Chapter IV: A Response to Facebook’s Fact-checker solution
4.1 Analysis of Facebook’s Fact-checking Program
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Chapter IV: A Response to Facebook’s Fact-checker solution
This chapter as a whole answers the research questions and encourages Facebook to act on certain moves to help themselves. While the first section is dedicated to an analysis of the program, the second one proposes several suggestions to improve the current situation regarding the dissemination of fake news on the social media.
4.1 Analysis of Facebook’s Fact-checking Program
Based on the discussions and findings in the previous chapters, the thesis argues that the fact-checking program proposed by Facebook exists fundamental flaws which are deeply rooted in the business model they sustain to amass a substantial amount of advertising revenue. Thus the program could only serve as a contingency plan at best.
The fundamental flaws in the program consist of two main dimensions: design and implementation. First, there are at least three pending questions in regard of the program design that requires Facebook to make a concrete stand: 1) The mystery of false news definition, 2) The puzzle of the exclusion of the political speech, 3) The question of whether there is any untold connection between the above two items.
It seems very suspicious to exclude politicians from the program and, at the same time, appoint false news to be their addressing target. Why? As mentioned previously, the logic upholding Facebook’s mentality is self-contradicted. On one hand, they heralded the merry of speech right, but on the other hand, sublimed political speech and called it “the most scrutinized speech there is.” So with this poorly-connected logic, they justified their exemption of political discourse from the program. It is as if they tried to tell people they did not scrutinize posts from politicians because they cherish
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freedom of speech, and other people (whom I do not know) in the democracies would do it for them automatically anyway.
If the above speculation was what they are truly after, what they did with the definition of false news could make one sense then, but just not a decent one. Per their own definition, false news could be known as facts with misleading intentions, which by UNESCO standards, mal-information. By claiming their bold commitment to deter the spread of false news did leave an image that they are trying to take on the herculean tasks because it is not easy to do fact-check and clarify one’s intention at the same time.
But to peel off the layers of their words one by one, it is quite obvious that they did not intend to carry such burdens in the first place.
The rules they set for themselves in this game have freed them from the troubles to scrutinize the major source of false news—posts of politicians. According to the findings in this thesis, there was a great deal of mal-information (or in Facebook’s words, false news), appearing in the selected Facebook pages. If Facebook did intend to fight the spread of false news, why would it miss the supposed hotbeds of false news and protect them with the shields of speech right?
These conflicts, of course, have shattered the trusts of their fact-checker partners and even generated antipathy toward Facebook. The old-time fact-checker partners criticized that fact-checking program is merely a PR function to save Facebook’s reputation after being harshly criticized its role in CAS. Taking their business model into accounts, observers believe Mark Zuckerberg won’t take up serious measures against fake news because it would mean cuts to their financial funnels. They argue Facebook needs to adjust the business model in order to combat the spread of fake news.
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In addition, the flaws in their program design underlie great concerns as well. For one thing, to detect and lower the visibility of false news aren’t easy works because it involves a certain degree of subjective judgment to tell which contents contain fragments of facts with misleading intents and which not. A case in point would be a Politico article1 titled, “Trump rallies his base to treat coronavirus as a hoax,” which was later debunked as a false statement by Check Your Fact, a third-party fact-checking partner of Facebook.2 Check Your Fact explained that Trump was referring to “the alleged ‘politicizing’ of the coronavirus by Democrats” as their new hoax, not coronavirus itself.3 While some contended what Trump said was extremely ambiguous and that debunking the content of Politico was merely too arbitrary, it was no doubts that Facebook’s fact-checking is a powerful tool, which makes it an arbiter of truth.
Another similar yet contentious example4 could also be seen in a recent online post from President Trump, saying “when the looting begins, the shooting begins,”
which lots of people translated into “a call for violence in nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd.” Some Facebook employees believe the company should take action on the controversial post, the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, however, reacted otherwise. It is shocking to witness Facebook not to take up any measure while Twitter had put a warning label and flagged it as violent. The non-action from top management has caused outrage from Facebook employees, resulting in at least two employees resigned.
1 Nancy Cook and Matthew Choi, “’Trump rallies his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax’,” Politico, February 28, 2020.
2 Adi Robertson, “Facebook fact-checking is becoming a political cudgel,” the VERGE, March 3, 2020.
3 Ibid.
4 Elizabeth Dwoskin, “Zuckerberg defends decisions on Trump as Facebook employee unrest grows,” The Washington Post. June 2, 2020
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In fact, Zuckerberg also made a decision last year to not take down a video of House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that was manipulated to make her appear drunk despite public frustration was ignited when he made a personal call not to fact check the political advertising.5 Even though Facebook’s fact-checking program is designed to stop false information from propagation, being able to decide what’s true and what’s not is essentially a political weapon.6
Second, the fundamental flaws in implementation. Although Facebook is a worldwide corporation having billions of registered users around the globe, the fact-checking program does not cover all the countries.7 To start with, there is no fact-checker partner in Russia. Some European democracies, such as Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria, have no organs in charge of checking published contents, either. One might argue that since those countries have a rather small population and share a common language with their neighbors (French, Italian, Dutch, and German), most of the information coming from the outside is checked by the French or German fact-checkers before being distributed to the locals. However, it does not apply to the lack of fact-checkers in countries with unique languages, such as Sweden and Finland.
Next, the geographic coverage of fact-checkers is also unequal. Canada has one fact-checker, while the U.S. has six, and Germany, only two. Meanwhile, in South East Asia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Brunei do not have a single fact-checkers. North
5 “Zuckerberg tried to contact Pelosi after Facebook refused to take down manipulated video,” National Post, June 11, 2019.
6 Adi Robertson, “Facebook fact-checking is becoming a political cudgel,” the VERGE, Mar 3, 2020.
7 Facebook, “Fact-Checking on Facebook: What Publishers Should Know”
https://www.facebook.com/help/publisher/182222309230722.
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African and Middle Eastern countries are even monitored by the same fact-checker.
Overall, the number of fact-checkers varies in countries.
It is important to recognize that this lack of coverage could end up causing a tremendous issue. Suppose fake news is written and published somewhere else that does not equip fact-checkers, it could be speculated the fake news can easily dodge the censor and then be introduced to a targeted country through connections between users.8
To sum up, even though for some it may be too early to judge their effectiveness in combating false news, the flaws exposed in the program design and implementation have declared otherwise. The discussion has already unfolded its way and, not surprisingly, has included the voices of its critics. Categorized as “inadequate solutions”
by RSF,9 fact-checking works as an “emergency solution” (along with enhancing media literacy and government coercion), for it is too time-consuming to disprove a piece of fake news while writing one can be done in minutes.
Furthermore, in Swire’s et al. research, they found out familiar information, and fact affirmations may have influenced people’s perception of news (Swire-Thompson, Ecker, and Lewandowsky 2017). The study supports the notion that familiarity drives the effect of information and that by repeating false information, even in a fact-checking context, may increase an individual’s likelihood of accepting it as true.
Thus, the fact-checking program could only be a so-called, contingency plan, at best because from the journalism perspective, fact-checking may underperform its potential in the realm of newsroom; yet, in the context of social media, before these
8 Emma Graham-Harrison and Shaun Walker, “Hungary: the crucible for faulty efforts by Facebook to banish fake news,” The Guardian May 18, 2019.
9 Reporters Without Borders, “2019 Taiwan International Journalism Conference,” Taipei, December 27, 2019.
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