The Problem with Facebook

Social media has become an everyday asset for society. Social media is very powerful as users are able to interact with each other, create or share ideas and interests, and network with one another. One of the biggest social media platforms in existence developed by Mark Zuckerberg is Facebook which has expanded extensively across the world in 17 years. Facebook has approximately 2.91 billion active users and people use the platform for many purposes. Facebook users are capable of talking to one another, posting their interests, writing a blog, starting their own business, and many use Facebook as a way to advertise and promote whatever the user is pitching. The growth of Facebook has damaged the company’s credibility because of their data collecting algorithms, poor content monitoring, and permission to post any content that follows Facebook’s guidelines. Online platforms have existed since 1996 when the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and Section 230 was enacted. Section 230 protects social media platforms legal liability to websites and users from posting content. Without section 230, many social media platforms like Facebook and Reddit would not exist for people to share their thoughts. However, Section 230 has presented more suffering rather than liability. Section 230 has been connected to controversial matters such as extremely violent videos, political propaganda, and obscene material. This essay will discuss why Facebook is a problem, various Facebook scandals, Facebook’s convictions, Section 230 and how it relates to Facebook, and what to do about Facebook’s platform and their motives.

There is a lot of public opinion about Facebook and its core values as a company. Siva Vaidhyanathan, writer of the book Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, talks about the foundations of Facebook, analyzes the problems with Facebook, and identifies how the platform affects human interaction. Facebook has transformed itself into one of the biggest, if not the biggest, tech & social media company in the world. Vaidhyanathan writes, “Facebook is the paradigmatic distillation of the Silicon Valley ideology. No company better represents the dream of a fully connected planet “sharing” words, ideas, images, and plans. No company has better leveraged those ideas into wealth and influence. No company has contributed more to the paradoxical collapse of basic tenets of deliberation and democracy,” (Vaidhyanathan, 3). The significance of this quote is that the author appraises Facebook for being the most successful company in reaching idealistic magnetism. The user experience on the website is straightforward and as Vaidhyanathan said that Facebook has achieved something that other companies try to assimilate. The last sentence of the quote mentions how Facebook has most contributed to a collapse of basic principles of deliberation and democracy is important in identifying why Facebook is a problem. Facebook is a platform to express yourself and use First Amendment rights. However, Facebook has violated many First Amendment rights of the ordinary person and Facebook users.

A main reason why Facebook is a problem is because of their data collecting scheme. Besides Facebook, much technology now has the ability to share metadata that reveals location, time, and an idea or opinion. Now, Facebook’s algorithm gathers information about the user and generates assumptions about the person, their lifestyle, and consumer habits. In chapter 3 of Antisocial Media, it says, “As our media ecosystem becomes more polluted and fractured, each player in it experiments with new designs, targeting strategies, and stimuli to steal attention and then hold it long enough to convince the potential customer to take some action,” said Vaidhyanathan (Vaidhyanathan, 82). Facebook has the ability to automatically filter certain types of content or products to the user specifically because of their tendencies. This is how some advertisers, businesses, and marketers profit from Facebook users by using Facebook’s algorithms. Besides entrepreneurs making money on Facebook, Facebook themselves profit from them because they’re selling their service to allow businesses’ advertisements to be posted on Facebook.

In 2018, whistleblower Christopher Wylie, an ex-employe, broke the news that a political analyst and consulting firm called Cambridge Analytica for accessing personal data of Facebook users. The CEO of Cambridge Analytica was Alexander Nix. In the documentary “The Great Hack” directed by Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, goes through “Project Alamo” and talks about Cambridge Analytica’s involvement with Facebook and their involvement in the 2016 U.S. President election. “Project Alamo” was a fundraising political advertisement for Donald Trump during his 2016 presisidential campaign that was published through Facebook. With Facebook’s advertisement filtering algorithm, “Project Alamo” was able to reach funding over $200 million; not only this but with this much attention, but remember the project was “endorsed” for Trump’s campaign. With the participation of so many people, the organizers of the project, Giles-Parscale was able to advertise more political advertisements for Trump and with a lot of participation in the Alamo fundraiser, the organizers were able to collect the data from Facebook and use Facebook to their advantage and help Donald Trump gain more political support. In The Great Hack Brittany Kaiser, Former Director of Business Development for Cambridge Analytica said, “The wealthiest companies are technology companies: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, and the reason why these companies are the most powerful companies in the world is because, last year, data surpassed oil in its value. Data is the most valuable asset on Earth, and these companies are valuable because they have been exploiting people’s assets,” said Kaiser (The Great Hack, 30:28). In the film Kaiser’s admits of Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in the creative team of bombarding users through blogs, websites, articles, videos, and advertisements on most platforms until they got the vote for their candidate. Cambridge Analytica misrepresented the truth and data was sold by Facebook to manipulate the election. This is a big problem with Facebook because they are profiting off of user data and seen with the 2016 election, Facebook also plays a role with persuading political ideologies. Donald Trump’s 2016 digital campaign direction claimed to have run 5.9 million visual ads on Facebook in contrast to Hilary Clinton’s 66,000. The UK’s information commissioner’s office confirmed that Russia accessed Facebook data that was breached by Cambridge Analytica and used the data to intervene in the U.S. election. This shows where public data is circulated around the world and who has access to these types of manipulating tactics. This proves how much propaganda influences behavior and real world outcomes. A problem seen here is how user data is being used and manipulated by Facebook and other companies to get what they want from an individual.

Besides data collection being a big problem about Facebook, another issue is the misinformation that is published on the platform. On March 25, 2021 the House committee met with the CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to discuss how to combat online extremism and misinformation.

A notable member of congress Jan Schakowsky said in her argument:

All three of the companies that are here today are wrong platforms that are hotbeds of misinformation and disinformation. Despite all the promises and new policies to match, misinformation and disinformation was rampant in the 2020 election especially targeting vulnerable communities. For example, Spanish-language ads run by the Trump campaign falsely accused President Biden of being endorsed by Venezuelan President Maduro. The spread of disinformation fed upon itself until it arrived at the Capital of the United States on January 6, which cost five lives. The lives lost in the insurgents insurgency was not the first case of the platform’s failure or, nor even the worst. In 2018, Facebook admitted a genocide of the people in Myanmar and that was planned and executed on Facebook. 2020 saw the rise of Coronavirus disinformation on Facebook platforms. (Schakowsky, 12:16)

The first example Schakowsky uses is the Spanish-language ads that Trump’s campaign ran that claimed Venezuela’s President Maduro was supporting Joe Biden. A story published by ProPublica and Noticias Telemundo, says that YouTube showed that ad more than 100,000 times in Florida in the last eight days leading up to the election. The article claims, “The video was part of a broader Trump campaign strategy in heavily Latino South Florida that sought to tie Biden to Socialist leaders like Maduro and the late Cuban President Fidel Castro. Trump won Florida by about 375,000 votes, the largest margin in a presidential election there since 1988. He carried about 55% of the Cuban American vote, according to exit polls by NBC News,” wrote the co-publishers. This being said, extremism political propaganda surfaces on the web and disinformation spreads because people get persuaded before confirming their source. The insurrection at the capital was caused by President Donald Trump inciting a mob of his supporters in an attempt to overturn the ballot because he claimed that the results of the election were stolen from him. Co-writers Alan Suderman and Joshua Goodman from the Associated Press news wrote in their article that meanwhile police were battling and lawmakers were trying to hide, Facebook engineers were surveilling the spread of misinformation and ‘inciteful’ content simultaneously as the event took place. Questions arise when thinking about Facebook’s motives which put its growth and profit ahead of public safety rather than resolving conflicts like misinformation that is the source to fake news. During this incitement, there was a growth of pages posting “Stop the Steal” and posting violent comments. Another Facebook scandal Section 230 protects Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg from being held accountable for the misinformation.

Section 230 plays a role with Facebook and other social media platforms as being a safeguard to providers and users by giving immunity from legal responsibility. The provisions are not limitless as operators of online services can find and remove any obscene material they think is inappropriate to be online. Section 230 becomes controversial when relating it to Facebook because some things people post cause political discussion online and bring along hate speech. According to Business Insider, former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen believes that Section 230 should be amended in order for Facebook to change its business motives. Even though hate speech and inciting violence is allowed by the First Amendment, social media sites can still moderate their content that violates their policy. Business Insider puts the two political parties and their thoughts on Section 230 like this, “Republicans want to amend or revoke Section 230 to fight alleged censorship of conservative users online, while Democrats largely saw it as a way to make companies liable for harmful content, like disinformation.” This is true regarding how both parties would like to deal with Section 230 and its affiliation to social media companies. Section 230 needs modern reformation to make companies more liable for the way they filter content to their users and how they are collecting data and using it.

In conclusion, Facebook has put themselves into this situation because of how Facebook’s team built Facebook. Facebook wrongfully collects billions of public information from people and profits from their users. Facebook has had many scandals that should make the company more responsible for their actions in controlling the site. Facebook is probably the most used social media app in the world and their users get their human rights violated by having their personal information sold for money. Another reason why Facebook has become such an issue is because of how much politics have played a role with social media advertisements, political candidates and third-party’s know that with Facebook’s algorithm they can achieve their goals. Section 230 should play more of a crucible role on the CEO and developers of social media companies because of the invasion of privacy that happens without some users even knowing. It is absurd to know that newspaper authors are held more accountable than social media platforms where billions of users are active daily. A change to Section 230 should protect the user, their privacy rights, and correct system algorithms to make them not as directed to a specific audience. Misinformation should be handled better with more factual oppositions to that false source. If Facebook can implement an algorithm that filters content then they should also be able to create an algorithm that questions the source whether it is valid or not. Social media will continue to be used in everyday society and will remain harming those who become affected by media giant algorithms until Section 230 is adjusted to help users.