Meta and TikTok let harmful content rise after evidence outrage drove engagement, say whistleblowers [View all]

Source: BBC

Meta and TikTok let harmful content rise after evidence outrage drove engagement, say whistleblowers

16 March 2026

Marianna Spring,social media investigations correspondent and Mike Radford

Social media giants made decisions which allowed more harmful content on people's feeds, after internal research into their algorithms showed how outrage fuelled engagement, whistleblowers told the BBC.

More than a dozen whistleblowers and insiders have laid bare how the companies took risks with safety on issues including violence, sexual blackmail and terrorism as they battled for users' attention.

An engineer at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, described how he had been told by senior management to allow more "borderline" harmful content - which includes misogyny and conspiracy theories - in user's feeds to compete with TikTok.

"They sort of told us that it's because the stock price is down," the engineer said.

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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqj9kgxqjwjo