It was only a couple of weeks ago when Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to U.S. lawmakers about his regret in — among other things — taking officials at their word about Russian election meddling in 2020. Specifically, he expressed remorse for briefly demoting a single link to a then-breaking New York Post story involving data it had obtained from a copy of the hard drive of a laptop formerly belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of the now-U.S. president.
At the time, some U.S. officials were concerned about the possibility it was partly or wholly Russian disinformation. This was later found to be untrue. In his letter, Zuckerberg wrote “in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story” and said the company has “changed [its] policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again”.
To be clear, the laptop story was not a hoax and social media platforms ultimately erred in the decisions they made, but their policies were not inherently unfair and were reasonably cautious in their handling of the story. Nevertheless, the phrase “Hunter Biden’s laptop” is now a kind of shibboleth among those who believe there is a mass censorship campaign by disinformation researchers, intelligence agencies, and social media companies. That group includes people like Jim Jordan, to whom Zuckerberg addressed his obsequious letter. Surely, he was no longer taking U.S. officials at their word, and would be shrugging off their suggestions for platform moderation.
Right?
Kevin Collier and Phil Helsel, NBC News:
Social media giant Meta announced Monday that it is banning Russian media outlet RT, days after the Biden administration accused RT of acting as an arm of Moscow’s spy agencies.
[…]
U.S. officials allege that in Africa, RT is behind an online platform called “African Stream” but hides its role; that in Germany, it secretly runs a Berlin-based English-language site known as “Red”; and that in France, it hired a journalist in Paris to carry out “influence projects” aimed at a French-speaking audience.
As of writing, the Instagram and Threads accounts for Red are still online, but its Facebook page is not. A June report in Tagesspiegel previously connected Red to RT.
But I could not find any previous reporting connecting African Stream to Russia before U.S. officials made that claim. Even so, without corroborating evidence, Meta dutifully suspended African Stream’s presence on its platforms, which appeared to be active as of Friday.
Meta should — absolutely — do its best to curtail governments’ use of its platforms to spread propaganda and disinformation. All platforms should do so. I also hope it was provided more substantial evidence of RT’s involvement in African Stream. By that standard, it was also reasonable — if ultimately wrong — for it to minimize the spread of the Post story in 2020 based on the information it had at the time.
For all Zuckerberg’s grovelling to U.S. lawmakers, Meta ultimately gets to choose what is allowed on its platforms and what is not. It is right for it to be concerned about political manipulation. But this stuff is really hard to moderate. That is almost certainly why it is deprioritizing “political” posts — not because they do not get engagement or that the engagement they do get is heated and negative, but because it risks allegations of targeted censorship and spreading disinformation. Better, in Meta’s view, to simply restrict it all. Zuckerberg has figured out Meta is just as valuable when it does not react to criticism.
What I am worried about is the rising tension between the near-global scope of social media platforms and the parallel attempts by governments to get them to meet local expectations. Many of these platforms are based in the U.S. and have uncomfortably exported those values worldwide. Meta’s platforms are among the world’s most-used, so it is often among the most criticized. But earlier this month, X was banned in Brazil. The U.S. is seeking to ban TikTok and, based on a hearing today, it may well succeed.
It is concerning these corporations have such concentrated power, but I also do not think it makes sense to either treat them as common carriers, nor for them to be moderated in other countries as they would in the United States. I am more supportive of decentralized social software based on protocols like ActivityPub. Those can be, if anything, even more permissive and even harder to moderate. That also makes them more difficult for governments to restrict them — something which I support, but I know is not seen universally as the correct choice. They minimize the control of a single party’s decisions and, with it, help reduce the kinds of catastrophes we have seen from the most popular days of Facebook and Twitter.
Surely there will be new problems with which to contend, and perhaps it will have been better for there to be monolithic decision-makers after all. But it is right to try something different, and I am glad to see support building in different expressions. It is an exciting time for the open web.
Even so, I still wish for a good MacOS Bluesky client.