Mark Zuckerberg has promised to fix Facebook. In a lengthy Facebook post sharing his reading habits, Zuckerberg announced his goal for 2018 is to fix the issues with his social network that people have been complaining about for years. He was pretty vague about what would be done though. To help him along, we've come up with some of the issues he could start with.
Fake news has been on the agenda since the election of Donald Trump but its a much wider problem. After acknowledging the issue, Facebook has attempted to rid our timelines of hoaxes by working with fact-checking organisations and adding a ‘fake news’ warning, but these attempts have done nothing to throttle misinformation. Its new anti-fake news tools actually increased traffic to the disinformation that it had flagged, and back in October, Facebook and Google promoted false news stories claiming that the Las Vegas shooter was an anti-Trump Democrat.
A major resolution for Facebook should be to not allow advertisers to target racists. Last year, Facebook’s algorithm created anti-Semitic categories, which racists were targeting ads toward, and was approving ads for housing, employment or credit that excluded racial categories. Facebook responded by saying it had beefed up its policies, but reports said similar ads were still approved. In the same year, Facebook admitted Russia had paid for ads which interfered with the 2016 presidential election and Brexit. It's started fixing the problem by saying it will be more transparent about the sales of political ads.
Facebook has already vowed to stop rerouting ad revenue through Dublin amid pressure from regulators. Instead it will book advertising revenue in countries where it is earned. This might not be enough to make a real difference but time will tell. In 2016, Facebook paid just £5.1m in UK corporation tax, despite a quadruple jump in profit and revenues from advertisements sales.
During one of the UK's inquiries into Russia’s interference, Facebook was accused of doing ‘no work’ in uncovering the extent of meddling. Facebook highlighted three ads which targeted the Brexit vote; costing just 73p – but these were only the ones it already knew about. The company closely works with governments when it is ordered to do so but its efforts don't always appear to be proactive. In 2018, Facebook should increase its efforts to communicate more with governments which are trying to uncover the extent of its issues and increase the transparency in doing so.
This is one that Zuckerberg himself touched upon in his Facebook post; the dream of technology being a decentralised power is dying. Facebook has met with the Israeli government to determine which Facebook accounts of Palestinians should be removed, and deleted Chechnya's leader's account because the US said so. It was also reported to be setting up a version in China which satisfied the government's desire for a suppression tool. While Facebook should start playing nice with government inquires trying to uncover their pitfalls, it also has a duty to be an independent player and not chase profits at any costs.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
