Facebook is once again in the news for all of the wrong reasons. The tech giant has been struggling to determine the best way forward in terms of balancing libertarian permissiveness and societal concern. Facebook’s balancing act was on full display when it left a doctored video of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on the social media website past the point at which people knew that the video was fake.
Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, admitted this week that Facebook could have acted more swiftly to stop the spread of the video but made a few tactical mistakes. One version of the doctored clip received three million views. On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg conceded that Facebook’s fact checkers were somewhat remiss in letting the video go undetected for so long. At the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that response to the video proved an “execution mistake” for the company.
The curious part about the story is that Facebook and Twitter kept the video up whereas YouTube saw fit to take the video down almost immediately. Facebook has since admitted that it left the video up for too long; what’s more, the company has now committed to release a report for later in the week about its moderation process. The report will specifically cover the steps that Facebook’s oversight board go through as it makes the most agonizing moderation decisions.
The victim of the video, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, saw something much deeper in Facebook’s willingness to leave the video up. Representative Pelosi said that leaving the video up on Facebook proved Facebook were “enablers” to the kind of outside interference that tarnished the 2016 election. The lines of communication between House Minority Leader Pelosi and Mark Zuckerberg seem to be tenuous since Mark claimed to have called House Minority Leader Pelosi without success. Representative Pelosi claimed she wasn’t eager to return Mark’s call to discuss the matter further.
In defense of free speech, Mark Zuckerberg continues to maintain that Facebook must be extremely cautious in terms of policing purportedly objectionable content. Mark Zuckerberg claimed to “cherish” free speech in a discussion that ensued at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
That commitment will be tested as Mr. Zuckerberg will be forced to deal with the issue of so-called deepfakes, or videos that have doctored in a more sinister way to confuse the public. The discussion will certainly continue.
Dil Bole Oberoi
