How Influential is Facebook?

With the recent outage of the Facebook-owned social medias – Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook, and the subsequent accusation by a former employee of amplifying hateful content and spreading misinformation, Facebook shares are down by 4.9%. The social-media giant claimed that there was some internal malfunction and said that the users’ data remain uncompromised. But the accusations made by the company’s whistleblower raise the question: what is Facebook’s role in spreading propaganda? Facebook is known for using ads to gain massive profits, and has also been accused of spreading misinformation during elections, but how far does their control reach?

Let’s breakdown Facebook’s revenue model. Facebook earns 98% of its revenue from advertisements. Facebook shows ads to users through all three of its platforms – Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Users of these apps don’t pay anything directly to Facebook to use them, but they indirectly pay through the medium of ads. Users of these three apps pay for commodities they see in advertisements and in turn advertisers pay Facebook. Thus, Facebook generates a lot of income from ads. Their revenue stood at $86 billion dollars in 2020.

Now, Facebook has the right to advertise whatever they want and promote a specific type of outlook or narrative for their own gain. This is where the problem lies. For a lot of countries, Facebook is the main source of news. This was the case with Philippines in 2015. 97% of Filipinos were on Facebook, and naturally they got most of their information on current matters from this source. But a problem arose is 2016 when a presidential candidate – a populist authoritarian Rodrigo Duterte – used Facebook to spread misinformation about his opponents and even wrongly reported the conditions of the country in general. His supporters increased the spread of the political propaganda by posting similar information. Soon enough, the information spread by the Pro-Dutertes were given the same status as news published by well-known newspapers. False information regarding opponents was regarded as true due to how fast the news was spreading. Many other news companies and political candidates were personally criticised and targeted because of this, and Facebook did nothing to stop it despite several complaints. Because of the misinformation spread on Facebook, Duterte was able to come into power in 2016.

Over the years, Facebook and other social media platforms have become a major source of news. This has swayed politics and opinions of people to a large extent. Facebook did not want to interfere in politics, so they did not take down posts which spread political propaganda or misinformation. By doing this they essentially gave a green light to misleading posts. In the current times, most of our political socialisation happens through social media. This means a whole new generation of voters are forming their political beliefs and views based on people on social media and through posts made by unreliable news sources.

Facebook has been accused many a times of fanning the flames of propaganda and promoting fake news. Facebooks provides a platform for creating and spreading conspiracies and misinformation. Studies also show that Facebook is a ground for creating mistrust. For example, in the current Covid-19 situation many anti-vaxxers came together to spread misinformation about the effects of the Covid-19 vaccine. Social media became a platform that spread inaccurate side-effects of vaccines; vaccines which were made to protect the people. This misinformation lead to more and more people distrusting the government and their vaccines. Social media platforms like Facebook did nothing to stop the spread of this dangerous and false information. Because of how easily news can travel now, any news is considered as true news.

Moreover, within Facebook itself there exists different political and social environments. A liberal social media user’s home page would be more accommodating to their taste and their beliefs, further encouraging the thought that everyone thinks like them and their beliefs are right. The same goes for more conservative social media users. This leads to a very hostile political environment between people with two different beliefs as they don’t know how to compromise. These social media ‘echo chambers’ promote political polarisation. Facebook does not provide a good environment for a healthy democratic state. The polarisation leaves no space for effective political discussion and discourse.

Let’s look at the allegations of the former Facebook employee turned whistleblower – Frances Haugen filed complaints with federal law stating that Facebook’s own studies show that it amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest, but the company hides what it knows. Frances Haugen said, “The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.” Facebook has constantly been used as a platform for misinformation and dangerous political dialogue and it ignores this for its own profit. Facebook’s algorithm is such that it shows content which is engaging, which interests and moves its users. The easiest way to do this is to show polarising content which fires up the user. It does not consider the damage that these hateful posts may do to the public since the algorithm’s main goal is increased engagement.

The question is: Now that Facebook’s strategies have come to light, will there be a change in course? Will Facebook start filtering the information it shows to its users on any of its three social media platforms? How will Facebook change its role in political propaganda? Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook has already said that Frances Haugen misrepresented the company, but American legislators have started to look into strengthening regulations on big tech companies.