6 August 2021
Welcome to our latest weekly roundup! Here are the latest updates / news about social media from the Podium team.
Social Media’s Failure to Protect
A recent report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) (via The Guardian) has revealed that the main social media platforms are a haven for anti-semitic posts, after hundreds of posts the CCDH reported were left up. Such content included overt violations of community standards policies, including posts denying the Holocaust, Nazi hate symbols and hate speech. Facebook and Twitter dealt with the least content, a paltry 10.9% and 11% respectively. Facebook in particular added a label to a Holocaust denial post, rather than removing it, while Twitter allowed Holocaust denial hashtags to remain in use.
The CCDH believes that platforms need to be fined in order to encourage them to actually remove the content that violates their policies and community standards. The platforms themselves responded as they always do — referring to all the work they have done, and vaguely referencing more they can do — while changing very little.
Facebook Bans Ad Researchers
Facebook has removed account access from members of the Ad Observer, claiming that they were forced to because of a ruling from the FTC after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But in bad news for Facebook, the FTC has flatly denied that claim, saying: “the consent decree does not bar Facebook from creating exceptions for good-faith research in the public interest”. So what is really going on here? On the one hand we have researchers, who have created a browser extension for users to allow data to be collected on ads served, that does not share any other user data, built with open source code, that has been checked and endorsed by other members of the tech community. And on the other, we have Facebook who potentially care less about the privacy of individual users, but perhaps more so about advertisers who also use the platform, as well as their own lucrative ad data.
Furthermore, WIRED reports that while Facebook removed account access for the team, users can still use the Ad Observer browser, and send that data back as usual. It is the teams’ other work that they are now unable to carry out. And it should really not be the business of Facebook (or any other platform) if users want to share what ads they receive.
Facebook Fails to Remove Climate Disinformation
The oil and gas industry is using Facebook advertising to spread disinformation about climate change, for instance, suggesting that fossil fuels are a method for solving the climate crisis, reports The Guardian. Influence Map, a think tank, has been monitoring advertising on Facebook, discovering that $9.5m was spent by fossil fuel companies last year on US adverts. They also spotted an increase in these types of ads during President Biden’s campaign, when he discussed the plan for climate change.
Despite Facebook having rules against such advertising, claiming that ads are checked by independent fact checkers for misinformation, they removed very few of them. There has long been concern about the level of climate disinformation on Facebook, with Stop Funding Heat noting that there is no specific rule for climate misinformation.
Twitter Verifies Fake Account
A Cormac McCarthy account recently went viral on Twitter, for claiming he was only on the platform at the behest of his publicist. While many were sceptical (it is not the first fake Cormac McCarthy that has appeared on the platform — an earlier one was hilariously welcomed by Jack Dorsey himself), Twitter was taken in once again, and verified the account.
The Verge has confirmed that it is indeed a fake account, after they contacted the writer’s agent, who mentioned that they had made Twitter aware. For their part, Twitter claimed that the verification was “accidental”, which was interestingly similar to their response after they previously verified a number of fake accounts (as we shared in Weekly Roundup #5). Given Twitter spent four years working on an improved process, it is astonishing how it has managed to be fooled again so quickly.
Events in tech
9 Aug
- “Tech for Good: Using Tech for Social Justice” is being held at 21:00 BST by General Assembly Portland, on how to make the world a better place with tech!
10 Aug
- At 19:00 BST, Byline Times is hosting “In Conversation with Kyle Taylor”, author of The Little Black Book of Data and Democracy as part of their book club.
12 Aug
- “Algorithmic Fairness and Resentment” with Profs. Zoë Johnson King & Boris Babic, is being hosted at 17:00 BST by Sowerby Philosophy & Medicine Project as part of their Summer Colloquium Series on Stereotyping & Medical AI.
- Promise Institute and ITLP At UCLA Law are holding “Facial Recognition and Entrenching Racial Discrimination” at 20:00 BST with Safiya Noble and Tawana Petty.
13 Aug
- “Misinformation 2021: Public engagement trends” is being held at 16:30 BST by NewsWhip.
