Facebook made promises of not promoting political content on its platform, after the havoc that broke out at the Capitol earlier this year with Trump’s supporters attacking the office after a tweet by the former president.
However, looks like those promises have now been broken just a few months after being made. The Mark’s Citizen Browser Project which is a platform founded by Facebook for their users to directly report and send content that they find on the platform working against the company’s guidelines directly for the company to review, has informed the company that despite its promises almost hundreds of groups were recommended to users on this platform which promoted political stances and reviews.
At least one third people on the group came across such pages which asked them to follow pages related to political reviews.
Facebook when was confronted on this matter, put forward statement that they use specific keywords related to politics like “Trump” “President” etc. to cancel out the promotion of such groups and also makes sure to review out Diplomatic and Republican groups as well.
According to the tech giant this must have been an error in their automated systems and the company is looking into the matter as to why their systems are still recommending such groups.
However, this is not the first time Facebook has backed off a promise where it promised law makers to stop promoting dangerous content which according to them could push people towards extremist groups, however a few months later promotion of such groups was again found on the platform.
Facebook at the time had blamed this mistake again on their technical errors and this is something similar to what they did this time again.
Considering how both of the cases were similar, in context of spreading of content and later it being blamed on the machines has pushed people slightly off the edge with trusting the tech giant.
Fairly so, it should. Facebook is a large platform with millions of users and we all know how social media has the power to change the minds and impact the lives of so many and considering how Facebook is time after time promoting content which can be harmful for the mindsets of both the young and old, it is a dangerous situation to be in. There are young people on the platform and the internet has the ability to shape their minds and considering how they will be our youth, Facebook needs to sort out their “technical” errors, if they want to save themselves from a mass boycott.
Read next: Facebook takes the greater stage and is now prompting why users should enable ad tracking directly on the News Feed
However, looks like those promises have now been broken just a few months after being made. The Mark’s Citizen Browser Project which is a platform founded by Facebook for their users to directly report and send content that they find on the platform working against the company’s guidelines directly for the company to review, has informed the company that despite its promises almost hundreds of groups were recommended to users on this platform which promoted political stances and reviews.
At least one third people on the group came across such pages which asked them to follow pages related to political reviews.
Facebook when was confronted on this matter, put forward statement that they use specific keywords related to politics like “Trump” “President” etc. to cancel out the promotion of such groups and also makes sure to review out Diplomatic and Republican groups as well.
According to the tech giant this must have been an error in their automated systems and the company is looking into the matter as to why their systems are still recommending such groups.
However, this is not the first time Facebook has backed off a promise where it promised law makers to stop promoting dangerous content which according to them could push people towards extremist groups, however a few months later promotion of such groups was again found on the platform.
Facebook at the time had blamed this mistake again on their technical errors and this is something similar to what they did this time again.
Considering how both of the cases were similar, in context of spreading of content and later it being blamed on the machines has pushed people slightly off the edge with trusting the tech giant.
Fairly so, it should. Facebook is a large platform with millions of users and we all know how social media has the power to change the minds and impact the lives of so many and considering how Facebook is time after time promoting content which can be harmful for the mindsets of both the young and old, it is a dangerous situation to be in. There are young people on the platform and the internet has the ability to shape their minds and considering how they will be our youth, Facebook needs to sort out their “technical” errors, if they want to save themselves from a mass boycott.
Read next: Facebook takes the greater stage and is now prompting why users should enable ad tracking directly on the News Feed
