Zuckerberg Denies Involvement in Spreading Controversies, Says Site had No Role in Influencing US Politics.
Facebook– the ‘apple of young eyes’ has moved far from being a social network. The website has given a significant boost to media, marketing, safety, governance, politics, enterprise, directory and content services. Being a distributor of news and content under ‘Instant Articles’ feature, recently Justice Minister Heiko Mass from Germany accused Facebook for delivering hate speech on its platform. The owner and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg slammed these accusations saying Facebook has no role in spreading violence, controversies or fake news. Seems legit because the platform is not the producer of a framed gossips, but the disseminator of news updated by the users.
Facebook Controversies: Series of Squabbles Surrounding the Site
Recently, the site was allegedly involved in spreading fake news related to U.S. Presidential elections 2016 and other sensitive social issues has stirred a new debate among Facebook users.
Members from various communities like LGBT, Muslims, Jews and women have voiced concerns over Facebook’s content policy in last couple of years. They’ve approached the makers to eliminate threatening, gender-biased, hatred or violence based content from various pages. Based on customer feedback, the makers took appropriate measures to get it removed.
War time photo of the ‘Napalm Girl’ running from an explosion and memes including punch-line ‘everyone will know’ were taken down from the website to keep public uproar in check.
Though the site cannot be legally charged for the ‘fake news’ problem, questions involving its accountability does make sense after the iTunes store moved ‘Twitter’ from social media to ‘news’ section. This step hints at the multidimensional role played by social networks.
What will Site Developers Do to Stop it?
As of now developers take responsibility for the mess that crops up within the network. Though there are no fines, accountability or measures for content policing, but policy makers definitely attempted to halt phony content for advertising. The site introduced ad filters to restrict ad posting by fake forums.
The makers have modified the ‘Responsibilities’ page (www.facebook.com/legal/terms) that prohibits violent expressions and attacks on a specific religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, natural origin, disability and disease. Based on feedback posted by the user, site analytics and algorithms, developers are planning to update transparent policies regarding content distribution in future.
Considering these developments, we are expecting Facebook owners to come up with sensible measures in this direction in future.
