washington as supporters of donald trump stormed the us capitol on january 6th battling police and forcing lawmakers into hiding an insurrection of a different kind was taking place inside the worlds largest social media companythousands of miles away in california facebook engineers were racing to tweak internal controls to slow the spread of misinformation and inciteful content emergency actions some of which were rolled back after the 2020 election included banning trump freezing comments in groups with a record for hate speech filtering out the stop the steal rallying cry and empowering content moderators to act more assertively by labeling the us a temporary high risk location for political violencein this jan 6 2021 file photo insurrections loyal to president donald trump rally at the us capitol in washington apat the same time frustration inside facebook erupted over what some saw as the companys halting and inconsistent response to rising extremism in the ushavent we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence one employee wrote on an internal message board at the height of the jan 6 turmoil weve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldnt be surprised its now out of controlin this wednesday jan 6 2021 file photo supporters of president donald trump including jacob chansley center with fur hat are seen during the riot at the us capitol in washington apits a question that still hangs over the company today as congress and regulators investigate facebooks part in the january 6 riotsnew internal documents provided by former facebook employeeturnedwhistleblower frances haugen provide a rare glimpse into how the company appears to have simply stumbled into the january 6 riot it quickly became clear that even after years under the microscope for insufficiently policing its platform the social network had missed how riot participants spent weeks vowing on facebook itself to stop congress from certifying joe bidens election victorythe documents also appear to bolster haugens claim that facebook put its growth and profits ahead of public safety opening the clearest window yet into how facebooks conflicting impulses to safeguard its business and protect democracy clashed in the days and weeks leading up to the attempted january 6 couppolice keep a watch on demonstrators try to break through a police barrier wednesday jan 6 2021 at the capitol in washington apthis story is based in part on disclosures haugen made to the securities and exchange commission and provided to congress in redacted form by haugens legal counsel the redacted versions received by congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations including the associated presswhat facebook called break the glass emergency measures put in place on jan 6 were essentially a toolkit of options designed to stem the spread of dangerous or violent content that the social network had first used in the runup to the bitter 2020 election as many as 22 of those measures were rolled back at some point