Facebook Prepares Measures for Possible Election Unrest

Facebook Prepares Measures for Possible Election Unrest

Tools include slowing the spread of certain posts and tweaking users’ news feeds

0 4As text messages, digital ads and social media continue to embed themselves deeper into our pandemic days and lives, an unprecedented amount of political mis- and disinformation threatens to disrupt the 2020 election. Illustration: Preston Jessee for The Wall Street Journal

By Jeff Horwitz
and Deepa Seetharaman

Oct. 25, 2020 2:47 pm ET

Facebook Inc. teams have planned for the possibility of trying to calm election-related conflict in the U.S. by deploying internal tools designed for what it calls “at-risk” countries, according to people familiar with the matter.

The emergency measures include slowing the spread of viral content and lowering the bar for suppressing potentially inflammatory posts, the people said. Previously used in countries including Sri Lanka and Myanmar, they are part of a larger tool kit developed by Facebook to prepare for the U.S. election.

Facebook executives have said they would only deploy the tools in dire circumstances, such as election-related violence, but that the company needs to be prepared for all possibilities, said the people familiar with the planning.

The potential moves include an across-the-board slowing of the spread of posts as they start to go viral and tweaking the news feed to change what types of content users see, the people said. The company could also lower the threshold for detecting the types of content its software views as dangerous.

Deployed together, the tools could alter what tens of millions of Americans see when they log onto the platform, diminishing their exposure to sensationalism, incitements to violence and misinformation, said the people familiar with the measures. But slowing down the spread of popular content could suppress some good-faith political discussion, a prospect that makes some Facebook employees uneasy, some of the people said.

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Facebook Prepares Potential Emergency Measures for the Election: Report

By Matt Stieb

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/0e8/...quare.w700.jpgMark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in October 2019. Photo: Getty Images


In preparation for possible unrest related to the election, Facebook is planning for a potential rollout of internal tools designed to slow the spread of misinformation in “at-risk” countries, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.

While executives have stated that they would only enact such a plan if something as serious as election-related violence were to occur, the measures reportedly include “slowing the spread of viral content and lowering the bar for suppressing potentially inflammatory posts,” as well as “tweaking the news feed to change what types of content users see.”

In the wake of the platform’s decision to slow the spread of spuriously sourced New York Post reports on Hunter Biden’s business connections in Ukraine, a potential platform-wide action to slow misinformation would certainly amplify Republican complaints of censorship. In a company-wide meeting reported last week by BuzzFeed News, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that Facebook would slow the pace of its interventions after November. He also added that “a decisive victory from someone” could “be helpful for clarity and for not having violence or civil unrest after the election” — which could reduce the likelihood of the platform’s need to enact its emergency measures. Facebook has previously deployed the emergency measures in south and southeast Asia, after it was found by the United Nations to have fueled violence against Muslims in Myanmar and was reportedly used to organize violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka.

The threat of post-election violence in the United States is not hypothetical. The recent domestic-terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer was planned in part on Facebook. And according to a review of far-right groups by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and MilitiaWatch, researchers found “that groups are organizing to ‘supplement’ the work of law enforcement.” As a whole, the motivations of the militia groups are moving “from anti-federal government writ large to mostly supporting one candidate.” That candidate is, unsurprisingly, the same one that refused to disavow a far-right group during the first presidential debate.

In the midst of an election, a pandemic, and a summer of unrest, Facebook has taken unprecedented steps to limit the spread of misinformation and the organization of violent movements on its platforms. In June, it banned hundreds of accounts and pages associated with the loosely organized, anti-government Boogaloo movement. The next month, Facebook deleted a video shared by the president which claimed that face coverings are ineffective and that hydroxychloroquine cures COVID-19. By September, Mark Zuckerberg had said that the platform would discourage premature election-victory claims. In October, Facebook had banned all QAnon pages, groups, and Instagram accounts, after the conspiracy theory amassed millions of followers on the platform over the previous three years. Last week, Facebook removed 48 Trump ads that featured the phrase “your vote has not been counted” for violating its voter-interference policy.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020...es-report.html

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The potential moves include an across-the-board slowing of the spread of posts as they start to go viral and tweaking the news feed to change what types of content users see, the people said. The company could also lower the threshold for detecting the types of content its software views as dangerous.

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These are not "potential moves" this is what Facebook is doing to American conservatives every day while simultaneously helping to stir their political allies in BLM and ANTIFA to violence and riots daily.

Facebook readies kill switch: Everyone migrate to GAB

Twitter Declares ‘Election Results Might Be Delayed’


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