Facebook admits to election shortcomings
Facebook said Monday that it fell short in preventing the social media network from being used for foreign meddling in the U.S. presidential election.
New blog posts written by Facebook executives appear to be the most critical self-assessment yet of the social media network’s effect on American democracy. Samidh Chakrabarti, the company’s product manager for civic engagement, said the 2016 presidential election has forced Facebook to confront harsh questions about the role it has played in spreading false information and intensifying divisiveness in the current political climate.
“Facebook was originally designed to connect friends and family — and it has excelled at that,” Chakrabarti wrote in a blog post Monday. “But as unprecedented numbers of people channel their political energy through this medium, it’s being used in unforeseen ways with societal repercussions that were never anticipated.
“In 2016, we at Facebook were far too slow to recognize how bad actors were abusing our platform. We’re working diligently to neutralize these risks now.”
Facebook said last week that it will boost news sources that its users rank as most trustworthy, while shrinking the percentage of news posts overall in users’ news feeds.
In response to mounting criticism, Facebook has used third-party factcheckers to help flag fake-news stories. Once a story has been flagged by fact-checkers as problematic, Chakrabarti said, Facebook can limit its spread, reducing the number of times it is seen by users by as much as 80 percent.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the problems in a post earlier this year, saying his “personal challenge for 2018” is to fix the social media platform he founded.
Chakrabarti’s post, as well as those from outside contributors, reflect a broader effort by Facebook to wrestle with the implications of its global influence. In recent months, the company, using internal research as well as academic reports, has admitted that consuming Facebook passively tends to put people in a worse mood. On the heels of that analysis, Facebook last week announced major changes to its algorithm that will reduce the presence of companies and brands on the platform in a bid to restore a focus on human relationships.
Murdoch: Internet sites should pay for news
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch says Facebook should pay fees to “trusted” news producers for their content.
Murdoch said Monday that publishers are “enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content but are not being adequately rewarded for those services.”
Murdoch has previously criticized Google for the “theft” of news stories without payment.
The news industry has struggled as print advertising erodes. Online, meanwhile, Facebook and Google dominate, together taking nearly half of global digital ad revenue, according to eMarketer.