In a Pandemic Tech Platforms Need to Think Like Newsrooms
Here are 10 Questions Critical to Shaping a COVID-19 Editorial Policy
There is no neutral in a pandemic.
Up until a few weeks ago, most major tech platforms aspired to be neutral platforms for free speech. Their argument was that they were in the business of showing users the content those users wanted, not of deciding which information was worth showing. Until late February, the kind of decision making that occurs in a newsroom, determining which specific pieces of information are most important to push out to the world, was a third rail*.
Covid-19 has revealed what has always been true: large tech platforms are not and never have been neutral. Even a supposedly neutral feature like a share button reliably amplifies content that triggers a sense of moral outrage. In our current moment, unless tech platforms make accurate COVID-19 information available on an unprecedented scale, the void will be filled with speculation and misinformation that will cause widespread real-world harm. Thankfully, most platforms are doing just that.
As of the writing of this piece, every major tech platform except Twitter and Instagram has a heavily promoted platform-curated page for COVID-19. Platforms are rightly using their immense reach to encourage life-saving behaviors, such as Instagram’s Stay Home stickers or TikTok’s #happy@home campaign. One of the best tools we have against the flood of misinformation around COVID-19 is to make sure that accurate information is better amplified. For good reason, the biggest megaphones in the history of human civilization have just been switched on.
For good reason, the biggest megaphones in the history of human civilization have just been switched on.
Sitting behind these megaphones are a handful of tech executives who may have little to no experience making editorial decisions. For the same reason that newspapers across the globe can’t simply reprint WHO press releases on their front pages, platforms have to take responsibility over the information that they present. They must decide what information gets precedence, which behaviors are worth promoting, and how to effectively frame information that saves lives. There is no neutral way to make those decisions, and they will shape how human civilization understands and responds to this pandemic.
One powerful example of how both news organizations and tech platforms have intervened to address a public health crisis is around suicide prevention. When lives are at stake, both news organizations and tech platforms set clear operational guidelines for how they will frame information and intervene to change behavior. The same diligence is needed here.
To understand how, the Center for Humane Technology has collected input from numerous senior tech leaders and editors from major news publications. From these conversations, we’ve put together a set of questions that could be helpful in navigating this new terrain:
The Top 10 Questions Large Tech Platforms Need to Answer with their COVID-19 Editorial Policies
1. What goals drive your COVID-19 news operations? How and when will you reevaluate those goals as the pandemic unfolds?
2. How will you define a style guide and update it over time?
Scenario: Your style guide refers to the phenomenon of people staying home to prevent the spread of COVID-19 as “the quarantine.” Recently, news organizations aligned with those who oppose this quarantine have begun to refer to it as “the shutdown.” For editorial clarity, your policy is to only promote news items which follow your editorial standards (e.g. “COVID-19” not “the Chinese Virus”, and “the quarantine” not “the shutdown”). How do you adapt your policies and language?
3. What is your procedure for trusting a source?
Scenario: Imagine that the President of Brazil and a regional governor have just made sharply contrasting statements about the state of the pandemic and the recommended course of action for their citizens. Which do you amplify to Brazilians? What criteria allow you to make that decision?
4. How will you establish a respected and respectable editorial culture inside of your organization?
5. How will you integrate consideration for the mental health of your users?
Scenario: The pandemic is peaking, and things are bad. Many users are dealing with the loss of loved ones, extreme economic instability, and prolonged isolation and anxiety. You have accurate content about the state of the pandemic and also content which creates a sense of hope, but which could lead some people to underestimate the seriousness of the pandemic and relax their quarantine measures.
6. What behaviors are you actively promoting, and how does that change over time?
Scenario: Public officials are talking about lifting social-distancing guidelines, with widely varying opinions about how and how quickly that should happen. #stayhome is now seen as an outdated meme and an extremely controversial call to action. Some experts advocate secure contact tracing as a necessary part of a quarantine step down, others see it as a terrifying invasion of privacy. How do you decide what actions to recommend?
7. When all reporting on the pandemic is considered partisan or controversial, what principles will you stand by? What is your protocol when verified information conflicts with the established positions of governments in countries where you operate?
8. How will you measure if your editorial decisions are effective, and when will you share your learnings to help others meaningfully address the pandemic?
Scenario: Through A/B testing you have found a messaging strategy that is extremely effective at convincing a vulnerable population to take an action broadly recommended by public health officials. You see that most government organizations and other tech platforms are using a different method that you know to be ineffective. How do you share what you’ve learned?
9. How will you delegate editorial decision making to those with regional or domain expertise? How do you plan to make editorial decisions for languages other than English?
10. Assume that the urgent need for accurate information on the pandemic continues for the next 18 months at a minimum. How will you know when to de-escalate this work? What is your threshold for a crisis requiring this class of amplification and editorial treatment?
In this crisis, large tech platforms can either hide behind an imagined veil of neutrality, or make clear statements about the values they hold. These values must reach far beyond organizations’ dedicated COVID-19 pages to encompass the content they recommend, the way they shape user behavior, the way that they direct marketing teams and the features they choose to prioritize. It is these values, clearly articulated and operationalized, that will allow platforms to save lives.
* Apple is a notable exception to the rule that large tech platforms avoid editorial decision making. Apple News, one of the largest single news distribution services for much of the English speaking world, has always used human editors rather than algorithms to define its top stories. Their experience in this regard could be critical for other platforms trying quickly to come up to speed.
