The Damage Done by Facebook

It is the nature of politicians to lie, and not only Republicans. (I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski.) But when the President of the United States makes over 20,000 false statements in three and a half years in office, mendacity is brought to a new low. Unfortunately, in these dishonest times the Great Prevaricator has had lots of help. The social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, have helped him spread his misinformation across the country. The President communicates more through the social media than through official channels, and for the most part these media leave his misinformation untouched. Donald Trump is not the only one who disseminates fabrications through Facebook and others. It is known, for example, that Russia spread lies through these sources to influence the 2016 Presidential election. Facebook was charged with allowing Russians to sow chaos during that election. Since the election was so close, it is very likely that Russian posts on Facebook contributed to the outcome. Other unfriendly powers, like Iran and North Korea, have also spread untruthful statements through Facebook. It is not just foreign powers who spread fraudulent ideas through the internet. Notably QAnon has been posting poisonous ideas for the past three years. QAnon is anonymous, but it poses as an unnamed high-ranking government official. It promotes the conspiracy theory that Democrats are running a pedophile ring, and Donald Trump is leading the fight against the ring. During the 2016 presidential campaign it was charged that Hillary Clinton was involved in such a ring that was located in the basement of a Washington pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong. One man believed the falsehood so strongly that he went to the restaurant armed with a rifle. It turned out that there was no ring, and the restaurant didn’t even have a basement. Marjory Taylor Greene from Georgia seems sure to be elected to Congress. She supports the QAnon conspiracy theories. She also said that Barack Obama is a Muslim, liberal philanthropist George Soros is a Nazi, and she questioned whether a plane really crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. QAnon undermines trust in public institutions through hate speech and the spread of unfound conspiracy theories. Turning Point USA is another group that has been disseminating fraudulent stories. It published pro-Trump comments and misinformation. One of its affiliates, Turning Point Action, was paying teenagers to post messages. Another affiliate, Rally Forge, paid users to cast doubt on mail-in ballots and spread misinformation about the coronavirus. Many of their accounts used stock photos to create false profiles. In April 2020 websites spreading untruthful stories about health on Facebook drew nearly one half a billion views. The top ten sites peddling inaccurate information and conspiracy theories drew nearly four times as many views as the top reputable sites for health information on Facebook. The false claim that pure alcohol could cure the virus led to 800 deaths and 60 cases of blindness after believers drank methanol as a cure. False information and conspiracy theories downplay the public health crisis, spread disinformation about potential remedies and likely safety risks of future vaccines. The social media have taken some steps toward correcting some of the problems created fabrications on their sites. Twitter, for example, has rules against harassment, hate speech, and incitement to violence. They eliminated many accounts that violated these rules. Facebook removed hundreds of fake profiles linked to Turning Point USA. Twitter suspended over one hundred Iranian accounts linked to issues of social justice. When Donald Trump posted a false message that the flu is more deadly than COVID19, Facebook removed the post. Twitter left it in but added a warning label of misinformation. They also prevented it from being shared. Facebook and Google will block all political ads until after the election. We’re glad that the social media is taking some steps to limit deceitful posts on their sites, but what they are doing is not enough. While Facebook and Twitter have removed or labelled some posts as misinformation, lot of disinformation slips through Facebook’s disinformation system. They have stopped publishing posts from QAnon and its affiliates, but individuals can still post QAnon ideas and fabrications. 93,000 active Twitter accounts refer to QAnon in their profile. Since so many people rely on the internet for information, it is unacceptable that so much of the data in cyberspace is fraudulent. Something must be done to correct this. It is not an easy task. Liberals complain that the cloud contains so much prevarication. Conservatives charge that the social media has a liberal bias because so many of the posts that are removed have been placed by conservatives. In a future post we will look at some of the things that can be done to make the social media more honest.b