John Samples, a political scientist and Cato scholar, was chosen to serve on Facebook’s “oversight board,” a group of 20 people from various cou

Facebook's Challenges - by Arnold Kling - In My Tribe

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2024-10-25 17:00:10

John Samples, a political scientist and Cato scholar, was chosen to serve on Facebook’s “oversight board,” a group of 20 people from various countries that makes non-binding recommendations to Facebook concerning content moderation. In our discussion for paid subscribers, I came away with a better appreciation of why content moderation is an issue there. Unfortunately, I did not record the conversation properly, so the following is based on notes.

I asked if Facebook could not get out of the content moderation business simply by getting rid of the algorithmic feed. Have people select for themselves the content that they want to see. Then Facebook could claim neutrality, just as somebody who supplies Internet infrastructure can claim neutrality.

He replied that Facebook would still face would be reputation risk. With its worldwide reach of 4 billion users, Facebook has been used in other countries to rally political movements. Samples said that this first posed a problem several years ago in Myanmar, where organized oppression of the Muslim minority was being facilitated on Facebook.