Facebook Audit Reveals 'Deeply Troubling' And 'Weaponized' Platform
An independent civil rights audit commissioned by Facebook has found that the company’s decision-making process “remains too reactive and piecemeal” to achieve regular, meaningful progress on key issues plaguing the social media platform.
That stuttering approach has impeded Facebook’s own efforts to properly respond to urgent needs, thereby harming both its users and society at large. As a result, organized hate, misinformation, voter suppression and discrimination remain massive problems for Facebook to tackle, among others.
Facebook released the 100-page report, authored by a team of civil rights attorneys and led by former American Civil Liberties Union executive Laura Murphy, on Wednesday.
While auditors applauded the company for a “number of positive and consequential steps,” they warned that progress is being undone by other “vexing and heartbreaking decisions,” effectively setting Facebook on a “seesaw of progress and setbacks.”
One example: failing to act on a series of recent posts by President Donald Trump in which he labeled protesters as “THUGS” and said that “looting” leads to “shooting.” The posts were left up after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke with Trump and claimed, despite evidence to the contrary, that they didn’t incite violence and therefore didn’t violate company rules.
After Facebook’s inaction on the Trump posts, other politicians and businesses ran ads with similar language, advocating that armed vigilante citizens shoot “looters” and “ANTIFA terrorists.” Even though the ads violated the platform’s rules, they weren’t flagged by the company and received more than 200,000 impressions before they were brought to Facebook’s attention and removed.
In addition to carving out problematic exceptions for the president, the report found Facebook is generally “far too reluctant to adopt strong rules to limit misinformation and voter suppression,” effectively “weaponizing”...
