Two big recent exposés about the platform have shown exactly why we should all be on guard by Facebook's "survival at all cost" strategy, writes Noam Cohen.
In 2014, a Harvard law professor asked an especially prescient question: What if Mark Zuckerberg decided to control our elections?
It really wouldn’t be that hard. A study by the University of California and Facebook’s own data science team had shown as much. During the 2010 congressional election, researchers inserted get-out-and-vote ads on 60 million Facebook newsfeeds, some of which were also designed to inform users when their friends had voted. This single, barely perceptible tweak, led to an additional 340,000 votes nationwide. Now imagine Facebook decides to send slightly more encouraging ads to self-identified Democrats in Wisconsin, or, instead, to Jan. 6 insurrection supporters in Pennsylvania. Voilà. Zuckerberg is king-maker.
This long-standing question of Facebook’s ability to abuse its levers of power had sudden relevance with a pair of recent newspaper exposés. In one, The New York Times reported that in response to the spate of negative press against the company, the company launched “Project Amplify,” an initiative to regularly fill those same feeds with positive stories about Facebook. Some were produced by the company itself while others were plucked from the local press. The postings, which have been used in three US cities, don’t involve changes to Facebook’s mysterious algorithm, but instead appear as direct messages on users’ newsfeeds. Similar to, say, the company’s reminders to vote.
The other investigation, from The Wall Street Journal, revealed how Facebook’s internal research regularly showed the harm the social network inflicted on its users and broader society; nonetheless, the company refused to change course. The Journal also confirmed that the company created a special class for politicians and other influencers who were exempt from automated content moderation rules. This included Donald Trump, who was permitted to harass and threaten people on the platform until the Jan 6. insurrection. But also “protected” was Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the leading Congressional advocate for breaking up Facebook, not that she needed it.
Facebook hasn’t used its dominant role as the owner of our public square to overtly promote a certain political ideology — if that was the fear. Instead, we are learning that the social network is prepared to use its unprecedented levers of power to promote something truly important – the health and prosperity of Facebook. I’m joking about this distinction, of course, because one of our most important political questions is: Can we really trust Facebook as an impartial news delivery service, or our virtual public square? And if not, what can we do about it?
These are crucial times for the social network; it has never been under more government scrutiny or been subjected to more public scorn. In response, the company has added to its already huge marketing expenditures, spending more than $6 billion in advertising in the first six months of this year alone, including placing ads during the Tokyo Olympics. Facebook, alongside Amazon, also recently became the largest spenders on corporate lobbying in Washington, according to Bloomberg, surpassing even defense contractors. Harnessing the newsfeeds of nearly 300 million users in the US would be a natural progression in its aggressive efforts to improve its image — a strategy the New York Times called, “No more apologies.”
Once down this road, is it really so hard to believe that Facebook might restrict access to journalism that it believes maligns its beloved social networks? This summer, Facebook disabled the accounts of academics at New York University studying how the platform amplified right-wing misinformation. The company claimed that it was protecting its users’ privacy and obeying a commitment it made to the Federal Trade Commission, a claim that a top F.T.C. official publicly disputed. The academics told the Times they believed the company was using privacy as a cover quell their research.
To view things from Facebook’s perspective for a moment: Zuckerberg appears to believe that connecting the world through a single network is a great gift for humanity, perhaps the greatest. He is deeply offended to hear that others think he acts to make money or accrue power. If that were your passionate conviction, it would take superhuman powers to watch as petty or misguided critics try to tear your project down, especially after it has come so far.
Lately, Facebook spokespeople have been throwing shade at newspaper reporters, accusing them of hypocrisy. In one, a spokesperson on Twitter questioned what was newsworthy about Project Amplify: “Kinda like the New York Times uses the New York Times to promote the New York Times?!” In another, the spokesperson argued in response to criticism of Facebook’s proposed Instagram for Kids service that the Times itself published a Kids Section aimed at 8- to 13-year-olds. The reporter noted that the Times’s kids section wasn’t harming teenage girls’ self-image and questioned why Facebook was suddenly comparing itself to a publisher (a designation the social network has rejected), which certainly controls what appears in its pages and often endorses political candidates.
Was the spokesperson revealing a fundamental rethinking of Facebook’s role in the news ecosystem? There is reason for all of us to be on guard to see if the company takes greater control of what appears on its platform. The same concern would apply to the other tech behemoths like Apple and Google, who have their own popular newsfeed apps, and a similar immense confidence in the good they are doing.
The professor who first raised concerns about Facebook’s ability to manipulate elections, Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard, appeared confident in his essay that the free market would discourage Facebook and other dominant digital platforms from abusing their power. We now know how inadequate that check is, considering there are so few alternative services, and the unwillingness of these businesses to allow one to ever plant roots.
This picture of an out-of-control system bent on surviving at all costs has me thinking of the HAL computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The astronauts, Dave and Frank, conclude the computer is jeopardizing their safety. HAL tried apologizing before acting decisively: trying to take out Dave and Frank to ensure its survival, it explained it had no choice: “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.”
In 2014, a Harvard law professor asked an especially prescient question: What if Mark Zuckerberg decided to control our elections?
It really wouldn’t be that hard. A study by the University of California and Facebook’s own data science team had shown as much. During the 2010 congressional election, researchers inserted get-out-and-vote ads on 60 million Facebook newsfeeds, some of which were also designed to inform users when their friends had voted. This single, barely perceptible tweak, led to an additional 340,000 votes nationwide. Now imagine Facebook decides to send slightly more encouraging ads to self-identified Democrats in Wisconsin, or, instead, to Jan. 6 insurrection supporters in Pennsylvania. Voilà. Zuckerberg is king-maker.
This long-standing question of Facebook’s ability to abuse its levers of power had sudden relevance with a pair of recent newspaper exposés. In one, The New York Times reported that in response to the spate of negative press against the company, the company launched “Project Amplify,” an initiative to regularly fill those same feeds with positive stories about Facebook. Some were produced by the company itself while others were plucked from the local press. The postings, which have been used in three US cities, don’t involve changes to Facebook’s mysterious algorithm, but instead appear as direct messages on users’ newsfeeds. Similar to, say, the company’s reminders to vote.
The other investigation, from The Wall Street Journal, revealed how Facebook’s internal research regularly showed the harm the social network inflicted on its users and broader society; nonetheless, the company refused to change course. The Journal also confirmed that the company created a special class for politicians and other influencers who were exempt from automated content moderation rules. This included Donald Trump, who was permitted to harass and threaten people on the platform until the Jan 6. insurrection. But also “protected” was Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the leading Congressional advocate for breaking up Facebook, not that she needed it.
Facebook hasn’t used its dominant role as the owner of our public square to overtly promote a certain political ideology — if that was the fear. Instead, we are learning that the social network is prepared to use its unprecedented levers of power to promote something truly important – the health and prosperity of Facebook. I’m joking about this distinction, of course, because one of our most important political questions is: Can we really trust Facebook as an impartial news delivery service, or our virtual public square? And if not, what can we do about it?
These are crucial times for the social network; it has never been under more government scrutiny or been subjected to more public scorn. In response, the company has added to its already huge marketing expenditures, spending more than $6 billion in advertising in the first six months of this year alone, including placing ads during the Tokyo Olympics. Facebook, alongside Amazon, also recently became the largest spenders on corporate lobbying in Washington, according to Bloomberg, surpassing even defense contractors. Harnessing the newsfeeds of nearly 300 million users in the US would be a natural progression in its aggressive efforts to improve its image — a strategy the New York Times called, “No more apologies.”
Once down this road, is it really so hard to believe that Facebook might restrict access to journalism that it believes maligns its beloved social networks? This summer, Facebook disabled the accounts of academics at New York University studying how the platform amplified right-wing misinformation. The company claimed that it was protecting its users’ privacy and obeying a commitment it made to the Federal Trade Commission, a claim that a top F.T.C. official publicly disputed. The academics told the Times they believed the company was using privacy as a cover quell their research.
To view things from Facebook’s perspective for a moment: Zuckerberg appears to believe that connecting the world through a single network is a great gift for humanity, perhaps the greatest. He is deeply offended to hear that others think he acts to make money or accrue power. If that were your passionate conviction, it would take superhuman powers to watch as petty or misguided critics try to tear your project down, especially after it has come so far.
Lately, Facebook spokespeople have been throwing shade at newspaper reporters, accusing them of hypocrisy. In one, a spokesperson on Twitter questioned what was newsworthy about Project Amplify: “Kinda like the New York Times uses the New York Times to promote the New York Times?!” In another, the spokesperson argued in response to criticism of Facebook’s proposed Instagram for Kids service that the Times itself published a Kids Section aimed at 8- to 13-year-olds. The reporter noted that the Times’s kids section wasn’t harming teenage girls’ self-image and questioned why Facebook was suddenly comparing itself to a publisher (a designation the social network has rejected), which certainly controls what appears in its pages and often endorses political candidates.
Was the spokesperson revealing a fundamental rethinking of Facebook’s role in the news ecosystem? There is reason for all of us to be on guard to see if the company takes greater control of what appears on its platform. The same concern would apply to the other tech behemoths like Apple and Google, who have their own popular newsfeed apps, and a similar immense confidence in the good they are doing.
The professor who first raised concerns about Facebook’s ability to manipulate elections, Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard, appeared confident in his essay that the free market would discourage Facebook and other dominant digital platforms from abusing their power. We now know how inadequate that check is, considering there are so few alternative services, and the unwillingness of these businesses to allow one to ever plant roots.
This picture of an out-of-control system bent on surviving at all costs has me thinking of the HAL computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The astronauts, Dave and Frank, conclude the computer is jeopardizing their safety. HAL tried apologizing before acting decisively: trying to take out Dave and Frank to ensure its survival, it explained it had no choice: “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.”