{"id":387352,"date":"2018-12-01T19:33:10","date_gmt":"2018-12-01T18:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/questions-we-should-be-asking-about-facebooks-smear-campaign-against-its-critics\/"},"modified":"2018-12-01T19:33:10","modified_gmt":"2018-12-01T18:33:10","slug":"questions-we-should-be-asking-about-facebooks-smear-campaign-against-its-critics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/questions-we-should-be-asking-about-facebooks-smear-campaign-against-its-critics\/","title":{"rendered":"Questions We Should Be Asking About Facebook\u2019s Smear Campaign Against Its Critics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The New York Times published a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/11\/14\/technology\/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html\">blockbuster story<\/a> about Facebook that exposed how the company used \u00a0so-called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20181115\/10073141056\/facebooks-use-smear-merchants-is-norm-not-exception.shtml\">smear merchants<\/a>\u201d to attack organizations critical of the platform. The story was shocking on a number of levels, revealing that Facebook\u2019s hired guns stooped to dog-whistling, anti-Semitic attacks aimed at George Soros <a class=\"see-footnote\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2018\/11\/questions-we-should-be-asking-about-facebooks-smear-campaign-against-its-critics#footnote1_nqwhfmn\">1<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2018\/11\/questions-we-should-be-asking-about-facebooks-smear-campaign-against-its-critics#_ftn1\"\/> and writing stories blasting Facebook\u2019s competitors on a news site they managed. As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20181115\/10073141056\/facebooks-use-smear-merchants-is-norm-not-exception.shtml\">Techdirt<\/a> points out, however, while the particulars are different, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20170213\/14460536703\/comcast-att-are-paying-minority-groups-to-support-killing-net-neutrality.shtml\">basic<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20160607\/09295034649\/jesse-jackson-likens-fcc-cable-box-reform-plan-to-snarling-dogs-water-hoses-church-bombings.shtml\">slimy<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20161025\/05594235881\/utilities-florida-are-using-fake-consumer-group-to-hamstring-solar-competition.shtml\">tactics<\/a> are <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/2014\/04\/verizon-led-massive-astroturf-campaign-to-end-nj-broadband-obligation\/\">familiar<\/a>. Any organization that runs public campaigns in opposition to large, moneyed corporate interests has seen some version of this \u201cslime your enemies\u201d playbook.<\/p>\n<p>What is different here is that Facebook, the company seeking to undermine its critics, has a powerful role in shaping whether and how news and information is presented to billions of people around the world. Facebook controls the hidden algorithms and other systems that decide what comes up in Instagram and Facebook experiences. And it does so in a way that is almost completely beyond our view, much less our control.<\/p>\n<p>This fact\u2014that Facebook can secretly influence what we see (like, perhaps, criticism against it), both through what it promotes and what it allows to be posted by others\u2014is deeply disturbing. Users deserve some answers from Facebook to these basic questions:\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We know that Facebook had staffers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2017\/10\/26\/facebook-google-twitter-trump-244191\">embedded<\/a> in the Donald Trump presidential campaign to help the organization best craft and target its messages. What did Facebook do regarding attacks on its critics detailed in the Times story? Did it use its power to ensure a wide or specifically-targeted distribution of this smear campaign? Did Facebook use its control over how Facebook works to help aim the smears at people who would be most receptive to them? To key policymakers or their staff? If so, how?\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Did Facebook help develop different versions of the smear campaign to appeal to different audiences, as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2018\/05\/14\/technology\/facebook-ads-congress.html\">Russians<\/a> have done? If so, we should see all of them.<\/li>\n<li>What is the boundary between what Facebook\u2019s policy teams wish to tell the public and how users experience Facebook and Instagram? Is there a firewall and how is it policed?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The over 2.6 billion people using Facebook globally, who Facebook unironically calls its \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.recode.net\/2018\/4\/9\/17215524\/full-text-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-testimony-congress\">community<\/a>,\u201d should demand much more than just self-serving responses or <a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.fb.com\/news\/2018\/11\/elliot-schrage-on-definers\/\">empty apologies delivered the day before a holiday weekend<\/a>. Facebook employees, who also have tremendous power to pressure their employer, should join users and demand that Facebook come clean.<\/p>\n<p>The ongoing hidden nature of Facebook\u2019s algorithmic decision-making, however, plus the fact that it took a major newspaper\u00a0expos\u00e9 to bring this to light, means Facebook probably can\u2019t be trusted to provide the answers users require. Facebook must allow third-party, neutral investigators access to see whether Facebook is misusing its position as our information purveyor to wage its own ugly propaganda war.<\/p>\n<p>Going forward, we must also demand openness from Facebook about how it uses its power to\u00a0 buttress its financial and policy positions. Facebook can have policy positions, and it can even use its own platform to promote them. But it should only do so if it is up front with users about those practices and makes it crystal clear when it uses its power to put a finger on the scales to influence what they see. Only then can users make an informed decision about whether the platform is where they want to be.<\/p>\n<p>Most importantly, this incident confirms that we should double down on pressure on Facebook and Instagram to provide users with more control over their experience on the platforms. We must support and develop <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2018\/06\/competition-civil-liberties-and-internet-giants\">competition<\/a>, including concrete steps to promote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2018\/07\/facing-facebook-data-portability-and-interoperability-are-anti-monopoly-medicine\">data portability and interoperability<\/a>. Congress can help by removing the legal blocks to a healthier Internet it created through the overbroad Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). We must also ensure that click-wrap contracts and API restrictions can\u2019t be used to block competing and interoperable online services.\u00a0 As we\u2019ve said before:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If it were more feasible for users to take their data and move elsewhere, Facebook would need to compete on the strength of its product rather than on the difficulty of starting over. And if the platform were more interoperable, smaller companies could work with the infrastructure Facebook has already created to build innovative new experiences and open up new markets. Users are trapped in a stagnant, sick system. Freeing their data and giving them control are the first steps towards a cure.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Facebook\u2019s smear campaign should spur policymakers and the rest of us to ask serious questions about Facebook\u2019s power as our information supplier. And once those questions are answered, we should take the steps necessary to restore a healthy information ecosystem online.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><b>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/2018\/12\/01\/questions-we-should-be-asking-about-facebooks-smear-campaign-against-its-critics?cd-origin=rss\">Common Dreams<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times published a blockbuster story about Facebook that exposed how the company used \u00a0so-called \u201csmear merchants\u201d to attack organizations critical of the platform. The story was shocking on a number of levels, revealing that Facebook\u2019s hired guns stooped to dog-whistling, anti-Semitic attacks aimed at George Soros 1 and writing stories blasting Facebook\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-387352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}