Facebook colludes in state censorship Just how far will the social media company go to break into new markets?
Facebook is preparing for the Chinese market, and part of that preparation is the development of tools to enable the Chinese Government to suppress unrest by ensuring that posts on certain subjects never appear. Facebook won’t do the censorship itself, but it will supply the means for a third party to monitor feeds and decide what goes live.
Facebook has refused to confirm or deny the existence of such tools as yet; it’s still an internal project. Their existence was leaked by employees, alarmed by the implications. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading non-profit organisation defending civil liberties, calls the project “extremely disturbing”.
Facebook has made no secret of trying to get into China. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made many visits, met President Xi, and even started to learn Mandarin. The lure is obvious. The internet is censored in China, and effectively, too. Any company that doesn’t comply faces being blocked; censorship isn’t optional. Actually, such tools were inevitable.
China loves the internet, censored or not. Realistically, though, Facebook’s chances of success there are pretty slim. A domestic Facebook-like app has already failed there. Renren claimed 160 million users at its stock launch, but quickly withered. The big thing is WeChat, largely used on smartphones; it has 846 million active users. Blocking foreign competition for so long has enabled domestic companies to become well established. Put simply, the Chinese state would prefer the big players on its home turf to be Chinese and under close control, and it has the power to make that so. Apple is a rare success, and that has drawn a backlash.
Meanwhile, at home, Facebook has faced calls to censor fake news stories, many of which circulated before the election, at one point gaining more coverage than the real ones. Initially, the company denied it had influenced the outcome of the election — “a pretty crazy idea”, according to Zuckerberg. He may have a point. People tend to read and spread stories they already either agree or disagree with strongly. This was later followed by a more nuanced response. Facebook said it will employ third-party fact checkers and stronger detection by algorithms in future.
We may abhor censorship in theory, but it’s remarkable how quickly it is called for when we don’t like the results of unrestricted access. It is a slippery slope on a delicate balance. As Zuckerberg commented, “We need to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or mistakenly restricting accurate content.” However, it is still a big step from removing individual articles to allowing wholesale censorship on specific subjects under state control. The Chinese experiment is moving into darker waters.
An uncomfortable question here is: how far is Facebook willing to compromise to get new business? Social media sites need to keep moving or they sink. Facebook has started to hit the limits on growth in mature markets; with 62.5% of adult Australians having access (and an even higher 67% in America), there can’t be much more room for growth. To grow, it must go abroad, where local laws and state controls can be very different.
In a recent press interview, Mark Zuckerberg was asked what checks and balances needed to exist for entities such as Facebook. The reply consisted largely of platitudes on connectivity and the power to share. It was particularly unconvincing stuff. There is a growing gap between accountability and responsibility that will definitely need addressing at some point.