Yahoo News - Facebook on defense over ad boycott, but regulation remains the bigger threat
WASHINGTON — The social media giant Facebook has spent years refusing to act as an “arbiter of truth,” which in practice has meant allowing political figures to publish demonstrably false and sometimes racist information on its platforms.
But with the company under fire from both the left and the right, Facebook has begun offering concessions to activists as it braces for new federal regulations.
Faced with an advertiser boycott, one of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s top lieutenants recently denied that the company makes money by spreading hate. And on June 26, Zuckerberg said Facebook would — for the first time — affix labels to some posts that might violate its standards, one week after the company removed a Trump campaign ad that included what critics charged was a Nazi-era symbol.
This reversal came after Zuckerberg had doubled down May 28 on his long-held position against calling out false statements. “I believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” he said then on Fox News.
On June 30, Facebook tweaked its algorithm to prioritize original sources of information rather than derivative articles from nonjournalism websites. And on July 1 the company’s global affairs point man, the former British politician Nick Clegg, wrote a post headlined “Facebook does not benefit from hate.”
Although no stranger to bad press, Facebook has been dealing with an unprecedented set of challenges in recent weeks. Major corporations and retailers have joined a growing boycott of Facebook advertising, blaming the company for spreading bad information and vitriol. The corporations now boycotting it include Coca-Cola, Ford and Verizon, the parent company of Yahoo News.
Much of the uproar, which began internally among Facebook employees, is over its treatment of President Trump. While Twitter has recently taken the lead in fact-checking Trump’s false statements, Facebook has been accused of giving Trump preferential treatment.
And at the same time, the chances of Democrats winning back the White House this November have gone up considerably, in addition to the possibility of Democrats winning a Senate majority.
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