As anti-vaxxers commented, Facebook froze
Company hesitated even as employees crafted solutions
In March, as claims about the dangers of coronavirus vaccines spun across social media and undermined attempts to stop the spread of the virus, some Facebook employees thought they’d found a way to help.
By subtly altering how posts about vaccines are ranked in people’s news feeds, company researchers realized they could curtail misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines and offer users posts from legitimate sources like the World Health Organization.
“Given these results, I’m assuming we’re hoping to launch ASAP,” one Facebook employee wrote in March, responding to the internal memo about the study. Instead, Facebook shelved some suggestions from the study. Other changes weren’t made until April.
When another Facebook researcher suggested disabling comments on vaccine posts in March until the platform could do a better job of tackling anti-vaccine messages lurking in them, that proposal was ignored at the time.
Critics say Facebook was slow to act because it worried it might impact the company’s profits.
“Why would you not remove comments? Because engagement is the only thing that matters,” said Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an internet watchdog group. “It drives attention and attention equal eyeballs and eyeballs equal ad revenue.”
In an emailed statement, Facebook said it has made “considerable progress” this year with downgrading vaccine misinformation in users’ feeds.
Facebook’s internal discussions were revealed in disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen’s legal counsel. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press.
The trove of documents shows that in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook carefully investigated how its platforms spread misinformation about life-saving vaccines. They also reveal rank-and-file employees regularly suggested solutions for countering antivaccine misinformation on the site, to no avail.
The inaction raises questions about whether Facebook prioritized controversy and division over the health of its users.
“These people are selling fear and outrage,” said Roger Mcnamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early investor in Facebook who is now a vocal critic. “It is not a fluke. It is a business model.”
Typically, Facebook ranks posts by engagement — the total number of likes, dislikes, comments and reshares. That ranking scheme may work well for innocuous subjects like recipes, dog photos or the latest viral singalong. But Facebook’s own documents show that when it comes to divisive, contentious issues like vaccines, engagementbased ranking only emphasizes polarization and doubt.
To study ways to reduce vaccine misinformation, Facebook researchers changed how posts are ranked for more than 6,000 users in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil and the Philippines. Instead of seeing posts about vaccines that were chosen based on their engagement, these users saw posts selected for their trustworthiness.
The results: a nearly 12% decrease in content that made claims debunked by fact-checkers and an 8% increase in content from authoritative public health organizations.