ABC News was among the US media outlets that received the so-called Facebook Papers, a series of internal documents given to Congress by Frances Haugen, a former employee of the company. The documents revealed, among other disclosures, Facebook’s decision on activating, and later rolling back, “break glass” measures meant to mitigate the spread of violent language on the platform at the beginning of 2020. Our Ciarán O’Connor comments in this article on how the platform’s decision to scale back may have been a contributing factor to the Jan. 6 insurrection. He further points out how Facebook is prioritizing platform growth over safety.

Ciarán O’Connor is an Analyst at ISD, working in the Research and Policy unit. You can find a range of his work in our publications section.