<
https://theconversation.com/conspiracy-theorist-tactics-show-its-too-easy-to-get-around-facebooks-content-policies-226118>
"During the COVID pandemic, social media platforms were swarmed by far-right
and anti-vaccination communities that spread dangerous conspiracy theories.
These included the false claims that vaccines are a form of population control,
and that the virus was a “deep state” plot. Governments and the World Health
Organization redirected precious resources from vaccination campaigns to debunk
these falsehoods.
As the tide of misinformation grew, platforms were accused of not doing enough
to stop the spread. To address these concerns, Meta, the parent company of
Facebook, made several policy announcements in 2020–21. However, it hesitated
to remove “borderline” content, or content that didn’t cause direct physical
harm, save for one policy change in February 2021 that expanded the content
removal lists.
To stem the tide, Meta continued to rely more heavily on algorithmic moderation
techniques to reduce the visibility of misinformation in users’ feeds, search
and recommendations – known as shadowbanning. They also used fact-checkers to
label misinformation.
While shadowbanning is widely seen as a concerningly opaque technique, our new
research, published in the journal
Media International Australia, instead
asks: was it effective?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
