Social networks: politics raises its ugly head…
Have you ever wondered to what extent a social network could influence the outcome of a general election or the political process in general?
The question comes to mind after learning that Facebook employees wanted to ask Mark Zuckerberg at his weekly Q&A session with the workforce whether they should try to prevent Donald Trump becoming president. Last week, speaking at the opening of the f8 developers’ conference, Zuckerberg suggested he was concerned about Trump, seemingly referring to the property magnate’s plans.
I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as ‘others’. I hear them calling for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, for reducing trade, and in some cases, even for cutting access to the internet. It takes courage to choose hope over fear. Instead of building walls, we can build bridges.”
Facebook employees then asked: “What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent Present Trump in 2017?
Mark Zuckerberg has never been shy about his politics. He has donated money to different candidates, and his company has encouraged people to vote, as well as conducting a mass psychological experiment on users by manipulating their news feeds to assess the effects on their emotions. As Facebook evolves from a social network to a mass media, thanks in part to initiatives such as Instant Articles, its users will spend more time reading newspaper articles than checking out their families and friends, meaning its potential to editorialize its content and to influence its users suddenly increases.
Most people don’t think of Facebook as having any editorial line, but why shouldn’t it? After all, it now reaches more people than any other single media in the world, and is able to generate custom-made news for its users. Already, political parties of all stripes around the world have grasped its potential to reach voters.
Facebook has no obligation to take a “balanced” view of this or that issue: the First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right of the company to inform how it pleases, just like any magazine or newspaper. It could easily decide what content it wants to block or promote, and it can already fine-tune its algorithms so that information is presented to users at a given time.
Meanwhile, the company has moved quickly to say that it would never interfere in how its users vote:
“Voting is a core value of democracy and we believe that supporting civic participation is an important contribution we can make to the community. We encourage any and all candidates, groups, and voters to use our platform to share their views on the election and debate the issues. We as a company are neutral — we have not and will not use our products in a way that attempts to influence how people vote.”
On the one hand, users are right to be fearful that a powerful tool like Facebook could editorialize news content in such a way as to try to influence their vote, on the other, should a responsible company that defends certain values stand by and do nothing as a candidate who clearly threatens those values uses the social networks and the internet to get his message over?
In short, if an individual or group of people believe a particular candidate is bad for their country, and act accordingly through campaigns, and if newspapers and other news and media outlets often do the same by expressing their support for this or that candidate, then why not a social network?
When a media outlet opts for one political party or candidate over another, it does so knowing that it will lose readers who don’t hold those views. A social network could decide to remain neutral if it wants to be used by people from all walks of life and with all kinds of political views, and it would do so largely for financial reasons.
That said, there are any number of cases when social networks have let their views be known, mainly when their interests are at stake, such as net neutrality, privacy, or censorship, and there is no doubt from what he says, that Donald Trump could be a threat to these values.
Would we hold Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg accountable for not having done more to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president, simply because the company didn’t want to offend a certain number of its users? Perhaps its time we had a debate about the ethics of editorializing, and whether they apply equally to newspapers or television companies as to the largest social network in the world?
(En español, aquí)
