Facebook fake news spirals out of control

The four tech CEO's appear by video link at a US congressional anti-trust hearing looking at their market domination and regulation.

Facebook’s propagation of dangerous misinformation is out of control and the company is making huge profits from it.

That’s a charge that its CEO Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t adequately address at a mammoth four-hour hearing looking at the monopolistic behaviour of tech giants Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple.

The four CEOs faced a grilling at the congressional antitrust hearing early Thursday AEST.

The hearing covered a broad range of issues and all four were vigorously confronted with persistent questioning via video link.

Questions homed in on these companies’ ability to bully, muscle out and destroy their competitors, and make billions through monopolistic practices. They were accused of stealing the intellectual property of fledgling businesses they purported to help.

They were also asked if they believed China was stealing technology from US businesses. Mr Zuckerberg answered that this was well documented, the other three said they had no first hand knowledge of it, although later Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai referenced an earlier incident where China hacked Google and stole code.

The ability to spread dangerous misinformation including during the pandemic, misinformation and hate speech was also covered, and Mr Zuckerberg was firmly in the hearing’s sights.

He was clearly the most uncomfortable of the four and had difficulty directly answering questions.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the hearing. Picture: AFP

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal confronted Mr Zuckerberg with the claim that he told staff to ignore the statements by more than 1100 companies and organisations who have pulled their advertising business from Facebook. Companies say it couldn’t control racist material, hate speech and damaging misinformation.

“You had a staff meeting earlier this month where you told employees: ‘We’re not going to change our policies or approach because of a threat to any per cent of our revenue, my guess is that all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough.’”

She said it seemed the company was so big, it didn’t care about being impacted by a major boycott of 1100 advertisers.

Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook did care about the boycott but it wouldn’t set its content policies because of advertisers. He said the company had invested billions in fighting hate speech and had tens of thousand of content reviewers.

But he couldn’t fend off claims that Facebook’s operation to remove this content simply failed. Facebook was accused of financially benefiting from it because it was the most engaging content. He had no answer to the charge that efforts to remove it often did not work – especially in the first hours after initial publication when major damage was done.

Hearing chairman, congressman David Cicilline, read out examples of where Facebook profited from the spread of this misinformation to millions of users.

He said the top ten articles on 2020 in Facebook include: “Trump suggests injection of disinfectant can beat coronavirus and clean the lung”, “Coronavirus heist biggest political hoax in history”, “US hospitals getting paid to label the cause of death as coronavirus”. Millions had read these.

US House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law chair David Cicilline. Picture: AFP

“The problem is Facebook is profiting off and amplifying disinformation that harms others because it’s profitable,” he told Mr Zuckerberg at the hearing. “This isn’t a speech issue, it’s about Facebook’s business model, that prioritises engagement in order to keep people on Facebook’s platform to serve up more advertisements.”

He asked Mr Zuckerberg what was Facebook doing “right now” about this.

The Facebook CEO said he disagreed that this content was helpful to his business. “It is not what people want to see,” he said, adding that Facebook ranked its content on what it believes is most meaningful to people and creates long term satisfaction.

Mr Cicilline replied that if this was true, how could he explain that the second most popular post on Facebook was a Breitbart News video claiming that you don’t need a mask, and hydroxychloroquine is a cure for COVID? He said the post racked up 20 million views and 100,000 comments in the first five hours after posting, before Facebook acted to remove it.

“Doesn’t that suggest, Mr Zuckerberg, that your platform is so big that even with the right policies in place, you can’t contain deadly content,” he asked.

Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook “had a relatively good track record” handing misinformation on COVID in particular.

But Mr Cicilline replied: “Facebook gets away with it because you‘re the only game in town, there’s no competition forcing you to police your own platform.”

It’s becoming harder for Mr Zuckerberg to claim Facebook is simply the victim of its own success, with reports such as Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive, by The Wall Street Journal, providing evidence that the company has consciously put success and profit ahead of the public good.

The platform also is under fire from Holocaust survivors who today launched a campaign to have Facebook remove Holocaust denial material. They plan to upload daily videos to Facebook urging Mr Zuckerberg to remove posts from the site that deny the Nazi genocide of Jews, reports wire service AFP.

“Survivors from around the globe, including Anne Frank’s stepsister, have recorded 30-second messages that are then posted on social media, including Instagram and Twitter, with the hashtag #NoDenyingIt,” the report says.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos(L0, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg look on via video conference during an Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee hearing, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC on July 29, 2020, on "Online Platforms and Market Power" in the Rayburn House office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on July 29, 2020. (Photo by Graeme JENNINGS / POOL / AFP)

“I lost all my family. Many, many family members. There is no denying it! Remove Holocaust denial from Facebook,” Eva Schloss, Frank’s stepsister, says in her video.

AFP reports that other survivors contributing to the project include 84-year-old Serge Klarsfeld, a prominent so-called Nazi hunter who has helped track down and expose Nazi war criminals.

The campaign has been organised by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, says AFP.

Facebook was also heavily questioned about its many acquisitions over the years, and was accused of having a “copy, acquire, and kill” approach to competitors in the market. It was not alone in facing such a claim. Device tracking service Tile has levied a similar accusation against Apple.

With so many issues on the table, it’s hard to know where the Congress will start, and what action it will take other than produce a hefty multi-volume report – at least for now.

In his summing up, chairman David Cicilline said: “This hearing has made one fact clear to me. These companies that exist today have monopoly power. Some need to be broken up, all need to be properly regulated and held accountable.”

That will take years if US politicians have any hope of achieving any of this.