Facebook faces growing pressure to tackle hoaxes, misinformation, after employee protests
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is under unprecedented pressure to police dangerous posts on the social network, but experts say he’ll refuse to make meaningful changes.
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Mark Zuckerberg is facing mounting pressure to take action against disinformation plaguing his multibillion-dollar social network … and this time the pressure is coming from within his own ranks.
Facebook employees, from engineers to moderators, along with scientists funded by his charity organisation, are urging the tech leader to take a stronger stance on the misleading, fraudulent, and potentially harmful information that riddles the social network.
The European Union described the problem as an “infodemic”.
Some employees staged a virtual walkout against Facebook’s inaction on the issue, and at least one engineer resigned over it.
Social media and fact-checking experts say the in-house protests, sparked by Facebook’s failure to moderate posts from US President Donald Trump, were the latest in a long line of calls to see the social network tackle “one of the decade’s greatest problems,” and one that could endanger the democratic process or even lives.
But they also question whether Facebook’s leadership team, including Zuckerberg, would be brave enough to curtail misinformation when the company had a history of ignoring the problem and when billions of dollars were at stake.
Facebook’s latest scandal hit after the tech giant refused to hide or label a violent message posted on its platform, even though rival Twitter did take action.
The post, from President Trump, called Black Lives Matters protesters “THUGS” and used the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” implying violence against them.
The phrase was first used in 1967 and was thought to have contributed to race riots in Miami.
Trump has more than 29 million followers on Facebook and 255,000 users reacted to his post, while 71,000 shared it. The post remains on Facebook, untouched.
Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey took a different approach, however, restricting access to the violent message.
Before viewing it, users were shown a warning that it “violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence”.
“We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally,” Dorsey explained.
“And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make.”
Twitter also fact-checked and added labels to two other tweets from President Trump about voter fraud allegations.
Facebook’s inaction during a time of mass protests in the US inspired an unprecedented response from employees.
Hundreds staged a “virtual walkout,” refusing to work from home.
Others voiced disapproval on Twitter.
Some threatened to resign, and at least one worker did.
Facebook moderators, hired on third-party contracts and unable to protest, signed an open letter against the decision.
And more than 140 scientists at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organisation set up by Zuckerberg and wife Dr Priscilla Chan, signed a document protesting Facebook’s stance.
“As scientists, we are dedicated to investigating ways to better our world,” the letter reads. “The spread of deliberate misinformation and divisive language is directly antithetical to this goal and we are therefore deeply concerned at the stance Facebook has taken.”
In response to the overwhelming pressure, Zuckerberg backed away from his initial insistence that Trump’s post “did not constitute a policy violation” but did not commit to making changes.
In a lengthy response, the chief executive said Facebook would “review our policies allowing discussion and threats of state use of force to see if there are any amendments we should adopt,” as well as looking at policies on voter suppression, transparency, and removing content.
“We’re going to review potential options for handling violating or partially violating content aside from the binary leave-it-up or take-it-down decisions,” he added.
“I know many of you think we should have labelled the President’s posts in some way last week.”
But Swinburne University social media major director Dr Belinda Barnet said it was telling that Zuckerberg announced no concrete changes to the way the network handled misinformation, disinformation or calls for violence on his network.
“He’s very good at resisting calls to fact-check content and he’s not going to fold just because his employees have walked out,” she said.
“There will be increasing pressure from the media, governments, his own employees, and experts — pressure from 360 degrees — but so far he has stood his ground.”
New pressure came late this week when the European Commission also called on Facebook to publish reports on its efforts to tackle misleading content, including advertisements.
Commissioner Josep Borrell cited the COVID-19 outbreak as causing a new spike in dangerous social media content.
“The coronavirus pandemic has been accompanied by a massive infodemic,” he warned.
“We have witnessed a wave of false and misleading information, hoaxes and conspiracy theories, as well as targeted influence operations by foreign actors. What is more, disinformation in times of the coronavirus can kill.”
RMIT journalism and fact-checking lecturer Gordon Farrer said allowing this dangerous information to spread unchecked on powerful networks would also put future elections at risk.
Disinformation on social networks was so widespread that some voters were no longer getting “enough correct information to make an educated choice,” he said, and public health messages were being lost.
“Nowhere in mainstream media has anyone seriously argued that 5G towers spread coronavirus but we had a whole bunch of people stand up and protest 5G for that reason in Australia,” he said.
“I know that conspiracy is rife on Facebook and enough people now been informed about a conspiracy that is just not true. It is damaging to society.”
Despite growing calls to action, Dr Barnet said she expects more misinformation, more violent posts, and no big backdown from the world’s biggest social network.
“We’re going to see more disinformation campaigns and co-ordinated misinformation campaigns, possibly from foreign actors again as it was in 2016,” she said.
“To have an impact on misinformation there needs to be a strong level of fact-checking, preferably on political ads but also on information that is going viral.
“Trump and the US Republican Party spend millions of dollars a month on advertising and if they pulled that or if they rushed legislative changes, it could potentially cost Facebook billions of dollars in lost revenue.”
Originally published as Facebook faces growing pressure to tackle hoaxes, misinformation, after employee protests