “more than 70,000 accounts” linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory following the attack on the US Capitol by a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters.

The social network began its purge Friday, shortly after it had permanently suspended Trump’s account for language that could incite violence.

“Since Friday, more than 70,000 accounts have been suspended as a result of our efforts, with many instances of a single individual operating numerous accounts,” Twitter said in a blog post.

“These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service.”

The far-right QAnon conspiracy theory claims Trump is waging a secret war against a global liberal cult of Satan-worshipping paedophiles.

Most major social media platforms have taken unprecedented action since Trump’s supporters invaded the Capitol Wednesday to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential win, shocking the US and tarnishing its international image.

Facebook and Twitter have both indefinitely suspended the accounts for Trump, who has refused to accept the result of the November 3 election and spread baseless theories that the vote was rigged.

Both platforms referred to the risk of future violence, particularly before Biden’s inauguration on January 20.

Twitter said it also factored in that plans for more armed protests have been proliferating on and off the service, including a proposed second attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17.

The social network was Trump’s preferred megaphone, and his account had 88 million subscribers when it was suspended.

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