We’re approaching the US Presidential Election and a maelstrom of vitriol. In the red corner, a proto facist and the first President to adopt a govern-by-tweet approach. In the blue corner, a seasoned operative but one who is gaffe-prone and uncharismatic.
This is in the midst of an impending economic recession, low oil prices which have decimated the Texas shale industry, pent-up anger and frustration from the COVID lockdown and a culture war which has emerged from the Black Lives Matter movement and the racist killing of George Floyd.
2016 was a year which changed the course of history. Trump was elected, the UK voted in favour of Brexit and as the Presidential race began in France, the vitriolic, anti-immigrant National Front stormed ahead. Cambridge Analytica mined the data of thousands of people, playing into the psychological vulnerabilities of unsure voters.
We realised the fragility of democracy as it is played out via social media. Facebook is no longer a platform for cat videos, Instagram transcends the superficial selfie culture, Twitter is not merely a personal blogging site. These are all powerful political tools to reach voters, spread (mis)information and rubbish opponents.
Half of Britons now get their news from social media, according to an Ofcom 2019 Survey. While the indigenous traditional media brands such as the BBC and RTE prevail, social media is increasingly becoming the main means of accessing news. Social media is becoming the default gateway to accessing the news.
What Facebook is(n't) Doing
Facebook has adopted a deliberately laissez faire attitude to moderating its own platform. Just take a look at this video:
"So you won't take down lies or you will take down lies?"
US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cross-examined Mark Zuckerberg last year in a Financial Committee. Her shotgun questioning unfortunately yielded little substance in response from Zuckerberg, who floundered, insisting "it depends on the context." Why is the CEO of Facebook unable to answer these fundamental questions about his company's policies? Well, I'd like to propose that these are issues which are difficult to answer in one sentence - the self-regulated policing of free speech is a difficult game. Particularly if, like Facebook, you care about free speech but realise that some limits are required.
Facebook's ad policies are detailed on its website. Under the title 'Political Advertising', the company describes the authorisation process to ensure that anyone purporting to be a political party is who they say they are. Enforcement will be taken against people who run ads without authorisation or provide "false or misleading information in the authorization process." What if the advertisement itself contains false or misleading information?
Facebook's view is that transparency should prevail. I agree. The recent UK General Election was in a way a trial run for the upcoming Presidential election. Facebook's policy was to prevent campaigners from spreading misinformation about where, when or how to vote, inciting violence and sharing content that has previously been debunked or content which violates laws.
Before the election, Facebook's Steve Hatch did an enlightening interview with BBC Radio Four in which he discussed the platform's policies. He promised that any political advertising would be highlighted with the name of the individual behind the advertising appear above the advertisement. There would be a degree of fact checking, he promised, with users being notified if a statement in an advertisement was contrary to the past political actions of a candidate.
Facebook values giving political groups a platform to air their views and promises to refrain from censorious authority. Zuckerberg et al realise that they walk a precarious tightrope here - between allowing free speech and preserving accurate, informed and reasonable speech. With the best will in the world, Facebook cannot walk this tightrope alone.
Facebook is at least self-aware. The CEO posited that it shouldn't be the arbiter of "everything that is said online." Within a corporate entity like Facebook, democracy starts and ends with its shareholders. This is not an appropriate body to police what can and cannot be said, I believe.
Facebook's view is that transparency should prevail. I agree. The recent UK General Election was in a way a trial run for the upcoming Presidential election. Facebook's policy was to prevent campaigners from spreading misinformation about where, when or how to vote, inciting violence and sharing content that has previously been debunked or content which violates laws.
Before the election, Facebook's Steve Hatch did an enlightening interview with BBC Radio Four in which he discussed the platform's policies. He promised that any political advertising would be highlighted with the name of the individual behind the advertising appear above the advertisement. There would be a degree of fact checking, he promised, with users being notified if a statement in an advertisement was contrary to the past political actions of a candidate.
Facebook values giving political groups a platform to air their views and promises to refrain from censorious authority. Zuckerberg et al realise that they walk a precarious tightrope here - between allowing free speech and preserving accurate, informed and reasonable speech. With the best will in the world, Facebook cannot walk this tightrope alone.
Facebook is at least self-aware. The CEO posited that it shouldn't be the arbiter of "everything that is said online." Within a corporate entity like Facebook, democracy starts and ends with its shareholders. This is not an appropriate body to police what can and cannot be said, I believe.
Is Facebook a Publisher?
‘Facebook should be considered a publisher’ it is often argued mainly by traditional media wishing to see the platform being shackled to the same responsibilities and standards as themselves. If Facebook is a publisher, it gives it the prerogative to have an editorial agenda. In the cable television wars of the US, CNN is seen as having a democratic lilt while Fox News is a gun-hugging republican channel. The Telegraph is considered a Tory manuscript, while the Guardian is more liberal.
From a commercial point of view, it is unfair that Facebook has all the benefits of being a publisher (Facebook and Google together have 81% of online ad spend in Ireland) without all of the costs (fact-checking and researching).
It is foolish to think that merely because an article is factually-correct it does not carry an agenda. The Irish Times had an advertising campaign a number of years ago with the slogan Facts Have No Agenda. On its face, this statement seems reasonable. However, the facts you choose and the facts you omit conceal an agenda, portraying a certain narrative of an event. Whether or not you run with a story in the first place is telling. So to anyone who believes that fact-checking alone is the panacea to removing bias - it's not.
From a commercial point of view, it is unfair that Facebook has all the benefits of being a publisher (Facebook and Google together have 81% of online ad spend in Ireland) without all of the costs (fact-checking and researching).
It is foolish to think that merely because an article is factually-correct it does not carry an agenda. The Irish Times had an advertising campaign a number of years ago with the slogan Facts Have No Agenda. On its face, this statement seems reasonable. However, the facts you choose and the facts you omit conceal an agenda, portraying a certain narrative of an event. Whether or not you run with a story in the first place is telling. So to anyone who believes that fact-checking alone is the panacea to removing bias - it's not.
Questions around whether a statement or article on Facebook is false, misleading, inaccurate or hate speech involve a great degree of nuance. If a Facebook ad claims 'Politician Joe Bloggs hates the environment' and that affirmation is based on the fact that Joe Bloggs has voted against a piece of pro-environmental legislation - is the statement misleading? I think so. Is it false? Not entirely, but it's not entirely true either, so it falls somewhere in a grey area.
If it is found to be misleading or false, what should be done? Should the post be retained but users notified that it is misleading or false, or should it be removed from Facebook entirely? Trump’s ‘when the looting starts’ klaxon for chaos was rightly marked by Twitter as containing “offensive material”. Nonetheless Twitter kept the Tweet on its platform, open to being shared and commented on, albeit with a caveat. This is the most admirable approach to take, I believe. If you want Facebook to be a publisher - you're happy to let Facebook, a corporate entity with responsibilities only to its shareholders, deliver the final adjudication on these questions.
If it is found to be misleading or false, what should be done? Should the post be retained but users notified that it is misleading or false, or should it be removed from Facebook entirely? Trump’s ‘when the looting starts’ klaxon for chaos was rightly marked by Twitter as containing “offensive material”. Nonetheless Twitter kept the Tweet on its platform, open to being shared and commented on, albeit with a caveat. This is the most admirable approach to take, I believe. If you want Facebook to be a publisher - you're happy to let Facebook, a corporate entity with responsibilities only to its shareholders, deliver the final adjudication on these questions.
Recently, Facebook has admitted to taking down comments made by anti-5G activists on a Facebook group. Calling them activists gives them too much credit. Anyway, this should not be read into as a political move by the platform given that some of the comments violate rules on speech which threatens the safety of individuals. If Facebook starts to remove anti-5G posts, though, that would involve the policing free speech. As described above, I do not believe that this is not appropriate for Facebook to do.
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| The Irish Independent's reporting on Facebook removing comments (17th April 2020). |
Throughout the past couple of hundred words I've told you what is not the solution - to trust Facebook sort out its own affairs. Self-regulation does not work. It effectively means that Facebook is both the referee and a football player at the same time.
One solution is to ban political advertising outright. Facebook has acknowledged and rightly so, that its platform is fuel for grassroots political movements. This would also involve drawing a finer line about what is and what is not a political message. Is an anti-climate change advertisement a political message, for instance? Google's knee-jerk reaction to ban all political advertising a fortnight before the referendum to Repeal the Eighth Amendment illustrated that the platforms really don't know what level of intervention to take when misinformation is spread.
Facebook is crying out for regulation. I think the solution lies with the EU. The GDPR has become the international high watermark for data protection law and practices. Its protection extends far beyond the borders of the EU nations, given that it protects the rights of EU citizens regardless of where the company processing the data is based. A similar catch-all regulation is required in the context of content moderation online, setting a new international standard.
This standard should include fact-checking which alerts a user to a posts's veracity, without removing the post. It should drive social networks to display a variety of viewpoints on an issue to avoid echo-chambers. Under a newspaper's article it should suggest similar articles from different publishers. There should be a space on the site to see how much each political candidate is spending on their advertising campaign, and what type of people/topics they are targeting.
Facebook should identify all publishers and give background on who they are above each one of their posts. This will help the reader to see that RT is merely the Kremlin's Russia Today with a shorter name, that AJ is part of Qatar's Al Jazeera and that Breitbart is a front for false information.
Transparency, as Facebook wishes, should come first. As with traditional media, trust the user to make up their own mind from thereon in.
Facebook is crying out for regulation. I think the solution lies with the EU. The GDPR has become the international high watermark for data protection law and practices. Its protection extends far beyond the borders of the EU nations, given that it protects the rights of EU citizens regardless of where the company processing the data is based. A similar catch-all regulation is required in the context of content moderation online, setting a new international standard.
This standard should include fact-checking which alerts a user to a posts's veracity, without removing the post. It should drive social networks to display a variety of viewpoints on an issue to avoid echo-chambers. Under a newspaper's article it should suggest similar articles from different publishers. There should be a space on the site to see how much each political candidate is spending on their advertising campaign, and what type of people/topics they are targeting.
Facebook should identify all publishers and give background on who they are above each one of their posts. This will help the reader to see that RT is merely the Kremlin's Russia Today with a shorter name, that AJ is part of Qatar's Al Jazeera and that Breitbart is a front for false information.
Transparency, as Facebook wishes, should come first. As with traditional media, trust the user to make up their own mind from thereon in.
The genesis of the internet was as an open forum for freedom of expression and dissemination of information. It has been a free for all. This is all well and good until monied political machines manipulate the system to their advantage and until voters are fooled populist lies spread online. Facebook needs regulation and quick. Let's hope this Presidential election does not see a repeat of the social media chaos of 2016. Democracy dies in darkness.
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