Facebook revelations and the fundamental problems of platform monopolies
By Anand Sheombar
OPINION - In recent weeks, Facebook has been on top of the news charts, although it is highly unlikely their own algorithms created this interest. In a series of revelations from internal documents and testimony before US Congress, it became clear that Facebook management had long known the gravity of issues surrounding their algorithmic-based and engagement-based rankings. These rankings were found to be producing toxic interactions for the users of their platforms.
Interestingly, these revelations are not new. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager responsible for protecting against election interferences, was not the first to report this. Unlike previous Facebook whistleblowers (for example, former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhan), Haugen - a well-connected white woman - received broad attention from policy leaders and journalists worldwide.
“Interestingly, these revelations are not new. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager responsible for protecting against election interferences, was not the first to report this.”
The issues Haugen exposed were not only important for tech firms; they also appealed to a US and Western audience, which appears to have exacerbated attention. Haugen brought to light ‘Instagram's influence on the prevelance of eating disorders, self-harm and suicide among teenaged girls’, an issue the US audience seemed especially interested in due to the country facing these problems at home. Zhang, in contrast, raised issues that gained less attention in the US, as she revealed Facebook’s human rights problems abroad.
Facebook’s social media platforms are somewhat interconnected, with billions of users globally on Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp instant messaging, and voice-over-IP services, as well as visual content sharing Instagram, all being part of the recent network outage. Although this outage was global, the impact varied in severity. The most affected were countries in the Global South, where Facebook is equivalent to the Internet for many socio-economic underprivileged users. Furthermore, many shop owners rely on Facebook or WhatsApp for doing business in countries like Brazil.
As Facebook has become too big to be seriously, and financially, hurt by the revelations, governmental legislation will be needed to regulate social media companies to curb online disinformation, hate speech, and preying on vulnerable groups, like teenagers with depression. But platforms such as Facebook are designed for maximising engagement and profit growth, not on ethical principles.
In order to regulate and formulate data-driven policies, regulators and independent academic researchers need access to the data of these social media companies, like Facebook, who are operating as de facto data monopolies, denying access to their treasure trove from critical scrutiny. "They have exclusive access to the information needed to understand the most pressing challenges to society.", a Washington Post article states.
“As Facebook has become too big to be seriously, and financially, hurt by the revelations, governmental legislation will be needed to regulate social media companies to curb online disinformation, hate speech, and preying on vulnerable groups, like teenagers with depression.”
Like other whistleblowers, such as former Google AI ethics chief Timnit Gebru, Frances Haugen warns against the dangers of the opaque algorithms and platform design of social media platforms like Facebook, or search engines, like Google. The issue is not only in Facebook's content moderation policy and censorship rules. It runs deeper, and is more fundamental in the platform empire.
Transparency, public scrutiny, and oversight of algorithms used by social media platforms with near-monopolistic power, are drivers for stability, peace, accountability and preservation of digital rights. This is absolutely necessary for privacy, and fostering democratic processes around the world.