UPDATED 23:54 EDT / JUNE 25 2020

POLICY

Drums beat louder for social media reform amid pandemic, unrest and US elections

As the U.S. moves into a hot and turbulent summer, the thunderclouds are gathering around social media platforms — and it’s clear that neither the platforms nor the rest of the tech community are ready for the coming storm.

According to the latest Digital 2020 Global overview, 4.5 billion people were using the internet at the start of this year and the vast majority of them – 3.8 billion people – were also using social media. In a time of a raging global pandemic, a renewed focus on racial issues, protests and an upcoming U.S. presidential election, a large online audience receives news from social media sites, and accurate and trustworthy information has become vitally important.

Yet as demonstrated over three days of virtual sessions during the Collision From Home digital conference this week, there’s significant concern among tech industry leaders, government officials and journalists that social media platforms are not getting the message.

“In a disinformation environment that continues to be really aggressive I’m concerned about what’s going to happen,” Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and the former chief security officer at Facebook Inc., said during a Collision discussion on Wednesday about what actions social media platforms should take. “You can have your speech, but what we’re not going to do is let you use all the features of this product to reach hundreds of thousands of people. Companies need to think about: ‘Are we making things worse?’ They’re just not clear about it.”

Divisive content popular

The central problem, according to some observers, is a business model that’s heavily reliant on advertising, with $43 billion predicted to be spent in 2020 alone. Advertisers spend money on digital promotion via social media with an expectation of the largest possible audience.

A study conducted by NiemanLab in 2019 found that when Facebook adjusted its algorithms to prioritize content that spurred engagement, the most-commented and most-shared news stories were scary and divisive.

“The basic problem with these companies is they make money through clickbait,” said Matt Stoller, research director at the American Economic Liberties Project. “We should wonder why they make money when people post violent, conspiratorial, racist content.”

In addition to growing scrutiny of divisive dialogue on social media platforms, there are also major concerns around the spread of disinformation. When an Italian politician uploaded a video to her Facebook profile claiming that Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates was developing a COVID-19 vaccine to enslave the world’s citizenry, it sparked more than 1 million views and was shared 30,000 times. Facebook’s third-party fact checkers labeled the video as “partly false.”

“The platforms fail to acknowledge they are media companies and won’t invest in fact checking,” said Justin Smith, chief executive officer of Bloomberg Media Group. “One of the most important parts of our business that COVID has accelerated is the rise of the platforms. It’s really problematic.”

Targeted political messages

Concerns around disinformation have also spread into the political world. Twitter Inc. has become aggressive in recent weeks around labeling postings from President Donald Trump which has ignited debate among both his supporters and critics. The social media platform placed a fact-check label on two of the president’s tweets last month and flagged another on Tuesday for violation of its policy against abusive behavior.

However, political observers are quick to point out that Trump is relying heavily on social media to reach a massive audience in a pivotal election year. And the nation’s top elected official sends a lot of tweets.

“Remember, when he’s talking on that Twitter feed, plus Instagram and Facebook, he has 150 million people he’s reaching,” said Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director and founder of SkyBridge Capital. “That’s one-and-a-half times the Super Bowl audience every time he puts his thumbs on that phone.”

There are also concerns around the ability of particular groups to precisely direct messaging to the vast social media audience. Political campaigns have turned to the practice of microtargeting online ads, directing specific and often divisive messages to small subsets of voters based on geography and interests gleaned from platform data.

The ability to microtarget political ads to specific audiences has raised alarm bells because it has been documented that Russia-connected accounts used the same tactic on Facebook during the presidential campaign in 2016. In November, Twitter announced that it would ban all political ads from its platform worldwide. Google LLC allows microtargeting of political ads with some limits, while Facebook will allow campaigns to target voters for any reason, although the firm recently announced an “opt out” alternative for users.

“When ads are microtargeted, it does not allow for counter-arguments, there is no opportunity for that kind of counter-speech,” said Ellen Weintraub, a commissioner for the U.S. Federal Election Commission. “I worry about polarization and divisiveness and the spread of disinformation in our elections. The platforms have a role to play here.”

Social media companies currently find themselves in a battle, sandwiched between advertisers eager to pay for reaching billions of online users and a rising chorus of voices calling for change. President Trump recently signed an executive order limiting social media’s broad legal protections, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put pressure earlier this month on advertisers to force platforms to crack down on disinformation and 350,000 influencers had their information leaked as part of a data breach.

Regulation of social media tech giants appears to be coming, driven in part by what one university scholar characterized as a “14-year apology tour” by Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg.

“Big tech has big problems,” said Camille Dundas, co-founder and editor-in-chief of ByBlacks.com. “We can’t rely on these companies to regulate themselves.”

Image: Pixabay

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