Broadcasts.com - "Facebook Promoted Divisive Content to Boost User Engagement" (Community Signal)

Business
RELATED

Facebook Promoted Divisive Content to Boost User Engagement

Published: June 22, 2020, 9:30 a.m.

For years, Facebook executives have persistently shut down efforts to make the site less divisive,\xa0according to reporting\xa0from\xa0Deepa Seetharaman\xa0and\xa0Jeff Horwitz\xa0of\xa0The Wall Street Journal.

As community professionals, we\u2019re tasked with helping people start and participate in conversations that matter to them. We\u2019re often held accountable by \u201cengagement\u201d metrics \u2013\u2013 such as the number of people participating in conversations and the sentiment surrounding those conversations.

But in this conversation with reporter Jeff Horwitz, you\u2019ll learn that while Facebook obviously wants to gain more attention from users and increase time spent on the platform, there\u2019s less internal consensus around the ethical dilemma of reaching these engagement goals by amplifying divisive groups and content. Alternatively, a lack of concrete metrics to measure impact is perhaps one of the things stopping Facebook from taking a step back and thinking about how their platform is impacting the world.

Is Facebook already too much of a monolith to change its path? Or is Mark Zuckerberg still not convinced that the company is at the center of a moral dilemma when it comes to polarizing its members and advancing the spread of misinformation?

In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick talks to Jeff about the article and dives into the context surrounding the story learned while talking to Facebook employees. They discuss:

The engineers that are continuously pushing to build a more fair and just Facebook
How decision-making works at Facebook
Why \u201csocial good\u201d has fallen out of favor

Our Podcast is Made Possible By\u2026

If you enjoy our show, please know that it\u2019s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor:\xa0Vanilla, a one-stop shop for online community.

Big Quotes

Polarization is being encouraged by Facebook\u2019s algorithms (3:15):\xa0\u201c[Facebook] found that in some instances, its platform was increasing polarization. \u2026 Facebook\u2019s algorithms would spit out increasingly divisive content in an effort to boost engagement unless interrupted.\u201d \u2013@JeffHorwitz

The impact of delaying tough platform decisions (7:00):\xa0\u201cSome of the engineers really regretted that they hadn\u2019t been able to take action [against polarization] earlier because if they had, potentially, [Facebook] wouldn\u2019t have had this large ecosystem of misinformation and misinformation publishers that actually started defending its own interest. Making those changes once you\u2019ve already got an established platform and communities on this platform is a lot harder.\u201d \u2013@JeffHorwitz

Founders and the C-suite can hold back community initiatives (10:26):\xa0\u201cYou can\u2019t outrun the founders. I\u2019ve found myself reporting up the chain before to CEOs, COOs, and founders who would continually weaken my initiatives.\u201d \u2013@patrickokeefe

Allowing metrics to get in the way of progress (20:11):\xa0\u201cIf Facebook was asking the question, \u2018Are we making the world worse?,\u2019 how do you even answer that question? Facebook is a very metrics-driven organization, and that was a pretty hard thing to quantify. It was like, if you can\u2019t quantify it, then how do you know you\u2019ve solved it? Thus, if you can\u2019t quantify it, maybe we should just move on.\u201d \u2013@JeffHorwitz

So, why hasn\u2019t Facebook made more substantial changes? (25:26):\xa0\u201cIt\u2019s a product that really does work and it really is successful in just a truly profound way. Making changes to it, I think, is pretty hard. Even if there are so many other ways for Groups to be or for News Feed to be, this is the way that has built Facebook into a wild, almost unparalleled success. Why would you give that up?\u201d \u2013@JeffHorwitz

About Jeff Horwitz

Jeff Horwitz\xa0is a reporter for\xa0The Wall Street Journal\xa0focusing on Facebook. Before joining\xa0The Wall Street Journal, he was an investigative reporter for the Associated Press.