Facebook’s Safe Harbour for Hate Speech?

Résumé analytique

Social media platforms wield enormous power but do not always use it in the public interest, a fact the COVID-19 pandemic put on full display as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube and others helped spread misinformation about the virus, including claims it was developed in a Chinese laboratory and that various remedies could cure or prevent it. Some of that misinformation came directly from President Donald Trump, pushing content moderation into public debate. Platforms had long treated Trump's posts as largely exempt from normal moderation rules given his position, but in late May 2020 Twitter fact-checked one Trump tweet about mail-in voting and hid another about Minneapolis protests for "glorifying violence," while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg refused to act, saying the platform should not be "the arbiter of truth." Trump responded with an executive order targeting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields platforms from liability for third-party content; the order also revised how users submit complaints to the White House and threatened to strip liability protection from platforms whose moderation is deemed "deceptive."

Drawing on Mike Ananny's essay on media infrastructures, the piece argues that understanding social media requires recognizing that platforms' algorithms, AI models, and recommendation systems are driven by their owners' values and financial goals rather than being neutral mirrors of society, and that their infrastructural elements are "the best and most underexploited places where regulation can have the greatest impact." Since the 2016 U.S. election Facebook has refused to remove certain content, even as it removed accounts of Palestinian, Syrian, and Tunisian activists and journalists, and research has shown Black user accounts were far more likely to be automatically disabled by its moderation system. Trump's 2016 win is partly attributed to Facebook's boosting of his message, and the 2020 executive order is read by some, including Zeynep Tufekci, as an effort to deter Facebook from acting against Trump's posts before the November 2020 election. The commentary concludes that a concerted regulatory response is needed to address what is posted on social platforms and the broader social effects of profit-driven algorithms, requiring a deeper understanding of platforms' inner workings and better tools to ensure they serve the public interest rather than only their bottom lines.