This is infuriating, and totally predictable. "In its struggle to accurately moderate a torrent of content and avoid negative attention, Facebook created invisible elite tiers within the social network." wsj.com/articles/faceb…
We're not the only ones to say it, but I'm proud that @robyncaplan and I noted this, that platforms create "tiered governance" systems inside their content moderation efforts, treating categories of users differently, in ways that arent clear from outside. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20…
@robyncaplan But YouTube, for all its missteps, was at least treating users differently for a reason: in principle, it is reasonable to treat creators who earn ad dollars differently from other users. YT just handled it poorly. What Facebook is doing here is new-level outrageous...
@robyncaplan Facebook is overwhelmed by their own size, and will slap nearly any band-aid onto the problem. Whitelisting some accounts is either a stopgap measure when your moderation team is drowning, or its an ill-informed idea about who violates the rules and who doesn't.
@robyncaplan Facebook also seems to have less impulse than its competitors to actually abide by its stated ideals. Whitelisting may also be a way to smooth relations with valuable or visible figures, regardless of whatever lip service they pay to being an open, democratic, impartial forum.
@robyncaplan Facebook is either woefully ill-equipped to fairly manage the platform they manage, or they're regularly and systematically deceptive about what they're doing -- or both.
@robyncaplan Whitelisting users, absolving them from the content moderation everyone else faces is a bad idea even as a stopgap measure, even for a small group of users; letting that whitelist balloon to 5.8 million users is indefensible.
@robyncaplan A content moderation whitelist is patently unfair, on its face; and it is certainly chock full of assumptions about who is "safe" enough not to bother with.
@robyncaplan And it is a recipe for disaster, for exactly the kind of cruelty, hate, and misinfo we've been dealing with: the stuff that public figures can speak out of the corner of their mouths, that slips by because they enjoy other kinds of legitimacy: elected office, wealth, celebrity.
@robyncaplan And, if Facebook is doing it, we should probably ask which other platforms have their own whitelist of users who get some kind of a pass on the content moderation process. Facebook is certainly not the only one, though they're usually the most egregious, far too often.
@robyncaplan "Facebook designed the system to minimize what its employees have described in the documents as “PR fires”—negative media attention that comes from botched enforcement actions taken against VIPs." wsj.com/articles/faceb…
@robyncaplan "Historically, Facebook contacted some VIP users who violated platform policies and provided a “self-remediation window” of 24 hours to delete violating content on their own before Facebook took it down and applied penalties."
@robyncaplan "While the program included most government officials, it didn’t include all candidates for public office, at times effectively granting incumbents in elections an advantage over challengers."
@robyncaplan There are good reasons for platforms to have different rule sets for different tiers of users. But they should be public, bright line, and for the right reasons. YT can require paid creators meet a higher standard. Be clear, make it a point of pride: money = responsibility.
@robyncaplan Facebook could have said, "reach X number of friends / followers, you get MORE scrutiny." But instead it gifted this to people who would be a PR problem, and then dropped they ball in setting or imposing standards commensurate with the reach of these users.
@robyncaplan "In response to what the documents describe as chronic underinvestment in moderation efforts, many teams around FB chose not to enforce the rules with high-profile accounts at all... In some instances, whitelist status was granted with little record of who had granted it and why"
@robyncaplan "The XCheck documents show that Facebook misled the Oversight Board, said @Klonick. 'Why would they spend so much time and money setting up the Oversight Board, then lie to it? ...This is going to completely undercut it.'”
@robyncaplan @Klonick Many thanks to @JeffHorwitz for this article, it's excellent. Looking forward to the next in the series. wsj.com/articles/faceb…
@robyncaplan @Klonick @JeffHorwitz Facebook has years of internal research on teens, mental health, and Instagram. "Repeatedly, the company’s researchers found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls."
@robyncaplan @Klonick @JeffHorwitz The possible effect is large, and is not just about social comparison in general, and not even about social media in general. Thee effect is worse on IG thasn on TikTok and Snapchat, because of the site norms that emphasize professionalized beauty.
@robyncaplan @Klonick @JeffHorwitz Facebook has misrepresented what it knew: “The research that we’ve seen is that using social apps to connect with other people can have positive mental-health benefits,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at a congressional hearing in March 2021."
@robyncaplan @Klonick @JeffHorwitz FB did not provide this research to Congress when specifically asked for it: “'Facebook’s answers were so evasive—failing to even respond to all our questions—that they really raise questions about what Facebook might be hiding,” Sen. Blumenthal said."
@robyncaplan @Klonick @JeffHorwitz Here's the kicker: "In a recent interview, VP Adam Mosseri said... he believes Facebook was late to realizing there were drawbacks to connecting people in such large numbers."
@robyncaplan @Klonick @JeffHorwitz For those of us who try to argue that the challenges platforms face aren't the fault of one company, that they're endemic to our embrace of an info architecture where everyone encounters each other on an "open" platform that's actually built for advertising + data collection...
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
