The Social Dilemma is ‘Distorted’: Facebook Issues 7-Point Response to Viral Documentary

Facebook also vouches that polarising content is a “tiny percentage” of what’s on the company’s platform. Even with that, Facebook claims that it is trying to reduce this issue by conducting its own research as well as funding independent ones. On the topic of managing election phases, Facebook says, “We’ve removed more than 100 networks worldwide engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour over the past couple of years, including ahead of other major global elections since 2016.” Facebook also promises that in three months between March and May 2020, it has removed over 1 lakh pieces of content for violating voter interference policies, and also promote all the ads in a designated ads library.

Finally, Facebook highlights its 70-member-strong fact checking network as one of the steps that it has taken to combat fake news. In terms of numbers, Facebook says, “We removed over 22 million pieces of hate speech in the second quarter of 2020, over 94% of which we found before someone reported it – an increase from a quarter earlier when we removed 9.6 million posts, over 88% of which we found before some reported it to us.”

Facebook’s opinion of the documentary pivots around that most executives who spoke on it are ex-members, who are said to not know about the ethical activities that these companies have adopted in recent times. “We know our systems aren’t perfect and there are things that we miss. But we are not idly standing by and allowing misinformation or hate speech to spread on Facebook,” it quotes.

While The Social Dilemma’s degree of alarmism cannot be denied, it may not be entirely prudent to dismiss the show as being dated or wholly biased. However, while it does raise an issue or two about how people perceive privacy, many of the social media-related issues that the documentary has raised certainly demanded a far more nuanced narrative, in order to represent more strongly the issues that persist with today’s social media.