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“We are going to proceed to face scrutiny — a few of it truthful and a few of it unfair,” he mentioned within the memo. “However we must also proceed to carry our heads up excessive.”
Right here is Mr. Clegg’s memo in full:
OUR POSITION ON POLARIZATION AND ELECTIONS
You’ll have seen the collection of articles about us printed within the Wall Avenue Journal in current days, and the general public curiosity it has provoked. This Sunday night time, the ex-employee who leaked inner firm materials to the Journal will seem in a phase on 60 Minutes on CBS. We perceive the piece is more likely to assert that we contribute to polarization in the US, and recommend that the extraordinary steps we took for the 2020 elections had been relaxed too quickly and contributed to the horrific occasions of January sixth within the Capitol.
I do know a few of you – particularly these of you within the US – are going to get questions from family and friends about these items so I wished to take a second as we head into the weekend to offer what I hope is a few helpful context on our work in these essential areas.
Fb and Polarization
Individuals are understandably anxious concerning the divisions in society and on the lookout for solutions and methods to repair the issues. Social media has had a huge impact on society lately, and Fb is usually a spot the place a lot of this debate performs out. So it’s pure for individuals to ask whether or not it’s a part of the issue. However the concept that Fb is the chief reason for polarization isn’t supported by the info – as Chris and Pratiti set out of their word on the problem earlier this 12 months.
The rise of polarization has been the topic of swathes of great educational analysis lately. In reality, there isn’t a substantial amount of consensus. However what proof there may be merely doesn’t help the concept that Fb, or social media extra typically, is the first reason for polarization.
The rise in political polarization within the US pre-dates social media by a number of many years. If it had been true that Fb is the chief reason for polarization, we might anticipate to see it going up wherever Fb is fashionable. It isn’t. Actually, polarization has gone down in a lot of international locations with excessive social media use on the similar time that it has risen within the US.
Particularly, we anticipate the reporting to recommend {that a} change to Fb’s Information Feed rating algorithm was liable for elevating polarizing content material on the platform. In January 2018, we made rating adjustments to advertise Significant Social Interactions (MSI) – so that you’d see extra content material from mates, household and teams you’re a part of in your Information Feed. This alteration was closely pushed by inner and exterior analysis that confirmed that significant engagement with family and friends on our platform was higher for individuals’s wellbeing, and we additional refined and improved it over time as we do with all rating metrics. In fact, everybody has a rogue uncle or an old-fashioned classmate who holds sturdy or excessive views we disagree with – that’s life – and the change meant you usually tend to come throughout their posts too. Even so, we’ve developed industry-leading instruments to take away hateful content material and cut back the distribution of problematic content material. Consequently, the prevalence of hate speech on our platform is now right down to about 0.05%.
However the easy reality stays that adjustments to algorithmic rating methods on one social media platform can’t clarify wider societal polarization. Certainly, polarizing content material and misinformation are additionally current on platforms that don’t have any algorithmic rating by any means, together with personal messaging apps like iMessage and WhatsApp.
Elections and Democracy
There’s maybe no different subject that we’ve been extra vocal about as an organization than on our work to dramatically change the way in which we strategy elections. Beginning in 2017, we started constructing new defenses, bringing in new experience, and strengthening our insurance policies to stop interference. Right now, we now have greater than 40,000 individuals throughout the corporate engaged on security and safety.
Since 2017, we now have disrupted and eliminated greater than 150 covert affect operations, together with forward of main democratic elections. In 2020 alone, we eliminated greater than 5 billion pretend accounts — figuring out nearly all of them earlier than anybody flagged them to us. And, from March to Election Day, we eliminated greater than 265,000 items of Fb and Instagram content material within the US for violating our voter interference insurance policies.
Given the extraordinary circumstances of holding a contentious election in a pandemic, we carried out so known as “break glass” measures – and spoke publicly about them – earlier than and after Election Day to reply to particular and weird alerts we had been seeing on our platform and to maintain doubtlessly violating content material from spreading earlier than our content material reviewers may assess it towards our insurance policies.
These measures weren’t with out trade-offs – they’re blunt devices designed to take care of particular disaster eventualities. It’s like shutting down a whole city’s roads and highways in response to a brief risk that could be lurking someplace in a selected neighborhood. In implementing them, we all know we impacted vital quantities of content material that didn’t violate our guidelines to prioritize individuals’s security throughout a interval of utmost uncertainty. For instance, we restricted the distribution of reside movies that our methods predicted might relate to the election. That was an excessive step that helped forestall doubtlessly violating content material from going viral, however it additionally impacted a number of completely regular and affordable content material, together with some that had nothing to do with the election. We wouldn’t take this type of crude, catch-all measure in regular circumstances, however these weren’t regular circumstances.
We solely rolled again these emergency measures – based mostly on cautious data-driven evaluation – once we noticed a return to extra regular situations. We left a few of them on for an extended time frame by way of February this 12 months and others, like not recommending civic, political or new Teams, we now have determined to retain completely.
Combating Hate Teams and different Harmful Organizations
I need to be completely clear: we work to restrict, not develop hate speech, and we now have clear insurance policies prohibiting content material that incites violence. We don’t revenue from polarization, actually, simply the alternative. We don’t enable harmful organizations, together with militarized social actions or violence-inducing conspiracy networks, to prepare on our platforms. And we take away content material that praises or helps hate teams, terrorist organizations and legal teams.
We’ve been extra aggressive than every other web firm in combating dangerous content material, together with content material that sought to delegitimize the election. However our work to crack down on these hate teams was years within the making. We took down tens of 1000’s of QAnon pages, teams and accounts from our apps, eliminated the unique #StopTheSteal Group, and eliminated references to Cease the Steal within the run as much as the inauguration. In 2020 alone, we eliminated greater than 30 million items of content material violating our insurance policies relating to terrorism and greater than 19 million items of content material violating our insurance policies round organized hate in 2020. We designated the Proud Boys as a hate group in 2018 and we proceed to take away reward, help, and illustration of them. Between August final 12 months and January 12 this 12 months, we recognized almost 900 militia organizations beneath our Harmful Organizations and People coverage and eliminated 1000’s of Pages, teams, occasions, Fb profiles and Instagram accounts related to these teams.
This work won’t ever be full. There’ll all the time be new threats and new issues to handle, within the US and all over the world. That’s why we stay vigilant and alert – and can all the time must.
That can be why the suggestion that’s generally made that the violent rebellion on January 6 wouldn’t have occurred if it was not for social media is so deceptive. To be clear, the duty for these occasions rests squarely with the perpetrators of the violence, and people in politics and elsewhere who actively inspired them. Mature democracies by which social media use is widespread maintain elections on a regular basis – as an example Germany’s election final week – with out the disfiguring presence of violence. We actively share with Legislation Enforcement materials that we will discover on our providers associated to those traumatic occasions. However lowering the advanced causes for polarization in America – or the rebellion particularly – to a technological rationalization is woefully simplistic.
We are going to proceed to face scrutiny – a few of it truthful and a few of it unfair. We’ll proceed to be requested troublesome questions. And many individuals will proceed to be skeptical of our motives. That’s what comes with being a part of an organization that has a big influence on the planet. We must be humble sufficient to simply accept criticism when it’s truthful, and to make adjustments the place they’re justified. We aren’t excellent and we don’t have all of the solutions. That’s why we do the kind of analysis that has been the topic of those tales within the first place. And we’ll maintain on the lookout for methods to reply to the suggestions we hear from our customers, together with testing methods to verify political content material doesn’t take over their Information Feeds.
However we must also proceed to carry our heads up excessive. You and your groups do unbelievable work. Our instruments and merchandise have a massively constructive influence on the world and in individuals’s lives. And you’ve got each motive to be pleased with that work.
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