will facebook interfere in american politics?
Even though Facebook does not publish own contents and acts only as a medium that makes external contents public it’s the most influential and powerful social media world wide! Facebook would be able to interfere in politics easily: For example in american politics a slight change of the Facebook algorithm could choose articles that portray Hilary Clinton in a favored and Donald Trump in an adverse way.
Facebook is technically able to interfere in this way in american politics, according to the FAZ. In 2013 Facebook did a huge social experiment in which they manipulated the newsfeed of 700.000 Facebook members over one week. In the experiment the spreading of positive and negative emotions should be researched. But even if there are no experiments happening, our newsfeed is still distorted. As we already discussed in class Facebook uses algorithms to suit each newsfeed to each user. This is not happening only with the Facebook advertising, but also with news of our “friends”. The “friends” we’re often chatting with or on whose profiles we look or rather whose comments or photos we “like” are appearing more often in our own newsfeed. So Facebook decides what we see and is therefore able to show his users articles that portray Donald Trump in an negative way in order to prevent his election. But is this legal?
The thing is that these manipulations of the newsfeed algorithms can not be proved, because of the strictly protected company secret of Facebook. The FAZ even assumes, that this could possibly fall under the freedom of opinion and speech law of the First Amendment of the American constitution.
What do you think about this? Is Facebook allowed to interfere so severe in the formation of our opinion in political issues? I have to admit that I think it would be more than helpful if some of the Trump supporters come to their senses and realize that Donald Trump as the president of the United States would lead to a political disaster, but I am not sure if Facebook should wield that much power over society.
