In the fall of 2021, members of the U.S. Congress and hundreds of Western journalists obtained access to a collection of internal Facebook documents. The trove of research reports, proposals, presentations, and employee conversations would form the foundation for dozens of news stories describing Facebook’s own awareness of the real-world harms that resulted from its relentless pursuit of its users’ attention.
Whistleblower Frances Haugen—a former member of the Civic Integrity team at the company now called Meta—shared the cache of more than 1,300 documents that would come to be known collectively as the Facebook Papers. She would go on to testify before Congress as to their implications. Lawmakers would grill Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri about them as well.
In November 2021, Gizmodo partnered with a group of independent experts to review, redact, and publish the Facebook Papers. This committee serves to advise and monitor our work and facilitate the responsible disclosure of the greatest number of documents in the public interest possible. We believe in the value of open access to these materials. Our collective goal is to minimize any potential harms that could result from the disclosure of certain methods by which Meta tackles sensitive issues like sex trafficking, disinformation, and voter manipulation. The documents, which have not previously been published, additionally contain both personal and private details about low-level Facebook employees and many of the users included in the company’s studies and internal discussions. The risks associated with publishing this information outweighs the value of disclosure.
That review committee includes Laura Edelson, PhD candidate in computer science at New York University; Damon McCoy, associate professor in computer science and engineering at NYU; Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a senior staff technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology division; Pri Bengani, senior research fellow at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism; Ethan Zuckerman, associate professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and Michael Zimmer, associate professor in computer science at Marquette University.
This page will serve as a table of contents organizing every document Gizmodo has published to date along with a record of when we published them. We have categorized the documents by topic, redacted and reviewed them multiple times, and released them in batches. Additional documents, which require greater scrutiny for privacy or security reasons, will be added in the future.
Election 2020 Documents
Papers About the Jan. 6 Capitol Attack
Mission Control Post Jan 6th IPOC
CTO Mike Schroepfer’s Jan 6th post
Jan 6th Freedom of Expression Survey
Facebook Insurrection Redacted for Congress enclosures(Part 1)
Facebook Insurrection Redacted for Congress enclosures(Part 2)
Employee Post: Rhetoric of Violence
Papers Describing the Election-Related Task Force Monitoring “Complex Financial Organizations”
CFO Task Force Q3 Activity and Impact Summary
Papers Describing Election-Related Pages, Posts, Etc.
User Engagement on Civic Content
Where do top civic pages get their audiences from
Understanding the Impact of Political Content on Facebook Experience and Sentiment
Political Content on Facebook (Part 1) Understanding Consumer Experiences and how Facebook Can help
Internal Election-Related Research
User Perspectives on Facebook’s Voter and Census Disenfranchisement Policy
Adding civic users to XCheck (Cross Check)
Internal Election-Related Proposals
May 2020-Alternative Responses
Workstream 3: Alternative Responses
Civic Disenfranchise – Interference, Demobilization, Interference
Sociographic Segments may be impactful for hate speech and voter suppression
Internal Election-Related Explainers
Populations at risk for 2020 Election
Election-Related Platform and Product Updates
2020 Election Integrity Lockdown
SEV Civic Non-Recommendable Groups
Write Up On Civic Non-Recommendable Groups SEV
2020 Crisis Pillar Detection Product Lookback
Miscellaneous Papers
Update on political publishers
Proposal to reset White House Instagram over hostile followers
Elections Workshop Agenda 2019
Sociographic Segments May be Impactful for Both Hate Speech and Voter Suppression
Ranking Documents
Ranking-Related Explainers
Ranking-Related Platform and Product Updates
[LAUNCH] Civic Ranking: Engagement-Based Worth Your Time
Ranking-Related Proposals
Distributive Justice at Facebook
Providing Negative Feedback Should Be Easy (And Why This Would Be Game Changing For Integrity)
Papers Discussing “Demotions” in Feeds
Demotions from Community Review Are Low Accuracy inPrevalence
This Note May Not Reach Many People: Driving Demotions Transparency Through Product Interventions
Demotions Transparency Does Not A Priori Increase Legitimacy
Policy Input on ARC (At-Risk Country) Demotions
Issues with Restrictions/Demotions on Palestinian Content
What Does It Mean to Have a Voice?
[LAUNCH] Replacing Downstream Impact for Civic and Health
Project Brief: Reduce Audit V2
Downside Metrics: Viewer-Side Collateral Damage Measures
Demotion Strategies for High-Quality Integrity Signals
Papers Discussing “Meaningful Social Interactions” (MSI)
The Meaningful Social Interactions Metric Revisited: Part 2
The Meaningful Social Interactions Metric Revisited: Part 4
The Meaningful Social Interactions Metric Revisited: Part 5
Meaningful Social Interactions Useful Links
Evaluating MSI Metric Changes with a Comment-Level Survey
Surveying The 2018 Relevance Ranking Holdout
Overview of MSI + Pages and Survey Research
Is Multi-Group Picker “Spammy?”
Filtering Out Engagement-Bait, Bullying, and Excessive Comments From MSI Deltoid Metric
[LAUNCH] Using p(anger) to Reduce the Impact Angry Reactions Have on Ranking Levers
Planned MSI Metric Changes in 2020
MSI Metric Changes for 2020 H1
Should We Reduce the MSI Weight of Sticker Comments?
Miscellaneous Papers
“Understand This Post’s Ranking” —How I Miss Thee!
News Feed Documents
The Surprising Consequences to Sessions and MSI Caused by Turning Off Video Autoplay on News Feed
One-Go Summary Post for Recent Goaling and Goal Metric Changes for News Feed
News Feed UXR Quarterly Insights Roundup
What Happens If We Delete Ranked Feed?
News Feed Research: Looking Back on H2 2020
Content from “Political” Pages in In-Feed Recommendations
Political Content in In-Feed Recommendations (IFR)
In-Feed Recommendations HPM —April 15 2021
Showing More Informative Links in News Feed
Distribution and Personalization, 05/07
Integrity Audit-Context, Update, and Next Steps
Connection Integrity: Feed and Stories Distribution
How Much of News Feed is Good (or Bad) For The World?
Is News Feed Becoming More or Less Valuable to People?
Political Party Response to ‘18 Algorithmic Change
Feed Composition and Integrity
H1 Progress and Roadmap Highlights
Feed Recommendations Working Group
Climate Change Documents
FCU Feedback & XFN (FIT, UIP, Content Understanding)
Climate Change Integrity Discussion: Climate Change Misinformation
Climate Change Integrity Discussion
Policy For Misinformation—Climate Change Denial?
Q1 Update on Our Climate Efforts
Examples of Climate Change Misinformation Appearing on Facebook Watch
Video Search Feedback: Climate Videos
International Climate Change Interviews Kicking Off Friday in Texas and Monday in Oklahoma
Driving Positive Impact With CSIC: Opportunity Areas Based on Climate Change Understanding
Search Integrity—Climate Change Escalation
Climate Science Information Center is Open for Dogfooding!
The Effect on Communities By Global Heating
This Week I Learned: Young Adults Care Deeply About Climate Change!
Covid-19 Documents
Vaccine Hesitancy in Comments: C19D Lockdown Update
Identifying and Comparing Pro- and Anti-COVID-19 Vaccine Comments
COVID Containment Week 2: Ideas Pipeline: Global Health Commons
“Harmful Non-Violating Narratives” Is a Problem Archetype In Need of Novel Solutions
Potential Vaccine Hesitancy Product Solutions
A Covid Multi-Language Facebook Post Classifier
Connection Integrity Covid-19 Task Force
COVID-19 Vaccine Offense HPM 3/10
Revamping the Antivax Searchability Query Set with the Signal-Based Method
Health Integrity Feedback Example
COVID-19 Vaccine Risks Appear to be Concentrated Among a Few Subpopulation Segments
Integrity: Links, Research, and Discussion, 1
Integrity: Links, Research, and Discussion, 2
Facebook Creating a Big Echo Chamber—Do We Care?
Ghost Posts—“Remdesiver is a Cure”
Teens and Kids Documents
The “Downward Spiral” – Instagram Causes Eating Disorders
Cultural Norms – What Teens Do and Say On Instagram
Teens Aren’t Adopting Facebook
Prioritizing Children – the Kids, Tweens, and Teens Taskforce
Eating Disorders Are a “Relevant and Important Topic”
Facebook Tries to Understand “Finstas”
We Need To Do Better At Targeting Teens
Kids Sure Are Talking a Lot About Mental Health
Teen Analytics – How Are Teens Doing On IG?
Teen Engagement Decline Update
Our “Foundational Research” On Teen’s Overall Well-Being On IG
Why Kids Make So Many Different Accounts
How Often Kids See Other Kids Online
Quality Time – Parents, Kids, and the Fight Against Screen Time
“The Power of Identities: Why Teens And Young Adults Choose Instagram”
The Differences Between the Content Recommended to Teens Versus Adults
Content Enforcement Docs
Documents Mapping out Intensity of User Experiences to Certain Violating Content
Exposure to Integrity Harms is a Worse Experience Than “Over Enforcement”
Content Appeal Rates by Country and Types of Appeals
Users Perceptions of Over Enforcement
Relevance’s Voice of The Community Report
‘Everyone Has a Nipple’: Reactions To Post Removals
Group Levels Takedowns Organized by Age
Content Entity Enforcement For Content Problems
Perceptions of Over Enforcement
Strike Thresholds for Various Harmful Content
Discussion of Strike Thresholds for Global Terrorist Organizations
Discussion of ‘Soft Actions’ And Mark Zuckerberg’s Feedback
Adding Strikes Policy For Violent=Non-State Actors And Criminal Organizations
Data on Increased Strikes and Takedowns
Research Discussing ‘Soft Actions” to Address Violating Content
Integrity Soft Actions Taxonomy & Platforms
Civic Integrity Docs
Perceptions of Hate Speech Are Much Larger On Facebook Than Other Apps
Plans To Increase Facebook Defenses of Non-Violating Harms
Integrity Review Value Measurement
Experiments For Increasing Integrity Metrics
Deep Dive On Minimal Integrity Holdout
Integrity Choices And Like Data
Auditing Integrity Systems To Make Sure We Don’t Hurt Racial Justice
Polarization Documents
Demystifying Polarization Metrics
A Starting Point For Understanding Polarization on Facebook
How Information Corridors Work
Polarization Measurements on Facebook
External Research on Polarization
Polarization of Users Reading High-Quality and Low-Quality News
Internal Polarization Measurement Survey
Drebbel: System Intended to Measure Possibility of Digital Rabbitholes
Use of Love and Angry Emojis to Political Posts
Ads Documents
“We need to talk about Breitbart (Again)”
Political Ads For Donations Case Study
Hate Speech Documents
Notes From A Meeting About Borderline Hostile Speech
The Harassment/Silencing Tradeoff
Testing Comment Management Tools
Violating Hostile Content Q1 2021 Update
The Network Effects Of Disrupting Hate Speech Enforcement
Why People Don’t Talk About Politics On Facebook
Civic Harassment Research for Q3 2019
Short Term Hate Reduction Plan
Improving Civic Conversations With Conversational Motifs
Investments Across At Risk Communities
Changelog:
May 19, 2022: Added two civic integrity documents, 10 hate speech documents, three documents about ads, and one document about polarization.
May 2, 2022: 37 documents relating to the Facebook’s ranking practices were published.
April 18, 2022: 28 documents relating to the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump, and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot were published.
October 18, 2022: Two documents related to the 2020 elections, two documents related to rankings, 14 documents related to the News Feed, and 16 documents related to climate change were published.
January 12, 2023: Added 18 documents related to Covid-19 policies and Covid-19 misinformation.
February 14, 2023: Added 16 documents related to Kids’ and Teens’ engagement on Facebook and Instagram, and how the apps affect them.
February 27, 2023: Added 12 documents related to content takedowns, user attitudes to enforcement, and Facebook’s strikes policy.
April 6, 2023: Added three documents related to content enforcement and five documents related to civil integrity rules.
June 15, 2023: Added 11 documents related to political polarization.
Check back for updates.
