Yes, Facebook Treats Trump Fans Differently: It Has Relaxed The Rules To Give Them More Leeway
from the because-of-course dept
I know that it's become accepted wisdom among some that the various social media platforms have an "anti-conservative bias" in how they moderate content. However, we've yet to see any evidence to actually support such a claim. Indeed, one study that has been pointed to frequently seemed to show that Twitter, at least, had an anti-Nazi and anti-troll policy -- and unless you think "conservatives" are synonymous with Nazis and trolls, then that doesn't really prove very much. Of course, there was another report that came out around that time noting that some Republican politicians' accounts were indistinguishable from Nazi accounts -- so... who knows?
Either way, the narrative has continued that somehow all the social media companies are somehow "unfair" to "conservatives" (which does not seem to have anything to do with actual conservative values, but mainly whether or not they support the current President). Indeed, a big part of the "antitrust" hearing a few weeks back was Republican Congressmen ranting and raving about the unfair treatment they and their friends receive on Facebook (though, at least one Congressional Rep confused Facebook and Twitter).
But, again, if anything, all of the evidence has shown the opposite to be true on Facebook. Pages and individuals who support the President (whether or not you consider that to be "conservative" is up to you) seem to do much better than other sites. And, now, new reports suggest that Facebook has bent over backwards to appease those sites, even when they break the rules. Indeed, according to an NBC report looking at internal documents, Facebook treated pages that support the President differently, giving them much more leeway than other users:
According to internal discussions from the last six months, Facebook has relaxed its rules so that conservative pages, including those run by Breitbart, former Fox News personalities Diamond and Silk, the nonprofit media outlet PragerU and the pundit Charlie Kirk, were not penalized for violations of the company’s misinformation policies.
Facebook's fact-checking rules dictate that pages can have their reach and advertising limited on the platform if they repeatedly spread information deemed inaccurate by its fact-checking partners. The company operates on a "strike" basis, meaning a page can post inaccurate information and receive a one-strike warning before the platform takes action. Two strikes in 90 days places an account into “repeat offender” status, which can lead to a reduction in distribution of the account’s content and a temporary block on advertising on the platform.
Of course, it's noteworthy to see PragerU, especially, getting special treatment, since that company has basically built its reputation by playing the victim with regards to social media content moderation. Indeed, it lost its ridiculous lawsuit against YouTube, but that hasn't quieted down the site's founder, Dennis Prager, who continues to whine about social media censorship for his "conservative" views.
Of course, the truth now appears to be that he's the beneficiary of... a kind of affirmative action.
In another case in late May, a Facebook employee filed a misinformation escalation for PragerU, after a series of fact-checking labels were applied to several similar posts suggesting polar bear populations had not been decimated by climate change and that a photo of a starving animal was used as a “deliberate lie to advance the climate change agenda.” This claim was fact-checked by one of Facebook’s independent fact-checking partners, Climate Feedback, as false and meant that the PragerU page had “repeat offender” status and would potentially be banned from advertising.
A Facebook employee escalated the issue because of “partner sensitivity” and mentioned within that the repeat offender status was “especially worrisome due to PragerU having 500 active ads on our platform,” according to the discussion contained within the task management system and leaked to NBC News.
After some back and forth between employees, the fact check label was left on the posts, but the strikes that could have jeopardized the advertising campaign were removed from PragerU’s pages.
Facebook seems to apply affirmative action to help aggrieved grifters who support the President. And, really, part of the argument many have made is that this was the point of these sites and users whining all this time. They knew they were spewing bullshit, and ran the risk of getting penalized, but if they pre-whined about it, perhaps they'd get special treatment. And now that's exactly what's happened.
The list and descriptions of the escalations, leaked to NBC News, showed that Facebook employees in the misinformation escalations team, with direct oversight from company leadership, deleted strikes during the review process that were issued to some conservative partners for posting misinformation over the last six months. The discussions of the reviews showed that Facebook employees were worried that complaints about Facebook's fact-checking could go public and fuel allegations that the social network was biased against conservatives.
The removal of the strikes has furthered concerns from some current and former employees that the company routinely relaxes its rules for conservative pages over fears about accusations of bias.
Two current Facebook employees and two former employees, who spoke anonymously out of fear of professional repercussions, said they believed the company had become hypersensitive to conservative complaints, in some cases making special allowances for conservative pages to avoid negative publicity.
Indeed, Facebook seems so sensitive to this issue that it has since fired an employee who collected the information showing that these Trump-supporting pages got special treatment.
Facebook, of course, is free to manage its platform the way that it wishes too, but it is somewhat amusing, at least, to think that if folks like Senator Josh Hawley got his way on some of his anti-Section 230 bills, then Facebook would actually open itself up to lawsuits from aggrieved parties (such as those who oppose the President's agenda) who didn't get that same "beneficial" treatment...
Filed Under: affirmative action, anti-conservative bias, bias, content moderation
Companies: facebook
