Thread by @FBoversight

🚨BREAKING🚨 Disinformation on Facebook kills.

Ahead of Facebook's quarterly earnings, RFOB releases its "Facebook Quarterly Harms Report" for Q2. This report documents Facebook's harms around COVID-19, and human life, and democracy.

Read the report ⬇️
rfob.medium.com/facebook-quart…

A Real Facebook Oversight Board analysis from 2021 Q2 data found that a majority of the “Number One posts” (most engagement on Facebook for that day) originated from just five known ‘disinformation superspreaders’.

RFOB, in our report, also identified those five known “disinformation superspreaders.”
These superspreaders are serial disinformation offenders yet their posts rank “Number 1” frequently, per our analysis.

Ben Shapiro, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, consistently ranks Number 1 per our analysis. Franklin Graham, Dan Bongino, Sean Hannity, and Fox News follow closely behind.

Allowing this deadly disinformation to keep flourishing on FB is dangerous.
Disabling engagement for these users would result in a significant decrease in COVID-19 disinformation on Facebook, yet the company has done little to uprank reputable news sources.

We demand action.

After the US election in November 2020, Facebook tweaked its algorithm to promote high-quality news sources. On November 8, 2020, eight of the top ten posts came from @CNN, @NPR, or @nytimes. Yet on November 10, 2020, Facebook reverted to the previous algorithm.

Those four days confirm that Facebook is able to change its algorithm. The decision to allow less reputable sources to dominate “news” is an active business choice to maximize profits rather than minimizing societal harm.

We demand responsibility

RFOB also worked with @mmfa to analyze the presence former President Donald Trump still has despite being temporarily suspended from Facebook. We found that ads spent by the Trump campaign racked up 1.3 million impressions.

While former President Donald Trump may be temporarily suspended from Facebook, his posts still rack up millions of impressions and interactions.

And he is consistently among the people most cited or quoted in Facebook coverage.

Co-founder of @globalextremism, @heidibeirich, says just how important it is that this report be read and circulated ahead of Facebook’s quarterly earnings report today.

Read our report here: the-citizens.com/quarterly-harm…