Can Facebook clean house before the US election?
On Thursday, October 22 at 19:30 GMT:
Facebook is once more in the spotlight as a pressure group urges the social media company to combat misinformation and hate speech on its platform in the run-up to what is being widely called the most consequential US presidential election in decades.
The Real Facebook Oversight Board launched on September 30 and is led by social media experts who include Carole Cadwalladr, a journalist who uncovered how British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested millions of users’ Facebook data for political advertisements supportive of Donald Trump in the 2016 US election.
As Trump bids for re-election against challenger Joe Biden, the group has urged action from Facebook on three fronts: to remove posts that incite violence, including those from prominent political figures; to ban advertisements that mention US presidential election results until a winner is declared and the opponent concedes; and label as untrue any organic posts declaring a US election winner until results are certified and the other candidate concedes.
The collective is also engaged in tackling Facebook on other issues, including how the company handles the posting of conspiracy theories, contentious political advertising, and mass posting of misinformation and disinformation by bots. Roger McNamee, a former Facebook investor and a key member of the group, says it will serve as a “watchdog”, but a Facebook spokesman criticised it as “mostly longtime critics creating a new channel for existing criticisms.”
Facebook’s official Oversight Board is now accepting cases after a string of delays. The official board’s members are drawn worldwide from academia, law, policy and journalism backgrounds, and will act independently of Facebook. But while the board is part of Facebook’s stated aim to boost oversight and accountability, it will only review and rule on whether to reinstate controversial content already removed from the platform. Critics also say Facebook’s self-styled ‘Supreme Court’ will come too late to robustly protect the integrity of a US election already being contested on social media, despite Facebook recently moving to post warning labels on some controversial posts and reject more than two million advertisements across both Facebook and its photo-sharing platform Instagram for attempting to “obstruct voting” in the US election.
In this episode of The Stream we’ll look at how the Real Facebook Oversight Board is holding Facebook to account, and ask whether the company is doing enough to ensure accountability and transparency. Join the conversation.
In this episode of The Stream we are joined by:
Carole Cadwalladr, @carolecadwalla
Founder, The Real Facebook Oversight Board
the-citizens.com/real-facebook-oversight
Dipayan Ghosh, @ghoshd7
Co-director, Digital Platforms & Democracy Project
dipayanghosh.com
Kate Klonick, @Klonick
Assistant Professor, St. John’s University Law School
kateklonick.com