WASHINGTON: Meta-owned Facebook has handed US users the controls over fact-checked content, in a potentially significant move that the platform says will give them more power over its algorithm but some analysts insist could benefit purveyors of misinformation.
For years, Facebook’s algorithm automatically moved posts lower in the feed if they were flagged by one of the platform’s third-party fact-checking partners, including AFP, reducing the visibility of false or misleading content.
Under a new “content reduced by fact-checking” option that now appears in Facebook’s settings, users have flexibility to make debunked posts appear higher or lower in the feed or maintain the status quo.
Fact-checked posts can be made less visible with an option called “reduce more.” That, according to the platform’s settings, means the posts “may be moved even lower in feed so you may not see them at all.”
Another option labeled “don’t reduce” triggers the opposite effect, moving more of this content higher in their feed, making it more likely to be seen.
“We’re giving people on Facebook even more power to control the algorithm that ranks posts in their feed,” a Meta spokesman told AFP.
“We’re doing this in response to users telling us that they want a greater ability to decide what they see on our apps.”
Meta rolled out the fact-checking option in May, leaving many users to discover it for themselves in the settings.
It comes amid a hyperpolarized political climate in the United States that has made content moderation on social media platforms a hot-button issue.
Conservative US advocates allege that the government has pressured or colluded with platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to censor or suppress right-leaning content under the guise of fact-checking.
On Tuesday, a federal court in Louisiana restricted some top officials and agencies of President Joe Biden’s administration from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content.
Separately, misinformation researchers from prominent institutions such as the Stanford Internet Observatory face a Republican-led congressional inquiry as well as lawsuits from conservative activists who accuse them of promoting censorship — a charge they deny.
The changes on Facebook come ahead of the 2024 presidential vote, when many researchers fear political falsehoods could explode across social media platforms. The move has also prompted concern from some analysts that it could be a boon for misinformation peddlers.
“Downranking content that fact-checkers rate as problematic is a central part of Facebook’s anti-misinformation program,” David Rand, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told AFP.
“Allowing people to simply opt out seems to really knee-cap the program.”
Meta downplayed the concerns, saying it will still attach labels to content that is found to be misleading or false, making it clear that it was rated by one of its third-party fact-checkers. The company said it was exploring whether to expand this control to other countries.
“This builds on work that we’ve been doing for a long time in this area and will help to make user controls on Facebook more consistent with the ones that already exist on Instagram,” Meta’s spokesman said.
Aside from this control, Facebook is also allowing users to decide the degree to which they want to view “low quality content,” such as clickbait and spam, and “sensitive content,” including violent or graphic posts, on the platform.
The impact of the changes, analysts say, is only likely to be known over time when more users — especially those who distrust professional fact-checkers — start tweaking their settings.
Fact-checkers, who are not able to review every post on the mammoth platform, routinely face an avalanche of online abuse from people who dispute their ratings — sometimes even when they peddle blatantly false or misleading information.
“Someone who dislikes or distrusts the role of fact-checkers could use it to try to avoid seeing fact-checks,” Emma Llanso, from the Center for Democracy & Technology, told AFP.
Facebook, she said, should be researching and testing whether it will increase or decrease users’ “exposure to misinformation” before it rolls it out more widely around the world.
“Ideally they should share the results of that kind of research in an announcement about the new feature,” Llanso added.
Facebook alters fact-checking controls for US users
https://arab.news/6h269
Facebook alters fact-checking controls for US users
- Meta rolled out the fact-checking option in May, leaving many users to discover it for themselves in the settings
Prince Harry’s war against UK press reaches showdown with Daily Mail case
- Prince Harry to give evidence in London court for second time
- Media accused of phone hacking and other privacy intrusions
LONDON:Prince Harry’s war against the British press heads into a final showdown next week with the start of his
privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the powerful Daily Mail newspaper over alleged unlawful action he says contributed to his departure for the US
The 41-year-old Harry, a boy when his mother Princess Diana died in a 1997 car crash with paparazzi in pursuit, has long resented the often aggressive tactics of British media and pledged to bring them to account.
Harry, who is King Charles’ younger son, and six other claimants including singer Elton John are suing Associated Newspapers over years of alleged unlawful behavior, ranging from bugging phone lines to obtaining personal health records.
Associated has rejected any wrongdoing, calling the accusations “preposterous smears” and part of a conspiracy.
Over the course of nine weeks, Harry, John and the other claimants – John’s husband David Furnish, actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence, and former British lawmaker Simon Hughes – will give evidence to the High Court in London and be grilled by Associated’s lawyers.
The prince is due to appear next Thursday. It will be his second such court appearance in the witness box in three years, having become the first British royal to give evidence in 130 years in 2023 in another lawsuit.
Current and former senior Associated staff, including a number of editors of national newspapers, will likewise be quizzed by the claimants’ legal team. The stakes for both sides are high, with not just the reputation of media and claimants on the line, but because legal costs are set to run into tens of millions of pounds. Critics say Harry, the Duke of Sussex, is bitter over unfavorable coverage, from partying in his youth to quarrelling with his family and leaving the UK in later years.
But supporters say it is a noble cause against sometimes immoral media.
“He seems to be motivated by a lot more than money,” said Damian Tambini, an expert in media and communications regulation and policy at the London School of Economics.
“He’s actually trying to, along with many of the other complainants, affect change in the newspapers.”
Harry and his American wife Meghan have cited media harassment as one of the main factors that led them to stepping down from royal duties and moving to California in 2020. Elton John, 77, also has history in the courts with the British press, successfully suing newspapers including the Daily Mail for libel. He received 1 million pounds ($1.34 million) from the Sun in a 1988 settlement over a false allegation about sex sessions with male prostitutes.
Having successfully sued Mirror Group Newspapers, and also won damages, an apology and some admission of wrongdoing from Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), the case against Associated could be Harry’s most significant. The 130-year-old Daily Mail, renowned for championing traditional, conservative values, for decades has been one of, if not the most powerful media force within Britain and unlike the Mirror and NGN has not been embroiled in the phone-hacking scandal.
It says it gives voice to millions in “Middle England,” holding the rich, powerful and famous to account.
In 1997, it famously ran a front page denouncing five men accused of the racist killing of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence as murderers and challenging anyone to sue if that was wrong.
The case was a defining moment in race relations in Britain.
Despite that, one of those now suing the Mail is Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered Stephen, who says journalists tapped her phones, monitored her bank accounts and phone bills, and paid police for confidential information.
The Associated case will mark one of the final airings in court of accusations of phone-hacking which have dogged the British press for more than 20 years.
The practice of unlawfully accessing voicemails fully burst onto the public agenda in 2011, leading to the closure of Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, the jailing of its former editor who had later worked as a communications chief for ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, and a public inquiry.
Murdoch’s NGN and the Mirror Group have since both paid out hundreds of millions of pounds to victims of the unlawful activity.
If the claimants lose, Tambini said, “this could be the moment when phone hacking, finally, as a set of issues, went away.”
