- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Click here to share on LinkedIn (Opens in a new window)
- Click to email a friend (Opens in a new window)
Editor's Note: Dipayan Ghosh is a Shorenstein Fellow and co-director of the Digital Platforms & Democracy project at Harvard Kennedy School. He was an advisor of technological and economic policies at the Obama White House, and then served as an advisor on private and public policy issues on Facebook. Follow him on Twitter @ ghoshd7. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
(CNN) - In the Democratic debate on Tuesday something happened that we had not seen in previous episodes: 15 full minutes of open exchanges on how the government should deal with the growing power of Silicon Valley.
At the center of the exchange was the controversy between Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has been advocating the separation of technology giants such as Facebook and Google, and Senator Kamala Harris, who intentionally asked Warren if she would join him to demand that Twitter suspend the account of the president of Donald Trump on the platform.
This fact paves the way for what will undoubtedly be a dispute in the electoral period regarding the type of regulations that should be taken against internet companies.
- A plague of fake news took social networks: so you can discover what a hoax is
- Look: How to control the dissemination of fake news on social networks?
This is a question of heavy burden and highly politicized, particularly for Democratic candidates. Last month Facebook formalized a bold new policy that impacted many observers. The company announced that it will not verify what politicians say or censor them, even in the context of their political publicity or during the election campaign.
In recent days, this decree has thrown American political advertisements at something like the Far West. President Donald Trump, who will likely face the Democratic candidate in the general election next year, has already taken the opportunity to disseminate political lies without accountability.
A scary new world of political communication
After the announcement of Facebook, Trump's presidential campaign spread a commercial on the Facebook platform in which he claimed that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden had used his power when he was vice president to try to influence Ukraine and help his son Hunter Biden.
The "facts" behind Trump's commercial involving Biden (seen on Facebook no less than 5 million times) have been completely denied, and CNN refused to broadcast the commercial for that reason.
This new Facebook policy opens a chilling world to political communication and national politics. Now it turns out that prominent politicians can spread political lies without any repercussion. In fact, Trump's campaign was already spreading other falsehoods through online commercials immediately before Facebook made that announcement; And, as someone predicted, most of those ads have not been removed from the platform.
If our politicians do not reform the regulations of Internet platforms and digital advertising, our political future will be at risk. The 2016 elections revealed the tremendous damage to the US democratic process that coordinated disinformation campaigns can cause; 2020 will be much worse if we do nothing to contain the ability of politicians to lie on social networks.
- 5 false stories that refuse to disappear… years later
- Look: How do social networks influence elections?
The same tool that allowed political campaigns to reduce audience segments in 2016 for Facebook commercials will continue to exist in 2020. The difference will be that this time the lies can be distributed by Trump campaign agents, rather than by empty accounts operated by the Russian government and others.
By repealing the verification of the facts, Facebook will only give greater credibility to coordinated disinformation operations, as in the case of Trump's recent campaign commercial.
Warren responded to Trump's publicity with audacity: in a commercial that has circulated on Facebook, the senator states that "Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have just endorsed the re-election of Donald Trump." Then, in advertising, she acknowledges that this is a falsehood, and argues that “what [Mark] Zuckerberg did has given Donald Trump free rein to lie on his platform; and then to pay Facebook a lot of money to spread its lies to its American voters. ”
Warren's mockery of his publicity - and the underlying policy that allowed its dissemination - allows us to highlight how Facebook's new policy will have serious implications for our political future. Facebook's decision not to eliminate Trump's commercial amounts to consciously enabling the insidious political manipulation of American voters.
The power of Facebook and "free expression"
The irony is that Facebook already censures commercials, among others those placed by presidential campaigns in the United States, for many other reasons. An investigation found that the company had withdrawn paid content from four Democratic candidates, which included 117 advertisements placed by the Biden campaign, for reasons ranging from the use of insults to the display of fake buttons.
It is disconcerting to think that, by decree, Facebook may consider that political advertising is dishonest because it contains fake buttons (which can trick the viewer into entering a survey when advertising is not actually interactive), but the company is refuses to act against advertisements that contain outright political lies, even during US presidential elections.
This dangerous inconsistency in Facebook's policy decisions is a sign that its corporate power has grown too much. Concern for the public interest and health of our democracy should prompt us to act. And the only entity that has the power to do something to improve the situation for the American people is Congress.
Facebook has a main counterargument to object to the regulation: that the company must maintain its strong commitment to freedom of expression and freedom of political expression. This emerged in Mark Zuckerberg's speech at Georgetown University on Thursday, when he described social media as a fifth state, and characterized politicians' calls to action as an attempt to restrict freedom of expression. Quoting at times Frederick Douglas and jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, Zuckerberg said: "We are at a crossroads"; and said: "When it is not entirely clear what should be done, we should err in favor of free expression."
Unfortunately for Facebook, this argument does not hold much. If one decides that advertising that contains a fake button does not meet the conditions because "[they tempt] users to select an answer," then they certainly should not knowingly convey advertising that tempts voters to unconsciously consume lies publicly. known, whether distributed by the president or any other politician. In fact, as an official of the Biden presidential campaign pointed out, Zuckerberg's argument amounts to an insidious “choice to disguise Facebook's policy as a feigned concern for free expression” to “use the Constitution as a shield for revenue economic of your company ”.
Behind what the company presents as a commitment to free expression is a commercial convenience.
- Look: Spain creates unity against misinformation to prevent so-called "fake news"
Regulation is the future
If Facebook cannot take appropriate measures and remove the political lies paid from its platform, the only answer must be the serious regulation of the company. A regulation that forces Facebook to be transparent about the nature of political advertisements and prevents the spread of political falsehoods, even if they are enthusiastically distributed by President Trump.
Our nation has always aspired to put the interests of our democratic purpose above the interests of the markets. An exception should not be made with Silicon Valley.
- Translation of Mariana Campos
Facebook twitter
