With 60 days until the presidential election, Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook are doing everything they can to stop the spread of misinformation and hold politicians accountable for their ads. JUST KIDDING! As usual, Zuckerberg is offering to do the barest minimum to keep our flagging democracy alive.
Facebook announced that it will restrict new political ads in the week before the election. In addition, they promised to remove posts that convey misinformation about COVID-19 and voting, as well as attach links with official results to candidate and campaign pages that claim early victory. This will be especially important as the rise in votes by mail means a potential delay in election results that could last days, if not weeks.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a statement saying, “This election is not going to be business as usual. We all have a responsibility to protect our democracy, … That means helping people register and vote, clearing up confusion about how this election will work, and taking steps to reduce the chances of violence and unrest.”
He continued, “Facebook is already running the largest voting information campaign in American history — with a goal of helping 4 million people to register and then vote. In just three days, we already drove almost 24 million clicks to voter registration websites. Priscilla and I have also personally donated $300 million to non-partisan organizations supporting states and local counties in strengthening our voting infrastructure.”
But is this all too little, too late? With the pandemic showing no signs of slowing down, millions of voters will be voting by mail and/or voting early. And most folks will have made up their minds before election week. This also does nothing to stop misinformation in all the ads leading up to the election. What good does a last minute ad ban do, outside of virtue signalling that you’re taking misinformation “seriously”?
Zuckerberg has already made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t care about misinformation on Facebook. He testified as much to congress. And despite the changes his competitors are making, despite the protests of his employees, Zuckerberg is completely unwilling to take major, concrete steps to prevent a repeat of 2016.
Joan Donovan, a disinformation researcher at Harvard University, said of the move, “This is a huge about-face for Facebook in this moment because for so long they said they were unwilling to moderate political speech and now at this stage they are drawing very sharp lines and I think that’s because their company cannot survive another four-year scandal.”
Zuckerberg is under increasing pressure from his employees and from democrats in congress to do something about the massive spread of misinformation on his site. But at the end of the day, how much of this is meaningless posturing? Zuckerberg has made it abundantly clear where his values lie, and that’s with his personal wealth and the profitability of his company.
(via New York Times, image: ALAIN JOCARD/AFP/Getty Images)
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