Lawmakers Question Tech Firms, Publishers on How They Combat Fake News
July 17 2018 - 7:06PM
Dow Jones News
By Benjamin Mullin and Deepa Seetharaman
Tech firms, publishing executives and lawmakers broadly agree on
the dangers of fake news and hate speech online. But they still
can't find common ground on how to define it and what to do about
it.
On Tuesday, executives for leading social-media firms said on
Capitol Hill that they were committed to improving the quality of
the content on their sites, but caught flak from lawmakers who took
issue with where the companies draw the lines. The hearing
highlighted how Facebook Inc. and other tech firms are under
pressure to punish publishers of fabricated news articles without
stoking broader concerns about censorship.
The testimony before the House Judiciary Committee came days
after a private meeting late last week when some publishing
executives criticized Facebook for being overly sensitive to
conservative complaints about potential liberal bias.
Facebook in particular has come under sustained criticism in
recent years for how it mediates political discourse on its
platform. The social-media giant has hosted a number of meetings in
the past two years with various stakeholders, including publishers,
lawmakers and civil-rights groups, to discuss the issue. It also
has implemented a number of changes to how it presents news and
information on its platform.
But Facebook's actions have failed to quell the outcry from its
critics, including Republican and Democratic lawmakers who on
Tuesday continued to question the company for a range of complaints
including its handling of pages that repeatedly spread hate speech
and conspiracy theories.
Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) questioned why a Facebook page called
Milkshakes Against the Republican Party remained up for months
despite multiple posts that called for violence against
Republicans. The page appeared to be down as of Tuesday; a Facebook
spokeswoman said the company didn't take it down.
"How many times does a page have to encourage violence against
Republican members of Congress at baseball practice before you ban
the page?" Mr. Gaetz asked.
Throughout the Tuesday testimony, executives for Facebook,
Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Twitter Inc. were grilled on how they
choose what content to remove or demote. Fake content isn't against
the policies of any of these companies. However, each of the firms
takes steps to prevent the spread of certain types of content,
typically with a goal of reducing misinformation.
Facebook's head of global policy management Monika Bickert was
asked by Democratic lawmakers why the social network hadn't
suspended InfoWars, a far-right page that has promoted conspiracy
theories including one saying that the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting
never happened and another saying the victims of the Parkland, Fla.
school shooting were actors. Ms. Bickert said a page that
repeatedly violated Facebook's content standards would be suspended
but that the "threshold varies depending on the severity of
different types of violations." She didn't provide more detail.
In February, Facebook said it would pull down posts describing
the victims of the Parkland shooting as crisis actors, calling the
content "abhorrent." Some InfoWars p osts questioning the reality
of the Sandy Hook shooting remain on Facebook's platform.
Earlier this year, Facebook overhauled the way it presents news
and information on its platform, favoring posts from individuals
over those by news organizations and other businesses.
This change has increased the polarization of content on
Facebook, according to Angelo Carusone, president of progressive
nonprofit Media Matters for America, because the move reduces the
visibility of authoritative articles, and instead focuses on
pushing content that gets users riled up.
"Stuff with the most emotional appeal gets the highest levels of
engagement," Mr. Carusone said.
Disagreements remain about how to find the right balance. At an
off-the-record meeting between Facebook officials and publishing
executives in New York, some executives argued that the tech giant
has grown too deferential to conservative complaints of bias.
BuzzFeed Editor in Chief Ben Smith said that the number of
conservative publications in attendance indicated that Facebook had
bought into the idea that mainstream outlets such as the New York
Times are liberal and should be counterbalanced by right-leaning
opinion outlets, said people familiar with his remarks.
Mr. Smith objected in particular to the presence of the Daily
Caller, a conservative-leaning outlet whose journalistic standards
he called into question. Mr. Smith's assessment of the Daily
Caller's journalistic standards was echoed by Lydia Polgreen, the
editor in chief of HuffPost.
The co-founder and publisher of the Daily Caller, Neil Patel,
defended its reporting during the meeting, according to a person
familiar with the matter, saying that the publication as a matter
of practice followed basic journalistic guidelines.
This meeting came one day after Facebook came under scrutiny
during an on-the-record question-and-answer session with
journalists at its New York offices for its decision not to ban
InfoWars.
Facebook's chief of News Feed, John Hegeman, said the site
doesn't want to punish sites simply because they express
controversial views.
Facebook declined to further comment about the meeting. Some of
the details were earlier reported by Recode.
Georgia Wells contributed to this article.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 17, 2018 18:51 ET (22:51 GMT)
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