Press Gallery
Politische Werbung ist in Fernsehen und Hörfunk nicht erlaubt. Falls Facebook seine Werbepraxis nicht ändert, wäre es an der Zeit, diese gesetzlichen Vorschriften auch auf soziale Medien auszuweiten.
Comment from the Englishspeaking world
In every political debate since Facebook began to dominate democracy, the company has placed itself on the wrong side of history. Facebook cannot be reformed from within as its business model profits from hosting bomb-throwing circuses of hate, humbug and hogwash . ... It is not good for society, but it is good for Facebook.
That apparently is fine for the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who is worth $85bn. Consider the latest ugly episode... After some of the world’s biggest brands boycotted Facebook over its refusal to ban racist and violent content, the company said that the matter was being taken seriously. Internally ... Mr Zuckerberg said his company was “not going to change our policies … because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue”.
In America, there is a view that capitalism fixes things. In Britain, government usually acts. The Lords select committee on democracy and digital technologies last week was correct to say it was a mistake to allow social media firms to grow unimpeded by regulation. This, the peers said, had “become acutely obvious in the current Covid-19 pandemic, where online misinformation poses not only a real and present danger to our democracy, but also to our lives” . ... This message has been received by the UK’S competition authority, which has proposed forcing Facebook to give consumers a choice over whether to accept targeted advertising . ...
The firm’s hands-off approach means it won’t drain its swamp of racism, misogyny and conspiracy. In a speech last October, ... Zuckerberg said it’s not right to censor politicians. Mr Trump has been notably softer on Facebook than its rivals.
This bargain is unravelling. Faced with a ... backlash over Mr Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, the social network removed a Trump ad that used a Nazi-era symbol . ... Yet in Britain, Facebook is used to spread false political advertising. It does so knowing that the network’s algorithms spit out, in the words of its own research, “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform”.
There is an easy solution. The UK bans all political advertising from ... television or radio. Unless firms like Facebook change radically, it may be time to extend this prohibition to social media.
© Guardian News & Media 2020