Politico has an entire section on their website for coverage related to The Facebook Papers, including twelve articles produced over one week from October 25th to November 2nd.

The first few reports delve into the company’s role in the incitement of the January 6th riot at Capitol Hill and other high-profile conflicts around the world. “Facebook’s rules left giant holes for U.S. election falsehoods to metastasize… [And], in some of the world’s most high-profile conflict zones, the tech giant invested few resources and failed to stem a steady stream of harmful posts.”

The next couple of pieces discuss the culture at the company and how few people outside its confines were aware of what was happening and how upset it made their employees. “Facebook routinely makes exceptions for powerful actors when enforcing content policy… [providing] a rarely seen window into the company and [reflecting] matters of conscience bearing down on many of Facebook’s more than 60,000 workers.”

Then, there are several articles on the political implications of Facebook’s behavior on the country and on the organization itself. “Documents collected by whistleblower Frances Haugen could give the company a lot to regret in its fights to prove it’s not a monopoly…. The bad news keeps coming as critics accuse the social network of doing a terrible job countering [the] whistleblower’s disclosures.”

That’s when the company decided to change its name in an effort to rebrand. On October 28th, Mark Zuckerberg released a video explaining the rationale behind Facebook’s new effort to focus on building a meta-verse, an immersive internet reality that affords people the opportunity to have virtual experiences seamlessly online.

Lastly, the section’s newest entries detail how Facebook’s pivot hardly detracted from the anti-trust drama ensuing on Capital Hill. Recently, the federal trade commission sued Facebook (or Meta) for being a monopoly. Arguing that its purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp were intended to limit market competition and that, if left unregulated, the company will continue to create algorithms that stoke social divisiveness and push people towards content that they find offensive.

It’s hard to tell exactly where all of this is going to lead, but I’m glad that the government is showing interest in breaking up tech companies that control too much financial and political power. I can’t imagine that Facebook will be the last tech company to be targeted, but that’s who they’re going after first because of the role that their platforms have played in the fracturing of our social fabric, which we’ve been witnessing since 2015.