Is It Possible To Ban All The Toxic On Social Media?

Facebook is a social media platform owned by Meta and founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. It has almost 3 billion users all around the world and used to be the most downloaded app on smartphones. Since Facebook has such a big market and influence, its dominance also brings negative effects such as users’ privacy, fake news, addiction, etc.

Frances Haugen is 37, a data scientist from Iowa with a degree in computer engineering and a Harvard master’s degree in business. For 15 years she’s worked for companies including Google and Pinterest. She said Facebook does not put effort to ban harmful information because it will reduce the influence and profit of the company. She believes that Mark is not willing to create a hateful platform, but he lets those negative aspects appear freely.

On the other hand, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied Frances Haugen’s testimony and said the company tried their best with thousands of fake news and violence comments but many journalists and experts do not agree with the current situation. In the article on CBS News, the expert said fake COVID information posted on Facebook and a huge group of people believe it and refuse to take the vaccination. Also she explained why Facebook does not ban these fake news because fake news’ influence and attraction is six times more than real information. The potential profit and user engagement is huge.

According to the articles I read, I think the main problem between Facebook and the public is that trust has gone already. Facebook does not share the data and information and the public believe the reason they do not want to share is because they do not want change. In my opinion, from Facebook’s perspective I feel that they are isolated because of its dominance of social media in America. However, I do not think breaking up its dominance will make the case better unless there is regulation to force social media companies to share inside data. In China you cannot use Facebook without VPN and Chinese social media platforms also have strict policy for fake news and harmful information. However, there is still negative or illegal information appearing and many people still believe everything on social media without further consideration. I think making digital media accountable as traditional media is not practical now because the internet is the place for people to experience fictitious and be another person.

I think the importance is to teach children in school the right cognition of the internet and cultivate their ability of critical thinking. Sometimes people believe what they want to believe and only protecting them from outside is not enough to curb messages which permeate in their mind.