Is Facebook Really Ready for Election Day 2020?

“Their No. 1 priority is growth, not reducing harm,” Kirkpatrick said. “And that is unlikely to change.”

Part of the problem: Zuckerberg maintains an iron grip on the company, yet doesn’t take criticism of him or his creation seriously, charges social media expert Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University communications professor.

But the public knows what’s going on, she said. “They see Covid misinformation. They see how Donald Trump exploits it. They can’t unsee it.”

Read also: Coronavirus Misinformation is Proving to be a Contagious Trend

Facebook insists it takes the challenge of misinformation seriously — especially when it comes to Election Day 2020.

“Elections have changed since 2016, and so has Facebook," the company said in a statement laying out its policies on the election and voting.

“We have more people and better technology to protect our platforms, and we’ve improved our content policies and enforcement.”

Grygiel says such comments are par for the course. "This company uses PR in place of an ethical business model,” she said.

Kirkpatrick notes that board members and executives who have pushed back against the CEO — a group that includes the founders of Instagram and WhatsApp — have left the company.

“He is so certain that Facebook's overall impact on the world is positive” and that critics don't give him enough credit for that, Kirkpatrick said of Zuckerberg.

As a result, the Facebook CEO isn't inclined to take constructive feedback. "He doesn’t have to do anything he doesn't want to. He has no oversight,” Kirkpatrick said.

Read also: Sundar Pichai Joins Other Big Tech CEOs at Key US Antitrust Hearing

The federal government has so far left Facebook to its own devices, a lack of accountability that has only empowered the company, according to US Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat who grilled Zuckerberg during a July Capitol Hill hearing.

Warning labels are of limited value if the algorithms underlying the platform are designed to push polarizing material at users, she said.

“I think Facebook has done some things that indicate it understands its role. But it has been, in my opinion, far too little, too late.” 

(Writers: Barbara Ortutay, David Klepper) 

Source: https://apnews.com/article/misinformation-us-news-voting-fraud-and-irregularities-elections-presidential-elections-468aec2ac6340cb09df3def09f6930e4