Facebook: Social media threat to democracy

WASHINGTON, D. C.: Facebook acknowledged on Monday (Tues of social media poses a potential threat to democracy, pledging to tackle the problem head-on and turn its powerful platform into a force for “good.”

The comments from the world’s biggest social network were its latest response to intense criticism for failing to stop the spread of misinformation most strikingly leading up to the 2016 US election.

In a blog post, Facebook civic engagement chief Samidh Chakrabarti said he was “not blind to the damage that the internet can do to even a well-functioning democracy.”

“In 2016, we at Facebook were far too slow to recognize how bad actors were abusing our platform,” he said. “We’re working diligently to neutralize these risks now.”

Facebook to reboot its image, including with the announcement last week that it would let users “rank” the trustworthiness of news sources to help stem the

“We’re as determined as ever and ensure that our platform is unquestionably a source for democratic good,” said Katie Harbath, Facebook’s head of global politics and government outreach, in an accompanying statement.

Facebook, along with Google and Twitter, faces global scrutiny for facil other electoral battles.

The social network has concluded that Russian actors created 80,000 posts that reached around 126 million people in the United States over a two-year period.

“It’s abhorrent to us that a nation- state used our platform to wage a cyberwar intended to divide society,” Chakrabarti said.

“This was a new kind of threat that we couldn’t easily predict, but we should have done better. Now we’re making up for lost time,” he said.

Chakrabarti pointed at Facebook’s pledge last year to identify the backers of political advertise need to tread carefully, citing the could be endangered if they are

He also elaborated on the decision to let Facebook’s users rank the “trustworthiness” of news sources, saying: “We don’t want to be the arbiters of truth, nor do we imagine this is a role the world would want for us.”

While acknowledging concerns over the rise of “echo chambers,” he argued that “the best deterrent will ultimately be a discerning public.” Facebook’s plan to rank news organizations based on user “trust” sur

Renee DiResta of the nonprofit group Data for Democracy was optimistic.

“This is great news and a long time coming. Google has been ranking for quality for a long time, for social networks to get there,” she wrote on Twitter.

But technology columnist Shelly Palmer warned that Facebook appeared to be equating trust and truth with what the “wikiality.”