NEW YORK: Calling for companies in the tech industry to show more restraint, former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has said that Facebook’s conduct, revealed in leaked documents, is “pretty concerning.”
Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, “went a little too far on the revenue side and not enough on the judgement side”, Schmidt told Bloomberg Television. “You can see that from the Facebook leaks that have been occurring.”
The documents – shared with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress by whistle-blower Frances Haugen and obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and other media outlets – show that Meta struggled to contain hate speech and misinformation.
They also revealed that the company’s staff, including internal researchers, faulted it for failing to stop the proliferation of groups that fomented the US Capitol attack on January 6. And internal studies identified the potential risks of its Instagram photo-sharing app for teenage girls. The company, valued at $934 billion, rebranded itself as Meta last month.
“The disturbing thing is that people said a long time ago that Facebook was doing this, but people said, ‘well, they didn’t understand or they didn’t measure it’,” Schmidt said. “And what we learnt in those disclosures is that these companies – and Facebook in particular – knew what it was doing.”
Still, Schmidt said he opposes trying to regulate the tech industry. “The regulation is always either too soon or too late,” he said.
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