Unfriending Facebook for misinformation
Social media giants undermine health efforts by spreading false ideas about COVID-19
When crisis strikes, you learn who your friends are.
In the COVID-19 context, our friends include fearless health-care professionals and front-line food workers. They include business owners, who have closed down at immense personal cost to keep customers and employees safe, and governments of all stripes that have provided income support, wage subsidies, child care for essential workers, eviction moratoria and more. Facebook and Google? Not so much. Instead of contributing to Canada’s fight against COVID-19, these companies have infected large portions of the population with false ideas about the virus, gravely undermining public health efforts. While our governments — basically, you and I — spend billions to keep Canadians healthy and fed, Facebook makes a killing making the problem worse.
Arecent study published in a Harvard journal found that people relying on broadcasters and newspapers were far better informed about COVID-19 than those who get their news from social media. It’s no wonder.
For Facebook, COVID-19 misinformation isn’t a problem: It’s a product.
Last month, Facebook was exposed for offering advertisers the ability to target people interested in “pseudoscience,” ensuring that those who are most susceptible to COVID-19 misinformation would be most likely to encounter it. A BBC investigation revealed that false posts from just 34 malicious pages received 80 million interactions since January — six times more than the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention combined.
Meanwhile, the professional journalists working to strengthen our
community are disappearing. Free of the obligation to pay taxes, or pay for content, companies such as Facebook offer advertisers rock-bottom prices, sucking billions of dollars in potential ad revenue from its competitors, who now face mass failure. More than 2,000 Canadian media jobs have been lost since mid-March. More than 50 outlets have closed. Dozens more have made deep cuts.
Despite these facts, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that Canada’s journalism crisis — a crisis of truth and democracy — is “not a priority at this time.”
Not a priority? Canada is spending tens of billions of dollars on COVID-19 relief but allows Facebook and Google not to pay tax on billions of dollars in revenue. Government is working 24/7 to inform people about how to stay safe from
COVID-19 while, at the same time, allowing Facebook, Google and YouTube to spread falsehoods and hatred with complete impunity.
And while the government professes to support Canadian journalism, Facebook and Google are free to take content from Canadian news outlets without permission or compensation.
The result is a radical shift in the balance of influence from those who report the truth in service of democracy to those who spread propaganda in unthinkable volume, at unfathomable speed, with unconscionable indifference.
Successive Liberal and Conservative governments watched this train wreck unfold. They did nothing to stop it. Let’s call it a policy of radical inaction.
Perhaps the parties and the platforms have grown too cosy? Facebook’s chief Canadian lobbyist, Kevin Chan, was once a leading Liberal, having served as Michael Ignatieff’s policy director. And just this week, Facebook hired Stephen Harper’s former policy director, Rachel Curran, to join its band of mercenary insiders.
That our government has let itself be captured by the likes of Facebook is not just pathetic, it’s now borderline deadly — creating very real public health dangers as COVID-19 misinformation goes viral. Government must move quickly to restore sanity and defend quality journalism from demise. And it can make a big difference without spending a dime.
First, Canada must follow France and Australia in forcing platforms to pay for news, just as radio stations pay royalties to musicians. We must crack down on industrial-scale hate speech and misinformation. Germany fines platforms that fail to remove this content up to 50 million euros ($76 million). We should, too.
Further, we must restore tax incentives that encourage advertisers to buy Canadian, just as Trudeau urged consumers to do last week. The federal government can lead by example. In 2018 and 2019, it spent $52 million advertising with foreign companies including Facebook and Google, but just $11.6 million on Canadian digital advertising.
Facebook and Google take billions out of our country, damage our democracy and are now undermining public health during a pandemic. The likes of Facebook have proven they are not our friends. Any self-respecting nation would stand up to them, and that’s what Canada must do.
Daniel Bernhard is executive director of the watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. Follow Daniel @sendinthewolf.