Facebook Refused To Stop COVID Misinformation Because It Would Hurt Traffic
COVID-19 misinformation is rampant on Facebook, and as it was recently revealed in internal documents, CEO Mark Zuckerberg actively turned down researchers who found a way to stop it. While all of the Big Tech brands are facing a lot of heat right now, Facebook's been an especially large target for several reasons. It was one of the biggest sources of misinformation for the 2016 and 2020 elections, is often filled with rampant conspiracy theories, and has now been home to nonstop lies regarding COVID-19 and the related vaccines.
This criticism got cranked up to 11 when The Wall Street Journal published a series of reports in September. Based on leaked internal documents from whistleblower Frances Haugen (a former data scientist at Facebook), the reports reaffirmed what many people had long suspected of Facebook — that it actively creates division among users, is harmful to children, etc. After Haugen testified against Facebook on Capitol Hill and handed over more documents to the SEC, 17 of the largest news publications reviewed them and published their own findings (now known as the Facebook Papers).
In one such article published by The Washington Post, a particularly interesting tidbit came to light. It's no secret that misinformation is everywhere on Facebook. Whether people are creating/sharing inaccurate posts about the pandemic, elections, or other current events, it's arguably one of the biggest issues facing the site right now. In April 2020, researchers created a system that could potentially reduce "coronavirus-related misinformation" up to 38 percent. After being presented with this information, Mark Zuckerberg declined and let COVID lies keep spreading.
Per the report, researchers were looking for ways to reduce "hate speech, nudity, graphic violence, and misinformation" flooding people's News Feeds on Facebook. The solution found by the researchers would essentially put a limit on promoting content determined to be misleading. As it's explained, "The researchers proposed a limit to boosting content the news-feed algorithms predicts will be reshared, because serial 'resharers' tended to correlate with misinformation." After presenting this solution to Zuckerberg — and proving it could reduce COVID misinformation by nearly 40 percent — Zuckerberg turned the researchers down.
Why? According to Anna Stepanov, the director of the research project, "Mark doesn't think we could go broad." More specifically, Zuckerberg's response to the team was that "We wouldn't launch if there was a material trade-off with MSI." MSI is Facebook's internal codeword for 'meaningful social interactions.' This is essentially how Facebook gauges the way people are using and interacting with the site. If MSIs are up, that means people are spending more time on Facebook and engaging with other users. If MSIs are down, the opposite is happening. In other words, Zuckerberg ignored a tool to drastically prevent COVID misinformation because it could potentially hurt the website's traffic.
As stomach-churning as something like this is, it's also not particularly shocking given the previous actions of Facebook. This is a company that's repeatedly proven to put its own interests above everyone else's. Whether it be this, acknowledging that the Like button causes anxiety with younger users, or its own Oversight Board admitting there's a transparency issue, Facebook has a lot of issues it needs to address. Instead, it's toying with a name change and investing $10 billion in its fabled metaverse.
Source: Washington Post