Facebook's social balance is in the red

Thanks to a multipart Wall Street Journal series this week, we have learned about a number of the company's challenges based on internal reports and documents written by Facebook employees sounding alarms. Facebook has argued that the Journal's information is outdated and the company has taken many steps to mitigate each problem; at this point, though, a good portion of the public and the media don't take the company at its word and don't trust it to be transparent. For many, the powerful human connections the service makes no longer outweigh the myriad ways in which Facebook is undermining society — promoting medical misinformation, political extremism, teen self-harm, and even mob violence in countries halfway around the globe from the company's headquarters. Facebook is right to note that these problems predate the social network's existence, and that it isn't solely responsible for social divisions. But it's accountable to society for what happens on its platform. The Journal reports have already sparked letters from Congress, and the documents the stories revealed may give investigators at the Federal Trade Commission more ammunition for the cases they are pursuing. But letters and committee hearings won't change Facebook. Laws and enforcement actions could, but only if they're bold — and if they can steer clear of the kind of unintended consequences that keep tripping up Facebook itself.

[Ina Fried is the chief technology correspondent at Axios.]