Is Facebook Really Ready for Election Day 2020?

WASHINGTON, KOMPAS.com – Facebook insists that it has learned lessons from the 2016 US presidential election and is better prepared for Election Day 2020.

The Big Tech company has repeatedly reassured users and the public that ever since Russian agents and other opportunities abused its platform to manipulate the previous election, it has toughened up and is no longer a conduit for misinformation, voter suppression and election disruption.

But it has been a long and halting journey for the social network.

Although Facebook has revised its rules and tightened its safeguards, its own employees as well as critical outsiders say the company’s efforts remain wholly insufficient to the task.

This is despite having spent billions on the project that seeks to ward off malicious attempts such as misinformation.

Read also: Facebook Bans QAnon Accounts Across All Platforms to Curb Misinformation

As for why, they point to Facebook’s persistent unwillingness to act decisively over much of that time raising plenty of questions over its readiness this Election Day.

“Am I concerned about the election? I’m terrified,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and an early Facebook investor turned vocal critic.

“At the company's current scale, it’s a clear and present danger to democracy and national security.”

The company's rhetoric has certainly gotten an update.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg now casually references possible outcomes that were unimaginable in 2016 — among them, possible civil unrest and potentially a disputed US presidential election that Facebook could easily make even worse — as challenges the platform now faces.

“This election day is not going to be business as usual," Zuckerberg wrote in a September Facebook post in which he outlined Facebook’s efforts to encourage voting and remove misinformation from its service.

“We all have a responsibility to protect our democracy.”

Read also: Facebook Launches Hub on US Voting Info Ahead of November Election

Yet for years Facebook executives have seemed to be caught off guard whenever their platform — created to connect the world — was used for ill-intentioned purposes.

Zuckerberg has offered multiple apologies over the years, as if no one could have predicted that people would use Facebook to live-stream murders and suicides, incite ethnic cleansings, promote fake cancer cures or attempt to steal elections.

While other platforms like Twitter and YouTube have also struggled to address misinformation and hateful content, Facebook stands apart for its reach and scale and, compared to many other platforms, its slower response to the challenges identified in 2016.

Read also: TikTok Proposes Social Media Alliance to Remove Harmful Content