McKew believes Facebook is conflicted about blocking some content it already knows is suspect “because they keep people on their platform by sparking an emotional response, so they like they like the controversial stuff. The election war room and its inner workings remain too opaque to determine whether it’s helping Facebook do a better job of keeping garbage off its service or if it’s just a “temporary conference room with a bunch of computer monitors in it,” said Molly McKew, a self-described “information warfare” researcher for New Media Frontier, which studies the flow of content on social media. “On balance, I would say they that are still way off.” “What they are doing so far seems to be more about trying to prevent another public relations disaster and less so about putting in meaningful solutions to the problem,” Carusone said. He noted that the sensational themes distributed in fictional news stories can be highly effective at keeping people “engaged” on Facebook - which in turn makes it possible to sell more of the ads that generate most of Facebook’s revenue. As part of the crackdown, Facebook also has hired fact checkers, including The Associated Press, to vet news stories posted on its social network.įacebook credits its war room and other stepped-up patrolling efforts for booting 1.3 billion fake accounts over the past year and jettisoning hundreds of pages set up by foreign governments and other agents looking to create mischief.īut it remains unclear whether Facebook is doing enough, said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters For America, a liberal group that monitors misinformation. More than 20 different teams now coordinate the efforts of more than 20,000 people - mostly contractors - devoted to blocking fake accounts and fictional news and stopping other abuses on Facebook and its other services. “The primary thing we have learned is just how effective it is to have people in the same room all together.” “There is no substitute for physical, real-world interaction,” said Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s director of elections and civic engagement. Facebook provided a tightly controlled glimpse at its war room to The Associated Press and other media ahead of the second round of presidential elections in Brazil on Oct. Its technology draws upon the artificial intelligence system Facebook has been using to help identify “inauthentic” posts and user behavior. The war room is a major part of Facebook’s ongoing repairs. Zuckerberg eventually made fixing Facebook his personal challenge for 2018. Later that year, it acknowledged having run thousands of ads promoting false information placed by Russian agents. ”īut Facebook’s blase attitude shifted as criticism of the company mounted in Congress and elsewhere. That motto might strike some as ironic, given that the war room was created to counter threats that almost no one at the company, least of all CEO Mark Zuckerberg, took seriously just two years ago - and which the company’s critics now believe pose a threat to democracy.ĭays after President Donald Trump’s surprise victory, Zuckerberg brushed off assertions that the outcome had been influenced by fictional news stories on Facebook, calling the idea ” pretty crazy.
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