Companies wrestle with conspiracy theories about shooting
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are being used to sow division after killings at a Florida school
Aweek after the mass shooting at a Florida school, internet giants are once again scrambling to contain the damage that their platforms are helping enable: spreading conspiracy theories and sowing division.
On Facebook and YouTube, high school students from Parkland, Florida, who are organizing and calling for gun control are being accused of being paid actors. Twitter bots pushed different false narratives about the suspect. And there are theories floating around online that the shooting didn’t happen at all, even though 17 people died.
In the wake of all the scrutiny about misinformation and abuse on their platforms, especially amid growing evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, tech companies have rolled out changes and added people and technology to help vet content. But they still can’t seem to keep up with all the different ways their systems and algorithms are being manipulated.
Wednesday, accusations that one Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student in particular, David Hogg, is a paid actor trended on YouTube and Facebook. Hogg has made several media appearances since last week’s shootings, and is calling for gun control.
A video calling Hogg an actor appeared atop YouTube’s trending section Wednesday morning before being take n down, Business Insider noted. Hogg, 17, told CNN Tuesday that he is “not a crisis actor.”
YouTube has not responded to this news organization’s request for comment, but in statements to other news outlets, the company said it removed the video as soon as it became aware of it, and that it is “working to improve our systems moving forward.” It’s becoming a familiar refrain. “We saw the same kind of situation after the Las Vegas shootings,” said Irina Raicu, director of the internet ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, on Thursday. These companies “seemto be surprised every time” they see such misinformation being spread online, she added.
So what else can the companies do? They are already under pressure from lawmakers and advocacy groups over the content on their platforms. Even their early investors and former employees are lamenting the effects of the tools they helped create.
Both Raicu and Ahmed Banafa, a lecturer at San Jose State University’s engineering department, suggested Thursday that the companies might want to have dedicated teams that respond to the bad information that’s bound to surface after a major news story or crisis.
“Facebook has the Safety Check tool, what about a M is information Check?” Raicu asked.
“You have to be ready the minute it happens,” Banafa said.
A search for Hogg on YouTube Thursday yielded mostly news videos about the conspiracy theories, not the theories themselves.
On Twitter, Russian bots weighed in about the shootings last week, immediately taking advantage of the divisive nature of the gun-control debate in America, the New York Times reported.
Researchers told the Times that the bots “exploited the issue of mental illness,” started hashtags such as #NRA, #AR15 and “false flag,” a term used by conspiracy theorists to refer to secret government oper---
ations carried out to look like something else. Bots tweeted that the suspect, Nikolas Cruz, supposedly searched for Arabic phrases on Google before the shooting.
Twitter, which has reportedly suspended thousands of automated accounts recently, on Thursday referred this news organization to a tweet from its Twitter Safety account Wednesday, inwhich it said it is “actively working on reports of targeted abuse and harassment of a number of survivors of the tragic mass shooting in #Parkland.”
Twitter has also verified accounts of some of the students who are speaking up, including that of Hogg and of EmmaGonzalez, who over theweekend delivered an impassioned speech calling for gun control at a rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The companies can use artificial intelligence to do things such as get rid of bots, said Banafa, who specializes in AI and the internet of things.
But he put the onus on internet users, too.
“It’s not the same like it was before 2016,” Banafa said. “We always have to have this nagging question at the back of our heads when we read something. Check an- other source.”
Meanwhile, Facebook on Thursday sent along the following statement fromMary deBree, head of content policy: “Images that attack the victims of lastweek’s tragedy in Florida are abhorrent. We are removing this content from Facebook.”
The tech companies are increasingly “getting into having to make editorial judgments, although they prefer to stay out of it,” said Richard Craig, an associate professor at San Jose State’s journalism and mass communications department, Thursday.
“Something has to be done,” Craig said. “I don’t envy the people who have to do it.”