Name: Hawley presses Zuckerberg on whistleblower complaint alleging Facebook coordination with Twitter, Google
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Hawley presses Zuckerberg on whistleblower complaint alleging Facebook coordination with Twitter, Google

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Sen. , R-Mo., on Tuesday pressed &nbsp;CEO on a newly revealed whistleblower complaint alleging that Facebook employees coordinate with &nbsp;and employees to make certain content moderation decisions. Hawley said a former employee "with&nbsp;direct knowledge of the&nbsp;company’s content moderation&nbsp;practices" contacted his office&nbsp;about an "internal&nbsp;platform called Tasks that Facebook uses to coordinate&nbsp;projects, including censorship.""The platform reflects&nbsp;censorship input from Google and Twitter, as well," Hawley alleged. "...Facebook censorship teams&nbsp;communicate with their&nbsp;counterparts at Twitter and Google and then enter those&nbsp;companies' suggestions for&nbsp;censorship onto the Task&nbsp;platform so that Facebook can&nbsp;follow up with them and&nbsp;effectively coordinate their&nbsp;censorship efforts." Hawley also tweeted a screenshot of an apparent Tasks page on Tuesday afternoon. Zuckerberg said&nbsp; uses&nbsp;the Tasks system for "people coordinating&nbsp;all kinds of work across the&nbsp;company," adding later that the company&nbsp;did "coordinate&nbsp;on and share signals on&nbsp;security-related topics," such as "a terrorist attack&nbsp;or around child exploitation&nbsp;imagery or around a foreign&nbsp;government creating an influence&nbsp;operation."Facebook confirmed to FOX Business that Tasks has been used as a company-wide to-do list, and that the company has been public about working with other companies and organizations to address security concerns. Neither Twitter nor Google immediately commented.The Missouri senator went on to ask&nbsp;whether Facebook, Twitter and Google employees coordinated content moderation decisions regarding&nbsp;"individuals,&nbsp;websites, hashtags [or] phrases to&nbsp;ban.""Senator, we do not coordinate&nbsp;our policies," Zuckerberg said, adding later, however, that he&nbsp;"would expect&nbsp;that some level of communication."Hawley also brought up a platform called Centra mentioned in the whistleblower's complaint. The complaint alleged that Facebook used Centra&nbsp;"to track its users, not just&nbsp;on Facebook, but across the&nbsp;entire internet.""Centra tags different profiles&nbsp;that a user visits, their&nbsp;message recipients, their linked&nbsp;accounts [and]&nbsp;the pages they visit&nbsp;around the web that have&nbsp;Facebook buttons," Hawley said. "Centra also uses behavioral data&nbsp;to monitor users’ accounts, even&nbsp;if they’re registered under a&nbsp;different name."Facebook confirmed to FOX Business that the platform used Centra&nbsp;to&nbsp;centralize and aid investigations into complex subjects such as coordinated inauthentic behavior.Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., further pressed Zuckerberg on the subject, asking him to address concerns about how systems such as Tasks&nbsp;"could be used across&nbsp;platforms to force certain&nbsp;outcomes."The Facebook founder said he thought "coordination specifically on&nbsp;policies or enforcement&nbsp;decisions could be problematic.""What we do is share signals around&nbsp;potential harms that we’re&nbsp;seeing," like terrorism and foreign interference. Zuckerberg repeated that each company would make its own respective moderation decisions, which he said was "very different than saying the companies are coordinating to figure out what the policies should be."

Sen. , R-Mo., on Tuesday pressed &nbsp;CEO on a newly revealed whistleblower complaint alleging that Facebook employees coordinate with &nbsp;and employees to make certain content moderation decisions. Hawley said a former employee "with&nbsp;direct knowledge of the&nbsp;company’s content moderation&nbsp;practices" contacted his office&nbsp;about an "internal&nbsp;platform called Tasks that Facebook uses to coordinate&nbsp;projects, including censorship.""The platform reflects&nbsp;censorship input from Google and Twitter, as well," Hawley alleged. "...Facebook censorship...

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Audrey Conklin

Fox Business (officially known as Fox Business Network) is an American pay television business news channel that is owned by the Fox News Media division of Fox Corporation. The network discusses business and financial news.

Hawley presses Zuckerberg on whistleblower complaint alleging Facebook coordination with Twitter, Google

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