Facebook Eased off Fact Checking Conservative Pages

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Facebook has a clear and prevalent conservative bias. But it’s not necessarily because they universally harbor conservative views. It’s partially because conservatives are more profitable. Conservatives are more likely to share and engage with fake news, as well as controversial opinions. That controversy drives people to engage with them, driving up their time on Facebook. Facebook is coddling extremists because they bring more people to the platform to either agree with their hate and bigotry or counter it.

We’ve known for some time that Facebook unfairly seemed to favor conservatives. They allowed Trump to blow past religious based discrimination rules when he called for a ban of all Muslims on Facebook, and fake news from the far right litters Facebook feeds. However, recent leaks have revealed that the company actively supported fake news on the far right to avoid criticism and drive activity.

If you’re seeing fake news on Facebook, it’s likely right-wing, and Facebook’s not fact checking it because of that.

Facet Checking at Facebook

In order to have ads on Facebook’s platform for stories of a political nature, you have to verify your identity and organization. This was in response to Russian interference in the 2016 election, which largely used fake news spread on Facebook. As part of their efforts to keep from being a tool used by autocratic nations to disrupt the democracies of other nations, Facebook added fact checking and this approval process. If you publish two false stories in 90 days, you get two “strikes.” That second strike triggers a temporary block on advertising.

If the rule is universally applied, it helps keep large news organizations in check. Publishers may rely on Facebook advertising to drive up views and revenue, and therefore will keep the stories they share on Facebook factual. In theory, it’s a great tool. In practice, however, Facebook injects a significant amount of bias.

Conservatives Get a Pass

Three Facebook employees leaked information to NBC News. Two are current employees of Facebook and one a former employee. The leak included a list of escalated misinformation complaints that went to Facebook’s higher ups. Since February, more misinformation complaints than usual have gone to senior leadership for review. Those reviews lead to leadership removing strikes from conservative pages, including Breitbart.

“This supposed goal of this process is to prevent embarrassing false positives against respectable content partners, but the data shows that this is instead being used primarily to shield conservative fake news from the consequences.”

– Facebook employee speaking anonymously

Clearing Strikes

Facebook removed strikes against sites like Breitbart, Donald Trump Jr.’s page, Eric Trump’s page, and Gateway Pundit. There were escalations for liberal sources, but they were fewer, and Facebook counted the misinformation. Facebook treated conservative pundits differently.

For example, conservative publisher Diamond and Silk had received two false ratings in 90 days. They appealed, and the story was listed as “mostly false” after they claimed they weren’t stating fact, only their opinion, and a story about their opinion wasn’t misleading (circular logic aside). Facebook didn’t only clear them of the “repeat offender” status, but also eliminated their two strikes entirely for good measure. This was done because, “partner is extremely sensitive and has not hesitated going public about their concerns around alleged conservative bias on Facebook.”

Yes, because conservatives complain about their fake stories getting labels, Facebook just decided to continue to allow them to lie. This was the entire issue in the first place.

PragerU, another conservative site published false information about climate change. They did so with such frequency that they were quickly placed into the “repeat offender” status. Facebook that it was “especially worrisome due to PragerU having 500 active ads on our platform,” and removed the strikes against PragerU. The site is still allowed to put false information in ads, consequence-free.

Time and time again, Facebook allowed conservative sites to break their rules against spreading misinformation through ads on their platform simply because they were conservatives.

Firing Whistleblowers

One employee collected data proving the information that later ended up in the hands of Buzzfeed News and NBC News. Employees had proof that Breitbart had received the required numbers of strikes to receive “repeat offender” status. By their own rules, Facebook should have removed Breitbart from the News feed, and banned them from advertising. Yet Facebook continued to consider Breitbart a “trustworthy source,” even including it as a fact checker and in their supposedly strict “News” tab. Zuckerberg dodged the questions in internal chats, but the data was clear. Each interaction had a paper trail that many employees had access to. They could prove that Facebook was intentionally clearing the records of conservative sites specifically.

On July 22nd, one employee shared their findings, proving that Facebook cleared Breitbart’s record. They showed that Facebook executive, former George W. Bush staffer, and supporter of Brett Kavanaugh, Joel Kaplan personally intervened and cleared a fact check against conservative personality Charlie Kirk. PolitiFact confirmed the leak, stating that they spoke with Facebook about the post. The Facebook representative asked PolitiFact to change their fact check rating for no reason other than to appease Kirk. PolitiFact, thankfully, did not cave, stating, “We stuck to our guns there.”

The senior Facebook engineer who collected these biases shared them on Facebook’s internal network. Their post was removed. They had been at Facebook for four years, a long time in the software engineering world. According to employees, Facebook fired the employee. The employee requested that their name is not shared due to repercussions from Facebook and their career in software moving forward.

Enhancing Bias Before an Election

Facebook’s repeating a pattern. They’re enhancing the bias on their platform just before an election, and doing so to favor conservatives. Internally, Facebook has become increasingly hostile towards Black, female, and LGBTQ employees. They’ve been quicker to squash internal complaints. Now they’ve left a paper trail of appeasing conservatives, and have not announced any changes, or that they’d undo the damage they’ve done.

Facebook is tampering in an election again, and they’re throwing their support behind conservatives. Conservatives do little to limit Facebook’s reach or their empire, spanning far too many social networks, apps, and ad networks now. However, they do threaten Facebook when it comes out against publishing bigotry, false stories, and propaganda, as their platform relies on it. Facebook has political and financial reasons for continuing to support conservatives, so they won’t stop. Facebook will give Trump the same boost they gave him in 2016, only now they’re being far more obvious about it.

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Sources:

• Karissa Bell, Engadget
• Craig Silverman and Ryan Mac, Buzzfeed News
• Olivia Solon, NBC News
• Alyse Stanley, Gizmodo