One of the biggest criticisms that ends up being levied against Facebook has to do with the fact that the social media platform and its subsidiary Instagram do nothing to stem the spread of misinformation, something that has lead to lots of different kinds of problems especially when you look into the fact that the coronavirus pandemic has ended up becoming much worse than it should have been specifically because of the fact that so much misinformation was spread through social media that lead to people not taking common sense precautions that would have greatly stopped the spread of the virus.
These social media platforms are also being criticized for the fact that they facilitate political manipulation, and in the interests of preventing something like this from continuing to be an issue for an extended period of time Instagram will be rolling out labels for accounts that belong to media entities that are known to be affiliated with governments of countries.
This has caused some confusion because of the fact that the definition of state controlled media can be quite different depending on whoever it is that you are currently asking at this point in time. It turns out that the social media platform has ended up defining this as any organization based in the media industry where the government of the country that the organization is based in has the editorial control over the content that is being shared.
This is something that can cause a lot of problems which means that many would be glad that Facebook and Instagram are going for something like this. Others are criticizing this as a bandaid solution that isn’t correctly labeling media outlets and is promoting an agenda where only non-US media companies are being labeled as such. Regardless, this is a timely update as the US presidential election draws closer.
Read next: Instagram Tries to Pull Ahead of TikTok With New Shopping Features
These social media platforms are also being criticized for the fact that they facilitate political manipulation, and in the interests of preventing something like this from continuing to be an issue for an extended period of time Instagram will be rolling out labels for accounts that belong to media entities that are known to be affiliated with governments of countries.
This has caused some confusion because of the fact that the definition of state controlled media can be quite different depending on whoever it is that you are currently asking at this point in time. It turns out that the social media platform has ended up defining this as any organization based in the media industry where the government of the country that the organization is based in has the editorial control over the content that is being shared.
Instagram has begun rolling out new “state-controlled media” labels—here are the ones for Kremlin outlets aimed at younger Americans: pic.twitter.com/vyUySA1zbW
— Casey Michel 🇰🇿 (@cjcmichel) October 5, 2020
This is something that can cause a lot of problems which means that many would be glad that Facebook and Instagram are going for something like this. Others are criticizing this as a bandaid solution that isn’t correctly labeling media outlets and is promoting an agenda where only non-US media companies are being labeled as such. Regardless, this is a timely update as the US presidential election draws closer.
Read next: Instagram Tries to Pull Ahead of TikTok With New Shopping Features
