SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is fessing up
to what many people have known for a long time: The giant social
network can be bad for democracy.
The acknowledgment
came as Facebook races against the clock to shut down Russian
interference that rocked the 2016 presidential campaign before U.S.
voters cast their ballots in hundreds of midterm elections. The November
2018 contests will be the first test of its pledge to protect the American electorate from foreign powers.
"At
its best, (social media) allows us to express ourselves and take
action. At its worst, it allows people to spread misinformation and
corrode democracy," Samidh Chakrabarti, the company's product manager
for politics and elections products, wrote in a blog post. "I wish I could guarantee that the positives are destined to outweigh the negatives, but I can’t."
Facebook’s
global politics and government outreach director Katie Harbath also
acknowledged that the role of social media had radically changed in a
separate blog post.
"From the Arab Spring to robust elections around the globe, social media seemed like a positive," she wrote. "The
last U.S. presidential campaign changed that, with foreign interference
that Facebook should have been quicker to identify to the rise of 'fake
news' and echo chambers."
The
admission comes as Facebook wrestles with how to responsibly handle the
outsized influence it exerts over people's social and civic lives. That
global power is even more significant abroad, says Andrew Keen, author
of How to Fix the Future: Staying Human in the Digital Age.
In
Britain, investigations are looking into the Russian effort to
interfere in the British referendum last year on leaving the European
Union. In Myanmar, the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims is being
fueled by misinformation and propaganda spread on Facebook,
which is the country's primary news source. In developing countries,
Facebook is also being used to stifle free speech and dissent. A BuzzFeed News report published Sunday revealed how Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen has turned to Facebook to target critics of his government.
"Facebook
is acknowledging the tremendous — and in some cases harmful — effect it
has on democracies and civil society worldwide," Sen. Mark Warner, the
top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an emailed
statement.
In an interview last November, Mark
Zuckerberg said he's committed to stopping foreign efforts to influence
U.S. political debate, saying he wants to make sure "we make this as
difficult as possible going forward."
"We are
willing to do whatever we need to do to work on it and solve it," the
Facebook CEO told USA TODAY. In November, Facebook said it would hire
10,000 more people to work on safety and security issues in addition to
the 10,000 it already employs.
He wasn't sure
Facebook would be able to prevent the problems of the 2016 presidential
campaign in the next 10 months before the midterms.
"We
have a pretty good track record as a company of — once we set our mind
to doing something — we eventually get it done," Zuckerberg said. But,
he conceded, "I don't know how long it will take to address this."
Monday's
blog posts are part of the company's "Hard Questions" series, which
touches on a range of tough issues, from policing hate speech to
countering terrorism, for Facebook's more than 2 billion users.
Tech
CEOs like Zuckerberg are fond of trumpeting that their companies are
changing the world. As the toxic content flowing through Facebook —
violent live videos, false news articles, divisive messages from Russian
operatives — gets blamed for punching holes in the social fabric, the
social network is being forced to acknowledge that it's not always
changing it for the better.
In recent months,
Facebook has admitted that passive consumption of Facebook — aimless
scrolling through the news feed — can be bad for mental health. Last
week Facebook said it would alter the formula that determines what shows
up in people's news feeds to favor status updates from friends and family that spark more meaningful social interactions.
Zuckerberg's
personal challenge for the year, which in the past has run the gamut
from learning Mandarin to slaughtering his own meat, is to fix what ails
Facebook. He says Facebook has made "too many errors enforcing our
policies and preventing misuse of our tools."
That's quite a turnaround for Zuckerberg, who after the election of Donald Trump, dismissed the suggestion
that Facebook may have played an unwitting part in a foreign influence
campaign to sway voters. "To think it influenced the election in any way
is a pretty crazy idea," Zuckerberg said in November 2016. He later
apologized for the comment.
