Facebook and Russia
Social media is a huge part personal lives, business, and politics. In recent events, Facebook has faced scrutiny after it was discovered that 3,000 ads were placed on Facebook by Russians agencies to influence the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, and CEO, denied allegations that Facebook played a role in influencing voters. He supported his denial, by saying people base their votes based on lived experiences and not what they see on the social networking platform. He went on to make claims that his company found no evidence in the Russian produced fake news. However last week Zuckerberg said he would turn in all ad content that had been produced by Russia to Congress for revision. According to NPR "Members of a hacking group connected to Russia's military intelligence unit, the GRU, began creating fake Facebook accounts as early as June 2016 to amplify stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, the Post reported. According to the Post, some of those ads specifically sought to deepen disagreements about Muslims and the Black Lives Matter movement." (for full NPR story click here). The implications of this are that, the government may have to regulate ad postings on all social media networks. For instance, any account that contributes more than $10,000 to a certain ad would have to be flagged and meet the following consequences.
I don't agree with government regulation on what is and is not posted to Facebook, as I find that to be a bit of a slippery slope. I do, however, agree that Facebook influences the way people think, and perhaps, the way that they vote. I know for a fact that in my own experience, each and every day, I see fake news on my Facebook newsfeed. Something has to be done, but exactly what is the question. I've seen stats that say more than half of the number of Americans in this country saw these Russian ads... That's more than troubling, to say the least.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Jordan, if we allow the government to take control of something like that we are opening ourselves up to a slippery slope where it will continue to get worse. We shouldn't let the government control what we see online as that would be an infringement on our constitutional rights. However, I do think that we should hold Facebook more accountable for the ads that they allow to be posted. Being that they are a billion dollar company they should be able to afford more services to do a privatized version of what the government wants to do.
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