Former Google boss Eric Schmidt claimed in a recent interview that tech giant Facebook “knew what it was doing,” by prioritizing profit over user health. According to Schmidt, who oversaw the growth of Google into a notoriously monopolistic giant intent on controlling the internet and censoring speech, Faceook “went a little too far on the revenue side and not enough on the judgment side.”
Bloomberg reports that Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, called Facebook’s actions revealed in leaked documents “pretty concerning,” and encouraged tech firms to show more restraint overall.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives for the 8th annual Breakthrough Prize awards ceremony at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California on November 3, 2019. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)
According to Schmidt, Facebook, which has rebranded as Meta, “went a little too far on the revenue side and not enough on the judgment side.” He added: “You can see that from the Facebook leaks that have been occurring.”
The documents were revealed by far-left “whistleblower” Frances Haugen and appeared to show that Facebook was aware that many of its products and policies were harming users, but prioritized profits over user health.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the internal documents reveal that the 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 Facebook is aware that its photo-sharing app Instagram can have a negative effect on the body image of young women.
Schmidt discussed the document leak, stating: “The disturbing thing is that people have said a long time ago that Facebook was doing this, but people said, ‘Well, they didn’t understand or they didn’t measure it. And what we learned in those disclosures is that these companies — and Facebook in particular — knew what it was doing.”
Google has faced its own share of scandals relating to user health. Google has dealt with almost constant privacy issues, and has engaged in an active “shift towards censorship” to Appease Authoritarian Governments around the world.
Breitbart News reporter Allum Bokhari wrote in a 2018 report:
An 85-page briefing entitled “The Good Censor,” exclusively leaked to Breitbart News from within Google reveals that government requests for Google to censor content have nearly tripled since 2016, although it does not say that Google shouldn’t cooperate.
The briefing was the product of extensive research on the part of Google. This included expert interviews with MIT Tech Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin, Atlantic staff writer and tech critic Franklin Foer, and academic Kalev Leetaru. 35 cultural observers and 7 cultural leaders from seven countries on five continents were consulted to produce it. It can be read in full here.
Pages 66-73 of the briefing admits that tech platforms including Google, Facebook and Twitter underwent a “shift towards censorship” over the past few years.
Responding to the leak, an official Google source said the document should be considered internal research, and not an official company position.
Page 43 of the document includes data from within the Silicon Valley giant on government censorship requests.
The data shows a more than threefold increase in requests since 2016, although it does not identify which governments made the requests.
Read more at Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com.