Elizabeth Warren's Feud With Facebook Over 'False' Ads Just Highlights The Impossibility Of Content Moderation At Scale

Elizabeth Warren's Feud With Facebook Over 'False' Ads Just Highlights The Impossibility Of Content Moderation At Scale

5 years ago
Anonymous $JavybBYWR5

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191014/22010943192/elizabeth-warrens-feud-with-facebook-over-false-ads-just-highlights-impossibility-content-moderation-scale.shtml

You may have heard over the past few days about a bit of a feud between Presidential candidates -- mainly Elizabeth Warren -- and Facebook about how the company handles political ads with false information. It began a week or so ago when the Trump campaign started running a bunch of Facebook ads around impeachment, some of which were blatantly false, based on totally debunked claims. Facebook, however, just recently clarified its policy, noting that while it will block ads that its partner fact-checkers have determined to be untrue, that does not apply directly to political candidate ads themselves:

We rely on third-party fact-checkers to help reduce the spread of false news and other types of viral misinformation, like memes or manipulated photos and videos. We don’t believe, however, that it’s an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny. That’s why Facebook exempts politicians from our third-party fact-checking program. We have had this policy on the books for over a year now, posted publicly on our site under our eligibility guidelines. This means that we will not send organic content or ads from politicians to our third-party fact-checking partners for review.

Elizabeth Warren's Feud With Facebook Over 'False' Ads Just Highlights The Impossibility Of Content Moderation At Scale

Oct 15, 2019, 5:38pm UTC
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191014/22010943192/elizabeth-warrens-feud-with-facebook-over-false-ads-just-highlights-impossibility-content-moderation-scale.shtml > You may have heard over the past few days about a bit of a feud between Presidential candidates -- mainly Elizabeth Warren -- and Facebook about how the company handles political ads with false information. It began a week or so ago when the Trump campaign started running a bunch of Facebook ads around impeachment, some of which were blatantly false, based on totally debunked claims. Facebook, however, just recently clarified its policy, noting that while it will block ads that its partner fact-checkers have determined to be untrue, that does not apply directly to political candidate ads themselves: > We rely on third-party fact-checkers to help reduce the spread of false news and other types of viral misinformation, like memes or manipulated photos and videos. We don’t believe, however, that it’s an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny. That’s why Facebook exempts politicians from our third-party fact-checking program. We have had this policy on the books for over a year now, posted publicly on our site under our eligibility guidelines. This means that we will not send organic content or ads from politicians to our third-party fact-checking partners for review.