BY NOW, the joke that Mark Zuckerberg is the best-paid and most powerful editor and publisher in the world has grown tired. It still rings true, though.
Last Friday, the 35-year-old founder and CEO of the world’s most popular social networking platform launched Facebook News. It is probably no accident that the announcement came just two days after Zuckerberg endured another congressional grilling. Among his more memorable comments in that appearance was his admission that a political ad with false information would “probably” run on Facebook.
Excuse this old-school reminder but we don’t really think that dishonest or disingenuous political advertising is a new problem, do we?
Zuckerberg tried to sound less cavalier about the quality of political information when he announced Facebook News, through an op-ed piece in The New York Times, no less. He promised that the Facebook app’s new tab would be “dedicated solely to high-quality news” and that it would be up to humans (“a team of diverse and seasoned journalists”) to decide what is legitimately newsworthy information and what’s not.
At least in part. What appears in each of our Facebook News feeds will be “decided” in part by an algorithm that will serve up stories we might find interesting or important, based on what materials we’ve posted or responded to on Facebook.
Zuckerberg makes the claim that he has long “wanted to support journalism” directly but couldn’t do so in the main News Feed because FB users themselves would rather see more updates from their personal networks “and less other content.” In other words, if the quality of civic information on Facebook is poor and shallow, then we as consumers of information only have ourselves to blame.
There were, as expected, plenty of responses to that NYT op-ed piece, including many smug declarations from people who say they have long ago deleted their Facebook accounts (“and I don’t for a second regret it”) or never signed up for one in the first place (“because we’re not sheep”).
Well, they’re right about one thing, at least. No one’s forcing us to sign up or stay in Facebook. If you’re not convinced what you get from it is worth the amount of personal information you submit so you can be targeted for advertising by Facebook and its clients, then go. (Read more, maybe?) And if you decide to stay anyway, then remember that Facebook has never pretended to be in the news or education business.
Its business has always fed on a combination of distraction, attention and yes, creating a sense of community. Or an illusion of it.
True, Facebook has become so powerful that even those who have promised to break it up—along with other tech giants like Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet—can’t help but stay on it for now. And when power gets concentrated, it’s usually a good idea to figure out how to check it.
But calls for Facebook to regulate its contents more than it already does are problematic. These reveal a nostalgia for the bygone days when professional gatekeepers existed, and that tends to come from former or present gatekeepers themselves.
Asking Facebook to exercise more control over what we see is like expecting owners, publishers, business executives and editors of media outlets to be completely free of partisan bias when they decide what gets displayed prominently and what gets shut out. (Peter Kafka, writing in Vox, wryly observes: “It’s probably not an accident that the demo video (for Facebook News) doesn’t contain a single Trump headline.”)
If you really want high-quality news and commentary, don’t get it just from social networking sites like Facebook. Pay for it if you can afford to, like you’ve paid for your Netflix and Spotify subscriptions. Or make a conscious effort to vet what you read.
It’s not Facebook’s fault that crowds will believe lies, political advertising and other deceits. That happens because most people don’t want to do the hard work of staying informed and thinking critically—or else have forgotten or haven’t been taught how to do that at all.