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Facebook has touted its fact-checking procedure as one of the tactics it intends to combat unbridled misinformation in the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election. However, new reports on how you handle fact-checking of weather science stories obviously imply that data verification can only work if Facebook allows it, and that the months from now and November are going to be hard work.
Facebook does not directly use data verifiers, but works with a variety of third-party organizations to assess the degree of actual or false content shared in the categories. However, efforts are not universal. While Facebook has invested heavily in efforts to stem the overwhelming tide of false and misleading data about COVID-19, for example, it does not largely verify climate replacement data.
The New York Times recently explained the platform’s reasoning about how it handles climate replacement. Facebook believes that opinion content is largely free of review, and weather replacement may, as far as Facebook regulations are concerned, be a matter of opinion.
Rarely examined, however, is another than ever. “When someone posts content based on false facts, even if it’s an editorial or publisher, they’re still eligible for data verification,” Andy Stone, Facebook’s communications director, told NYT. “We are running to clarify this in our rules so that our data verifiers can use their judgment to determine whether this is an attempt to hide false data under the guise of an opinion.”
The line has been clear so far, and Facebook at least twice overruled the decisions of weather scientists who consider the content to be partially or totally false. The first time, an organization that joins Facebook as one of its data verifiers, Climate Feedback, marked a 2019 Washington Examiner editorial as fake. A climate replacement denial organization, the CO2 Coalition, complained to Facebook about data verification, and the content warning was then removed.
More recently, an article on climate change published through The Daily Wire, a right-wing site that generates very high traffic on Facebook, also received a “partially false” score from Climate Feedback. The author of the Daily Wire article publicly complained that it had been “censored” and Facebook staff reviewed fact verification. Popular Information received internal documents from Facebook stating that Facebook staff agreed with the “partially false” note. An email thread that alerted the company’s high-level executives about the uproar showed that verification and communication groups were looking to leave her alone, but the political team said verification of the idea of the “stakeholders” was “partial.” The account no longer appears in the Daily Wire story Facebook actions.
Facebook and data verification have a long-term relationship.
The company first submitted its fact-checking formula through back-third parties in 2016, following half a dozen confidentiality scandals and incorrect information surrounding this year’s presidential election arrangements. Late last year, Facebook revealed a series of “electoral integrity” efforts for the same pitfalls in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Just over a hundred days to go before this election, and those efforts seem to have at most a productive combined good fortune rate. One of the few categories of political discourse where Facebook promises a bright line is any attempt to suppress voters. This includes ads that intentionally involve misrepresentation information, such as the inclusion of the date (the big day this year is November 3), as well as any announcements that “voting is dead or unnecessary, or advising others not to vote.” The policy also prohibits ads that “exclude others from political participation on grounds such as race, ethnicity, or religion.” Ads that say they vote or do not vote for a candidate because of their race or that threaten violence or intimidation are included in this directive. Facebook workers rebel against Zuckerberg’s stance on Trump
However, last week, ProPublica reported that particular incorrect voting information remained endemic on the platform. The challenge is mainly manifested by accusations related to mail voting, which have increased because the COVID-19 pandemic has made remote voting a safer option for tens of millions of Americans.
“Many of these falsehoods seem to violate Facebook’s criteria but have not been removed or labeled as inaccurate,” says ProPublica. “Some of them, generalizing from one or two cases, have presented other people of color as the face of voter fraud.”
False accusations of voter fraud through politicians and candidates, adding President Donald Trump, have turned out to be thorny for Facebook. While the platform removed classified ads from Trump’s crusade that included misleading claims about the census, Facebook has been very reluctant to touch Trump’s or Trump’s crusade statements, even as they violate Facebook’s published standards.
An organization of senators led by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) He asked Facebook last week about its inconsistent position on data verification.
“Since Facebook published a blog post about its efforts to combat misinformation on Facebook in April 2017, disinformation campaigns on the platform have continued and developed, with state support,” the senators wrote. ‘If Facebook is in fact’ committed to fighting the spread of fake news on Facebook and Instagram, the company will have to recognize without delay in its fact-checking procedure that the climate crisis is not a matter of opinion and act to fill the gaps that allow incorrect weather information. spread on its platform. “
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