Facebook Neglected Fake News During Last Year's US Presidential Election

[Image source=AP Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Cho Hyun-ui] An internal report has been released revealing that Facebook ignored internal warnings about the spread of conspiracy theories and fake news around the US presidential election last November.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on the 22nd (local time) that it obtained a report from Facebook's internal research team, which investigated service usage by creating a fake account named 'Carol Smith' in July 2019.

This study, titled "Carol's Journey to QAnon (far-right conspiracy theory)," shows how a conservative fictional character named Carol, living in North Carolina, comes to follow conservative media outlets such as Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting.

Within days of creating the account, Facebook recommended pages related to QAnon. Carol was invited to join QAnon, and her page was filled with content related to extremism and conspiracy theories.

The researchers analyzed that within weeks of the account's creation, it became a place where extreme and low-quality content flowed. Experiments with left-leaning fake accounts also revealed that Facebook's algorithm fed low-quality memes and fake political news.

Internal warnings exposing these realities and urging action continued around the election. On November 5th last year, two days before the US election, another Facebook employee alerted the company internally that "highly inflammatory fake news is noticeable." Four days later, another data scientist warned that "about 10% of political content in the US raises allegations of election fraud."

NYT pointed out, "These reports show that Facebook was aware of extremists' efforts to fuel polarization among voters before and after last year's election." It added, "Employees warned about fake news and inflammatory content and urged the company to take action, but Facebook either ignored the issue or was passive."

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's Chief Executive Officer (CEO), attended a congressional hearing last March regarding this matter and claimed, "We made every effort to ensure the integrity of the election."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.