Facebook Says Social Media is Not Always Healthy for Democracy

Facebook acknowledged that social media can have a negative impact on democracies, and that the company has more work to do in order to ensure that the good outweighs the bad, according to Bloomberg.

“From the Arab Spring to robust elections around the globe, social media seemed like a positive,“ Katie Harbath, who runs the Facebook team that builds relationships with governments around the world, wrote in a blog post. “The last U.S. presidential campaign changed that, with foreign interference that Facebook should have been quicker to identify, to the rise of ‘fake news’ and echo chambers.“

Following the 2016 election,  Facebook has frequently promised to work harder and devote more resources to fixing such issues. But it also usually emphasized that bad actors made up a small percentage of activity and that, overall, the company was doing something good for society. Mentioned post is the most self-critical assessment of the company’s impact to date, complete with an admission that its efforts may not be successful.

“Even with the countermeasures, the battle will never end,“ Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s product manager for civic engagement, wrote in a separate blog post. “Misinformation campaigns are not amateur operations. They are professionalized and constantly try to game the system. We will always have more work to do.“

Facebook’s admission that social media may not be good for democracy comes about a month after another reflective report from Facebook, which said “passively“ consuming social media can be bad for mental health.