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When David Pogue interviewed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2005, the business was just getting started. “We’ve gone from around 150,000 people in the fall to around three million now,” Zuckerberg said. “People use the site so much that it creates a market for the advertising.”
it was still called LeFacebook.com. It was still limited to students, and it was still a bit laid back. Surprising one of the Facebook employees crashing into a couch, Zuckerberg said, “Dude, what’s up? Dude, you’re on TV.”
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How is this Facebook has become the object of criticism from Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) Who, during a Senate subcommittee hearing last Thursday, said: “Facebook is like Big Tobacco, offering a product that they know it is. ‘it is harmful’?
Or the subject of stories like this Wall Street Journal article from September 14: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic to teenage girls, company documents show; or a report indicating Facebook’s algorithms push content that divides, because it encourages engagement?
Even President Biden got involved: “Anyone who listens to him suffers,” he said. “it kills people!“
He was referring to one of Facebook’s hottest issues: misinformation, such as posts saying the COVID vaccine causes miscarriages, or that the FDA is tracking unvaccinated people, or that the vaccine is the “trademark of. the beast “.
None of this is true. But people are really dying of misinformation.
Pogue asked Adriano Goffi, medical director of the Altus Health System near Houston, “How often do you see someone die from COVID?”
“Almost every shift,” he replied.
Its emergency rooms have been overrun with desperately ill and unvaccinated COVID patients. He showed Pogue a huge binder representing patients from August, most of whom refused the vaccine because they had read bad information on social media.
Goffi said: “About 80% would come from Facebook; ‘I read on Facebook that it’s poison, there are tracking devices in me, it makes cows sterile.’ I’ve heard all kinds of things. “
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Pogue asked, “When you meet someone like that, where are you on the scale of ‘This person is an idiot’ or ‘I’m so sorry for this person that they have been brainwashed.’ ? “
“I really feel bad for individuals because if this is your source, right, it’s hard for them to separate reality and what is given to them,” he replied.
“Do you have any idea how reading this misinformation online affects a patient’s state of mind? “
“It’s very powerful that you can see it and feel it in individuals when they come in and get their swab and they’re sick, and some people, some patients even refuse treatment. It’s so. powerful in them that they almost even deny COVID exists in some people, because of what they have read. “
Now you might be wondering: if bad information is so bad, why is Facebook allowing it? And the answer is, it’s complicated.
“What they’re selling is user attention,” said Laura Edelson, a disinformation researcher at New York University. “User attention is sold in the form of advertising. So yes, there is a motive for profit.”
Edelson’s studies have shown that disinformation sells: “Disinformation in general gets more shares, comments, [and] like factual content. This effect is quite large. My recent study found that this is a six-fold effect. “
Pogue asked, “So if something is wrong I’m six times more likely to share or like it than if it’s true?”
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“Maybe not you in particular, but in general he’ll get six times the engagement,” Edelson said. “Facebook is a user engagement, a machine that maximizes user interaction. This is what Facebook is designed to: get users to engage with content as much as possible, as often as possible, for as long as possible.”
As you can guess, Facebook is not a fan of Edelson’s research. So this summer the company got tough – cut off access to a group of researchers who were studying disinformation on the platform.
“In August 2021, they closed our accounts,” Edelson said.
“So you’re not on Facebook anymore?”
“No, I’m not. I don’t have a place to post my dog photos!”
Now all social media companies have a problem with COVID misinformation. But Facebook is a nearly trillion dollar business, with 2.9 billion monthly users. Its slim waist makes it special.
“Facebook is the most powerful media device in the world,” said Kevin Roose, New York Times technical columnist, who has written extensively on disinformation on Facebook.
Pogue asked, “Why don’t they just say, ‘Oh, sorry, we’ll have our amazing artificial intelligence to wipe the misinformation out of the platform’?”
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“Well, it’s not as easy as it sounds,” Roose replied. “On the one hand, a lot of people don’t agree on what disinformation is. They’ve had to distinguish between removing the truly harmful content from the site and, you know, not engaging in it. which they would consider censorship. “
Facebook declined the “Sunday Morning” interview request. But he warmly rejects the idea that he’s killing people, or doing nothing to tackle COVID misinformation.
The company says it has: deleted more than 20 million bogus messages; close the accounts of 3,000 repeat offenders; put warning labels on 190 million questionable messages; and promoted evidence-based information on vaccines, including creating a vaccine search function to help people get vaccinated.
In a statement, Facebook added, “We are encouraged to see that for people in the United States on Facebook, vaccine reluctance has decreased by around 50% and vaccine acceptance is high. But our work is far from over… ”
Ultimately, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg told CBS News’s Gayle King a few weeks ago, maybe the problem isn’t Facebook… maybe it’s America.
“If it was mostly a social media question,” he said, “I think you would see that is the effect in all of these countries where people use them. But I think that there is something unique about our ecosystem here. “
OK. So, Facebook says it is doing everything in its power to fight disinformation.
But researchers, journalists and Congress do not believe it. They want Facebook to share its data on the number of people seeing false messages.
Roose said: “And so, they were basically saying, ‘You just have to trust us, because we’re not going to show you the data.’ And there are teams inside Facebook that are working really hard to prevent the spread of misinformation. I think the challenge is that a lot of that data and a lot of that work stays inside. of the company.
Pogue asked Edelson, “So let me play the role of Facebook advocate. If I were a Facebook, I could say, “Wait, wait, wait: are we supposed to reveal all of our internal data? You don’t ask that of Coca-Cola or Starbucks. Why does it belong to the public? ‘”
“Well, we ask organizations like banks,” she replied. “Banks are incredibly powerful institutions that are a lifeblood of modern society, but they also have the power to be incredibly harmful, and that’s why banks are regulated. And I think we have to move on to something. like that for social media companies. “
“It’s a radical change.”
“It would be a radical change,” Edelson said, “but I just don’t see how the status quo can continue. It’s not hyperbolic to say that disinformation on Facebook is killing people.”
Pogue asked Roose, “I wonder where the truth is.
“I think there are people who think, you know, even within the company, who think this thing has gotten out of hand,” Roose replied. “It’s kind of their version of a Frankenstein story where they built this platform that billions of people use, and it just got a little out of hand.”
So how is all of this going to end?
Both parties in Congress appear determined to regulate Facebook; and the company says it will make more of its data public. For Facebook, all of this means more conflict and compromise.
But then, Mark Zuckerberg has been fighting for his baby since 2005. At the time, Pogue asked: “Are the lawsuits and the bickering, right, was it a shock to you?”
“Um, it’s not really shocking, but it’s a little upsetting, I guess,” Zuckerberg replied. “But I guess if you’re doing something cool, it’s something you have to deal with. As long as you can, like, maintain that attitude and realize that, like, like, ‘We’re doing something positive and that’s the only reason everybody cares, “so, you know, I mean we’re going to be okay with this.”
FROM 2005: Four young internet entrepreneurs (“Sunday morning”)
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Story produced by Mark Hudspeth. Publisher: Remington Korper.
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