Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly signed off on a new initiative last month that aimed to promote pro-Facebook articles and news just shortly before a series of damaging reports were released by the Wall Street Journal. “Project Amplify” will promote stories on the platform’s News Feed that makes Mark Zuckerberg and the Masters of the Universe look like the good guys.
The New York Times reports that last month Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed off on a new Facebook project code-named Project Amplify. The project aims to use Facebook’s News Feed to promote positive stories about Facebook to the site’s users.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to testify before a House Energy and Commerce hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, April 11, 2018, about the use of Facebook data to target American voters in the 2016 election and data privacy. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Life-sized cutouts depicting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wearing “Fix Fakebook” T-shirts are displayed by advocacy group, Avaaz, on the South East Lawn of the Capitol on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 10, 2018, ahead of Zuckerberg’s appearance before a Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees joint hearing. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
One attendee at the meeting in January in which this idea was proposed said that some executives were shocked at the proposition that Facebook would use its own News Feed to essentially promote only positive content about the site, including some content written by Facebook itself.
Project Amplify comes as Facebook makes a number of aggressive moves to reshape the company’s image. Since January of 2021, Facebook has taken a number of steps to change the narrative surrounding the company. Facebook has been dealing with multiple scandals this year over privacy, hate speech, misinformation, and election interference.
Despite efforts by the company to address complaints, many are still unhappy with the platform. Even more so since the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles revealing internal documents that paint the company in an extremely negative light.
According to the Wall Street Journal, internal documents reveal that tech giant Apple threatened to remove Facebook from its App Store in 2019 following a report from BBC News that detailed the human trafficking taking place across the social media platform.
The Wall Street Journal also claimed that Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm saw a major change in 2018 that appeared to promote outrageous and negative content on the platform. When informed of this, top executives including CEO Mark Zuckerberg were allegedly hesitant to solve the issue.
In another report titled “Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show,” the Wall Street Journal claims that the company is aware that its photo-sharing app Instagram can have a negative effect on the body image of young women.
So now Facebook is attempting to go on the offensive, pushing pro-Facebook content to the masses. Katie Harbath, a former Facebook public policy director, commented: “They’re realizing that no one else is going to come to their defense, so they need to do it and say it themselves.”
Read more at the New York Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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