Regulation v. Censorship: Face to Face with the Dark Side Facebook
Facebook has recently been under severe scrutiny regarding content filtering, user protection, and their use of customer data. At the beginning of October, the identity of the Facebook whistleblower was revealed as Frances Haugen. The former employee came out to discuss her qualms with Facebook’s propagation of misinformation and hate.
Haugen has been on a mission to deal with misinformation since her start at Facebook in 2019. She worked as a product manager in the civic integrity department. In her time at the company, she observed very disturbing reactions and protocols to dealing with ethnic violence, fake news, misinformation, and data about the negative effects of specific types of posts on Facebook and Instagram.
Haugen says that in her experience, she constantly saw conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. Over and over again, Facebook chose what was in their best interest.
Based on research, there is evidence that hate speech and misinformation are types of content that garner more user interaction. Misinformation is six times as likely to be shared and viewed as opposed to the truth. This is a scary stat and one that Facebook has used to its advantage to maximize profit.
One of the major issues that is being investigated in court is whether Facebook is doing its duties to eliminate fake news. Unfortunately, what has been uncovered thus far has shown that, in fact, Facebook does not remove misinformation but, rather, allows it to stay on the platform. Facebook has even gone as far as allowing individuals with massive followings to post violence, hate speech, and fake news to their platforms without any repercussions. This comes as quite a shock to many who hear Mark Zuckerberg's claim to always have the interest of society in mind. But if you look at the history of what has transpired over the past few years, you won’t be as shocked as before.
Time and again, Facebook has been the facilitator of violent crimes and inhumane acts: consider the insurrection on January 6th, Mayanmar in 2018, and most recently, the distrust of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The way Facebook is today is “tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence,” said Haugen in an interview on 60minutes.
But what can and should be done about this?
The defense against removing posts and information is the blurry line to draw between regulation and censorship. Who has the power to decide when and where to remove misinformation? Zuckerberg says that his company is working towards using an AI system that will know when to remove a post and when not to. But how much trust can we put into artificial intelligence when the stakes are so high?
Both sides of this argument claim that the other is undermining democracy. On the one hand, perpetuating false information is undermining the citizen's right to live in a safe environment. On the other hand, censorship is one of the cornerstones of our democracy noted in the first amendment. Who is right?
This debate is obviously complex and controversial. But it is clear that something must be done to regulate this industry in more ways than one. The Facebook of today has been compared to being worse than the tobacco industry.
How can we allow this bully to bulldoze our democracy and our lives?
