Social media giants including Meta and TikTok recently enabled harmful content on their platforms, aiming to outdo rivals and to compete with each other for user engagement, as per whistleblower interviewed by the BBC.
Whistleblower is an insider who reveals wrongdoings recently made a shocking claim regarding the social media giants.
Over a range of insiders previously told BBC that both companies made decisions that would promote user engagement, including misogyny, hate speech, and other kinds of harmful content, as it drives increased engagement.
According to Meta’s former engineer, senior management instructed teams to enable more borderline content in users’ feed, aiming to compete with its rival TikTok.
The decision raised concerns that Meta was losing users and advertising revenue as TikTok started garnering significant attention.
Former Meta researcher Matt Motyl stated the company quickly launched Instagram Reels to compete with the Byte Dance-owned platform without adequate safeguards.
Internal research cited by the BBC revealed another astonishing fact, showing Reel's comments had increased levels of bullying, harassment and hate speech in contrast to other parts of Instagram.
Meanwhile, TikTok's member of the trust and safety team Nick told the BBC, the company sometimes prioritised cases of politicians over reports of harm that posed a significant threat to teenagers, such as cyberbullying and sexual exploitation.
Another former TikTok engineer, Ruofan Ding, called recommendation algorithms as a “black box” that are extremely difficult to fully control.
Both tech giants have dismissed the accusations, stating they are deeply concerned about user’s safety and invest heavily in moderation systems to protect users, especially teenagers.
Notably, Instagram recently announced to end support for end-to-end encryption on cat messages for all users from May 8, sparking serious security concerns and worries among users.
