I agree with Edward Snowden that too many people in our generation rely on Facebook as their sole or primary source of news information, for several reasons. First, Facebook is a media company and thus controls what content meets viewers eyes. I think the corporate mission to “increase engagement” stands in stark comparison with an ethical obligation to present relevant stories that both stimulate intellectual curiosity and promote civil discussion. In other words, it makes more sense to keep people on the site reading articles they agree with (true or not) than provide thought-provoking pieces that span the spectrum.
I realize this is a bold claim to make. People might argue birds of a feather flock together or that Facebook is simply broadcasting the sentiments of its users. However, I think Facebook is primarily a media company, not a megaphone. Further, I think all media companies need to be held to a high standard of being fair to both sides of an issue. Consider that 170 million people in North America use Facebook every day. This company then has the power to influence that many people in an election–no company should have that unchecked power!
Facebook is not simply, as it often portrays itself, a simple megaphone for the press, broadcasting articles chronologically in our newsfeeds without weight or intent. It absolutely times when we view articles, what articles we view, and those algorithms more often than not curate content from particular sources, creating echo chambers. Consider the findings from authors of a 2017 study on Facebook’s News Feed:
“The authors saw that active Facebook users were more likely to interact with a limited number of news sources. Additionally, the more active a community was, the more self-segregated and polarized it was.”
I see little benefit in allowing hyper-polarization online, but that seems to be exactly what Facebook promotes. What we need instead is balance. In the UK, the BBC is required to give both sides of an issue equal time, and still remains a top-trusted news source for international news. Why can’t Facebook employ similar tactics? It might force readers to be critical about what they read or talk about their differences with a little more understanding.
Understandably, such an argument is based upon a utopian view of the world: people everywhere will understand and agree with each other and little tribalism exists. It doesn’t seem practical. However, such conversations exist on a particular subreddit: r/cmv, short for “change my view.” Here, people do have frank discussions, with the caveat of following a few rules.
The rules of CMV are simple: you have to provide a well-reasoned argument, be open to changing your view, be able to respond in 3 hours, and….not be hostile toward one another. Chenhao Tan at the University of Washington was fascinated with this community and studied its effectiveness. He found that if you want to change someone’s mind on Change My View, you can reply back and forth up to about three times before your chances of changing their mind begin to decrease. After that, it makes sense to agree to disagree.
I think it’s important to have these conversations, but it’s impossible to in an echo-chamber like Facebook, which can indirectly control your opinion. Either Facebook needs to tweak its algorithms promoting equality for many views–even differing ones that your own, or our generation needs to find a more thought-provoking source of media. Information is vital to our democracy, it doesn’t make sense for a single company to be in charge of dispersing it.