Former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt has slammed Facebook after the release of “concerning” documents that show the company was complicit and knowledgeable in its damaging conduct over the years.
Schmidt told Bloomberg that the tech giant “went a little too far on the revenue side and not enough on the judgment side.
“You can see that from the Facebook leaks that have been occurring.”
The documents show that Facebook was aware it couldn’t control the level of misinformation and hate speech being spread by its platform, and that it knew of the mental health risks of Instagram for teenage girls.
“The disturbing thing is that people have said a long time ago that Facebook was doing this, but people said, ‘Well, they didn’t understand or they didn’t measure it,’” Schmidt said.
“And what we learned in those disclosures is that these companies — and Facebook in particular — knew what it was doing.”
