MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th March, 2021) Facebook could have prevented around 10.1 billion views of misinformation content concerning the 2020 United States election from vastly spreading, a report released by Avaaz states.
"Had Facebook tackled misinformation more aggressively and when the pandemic first hit in March 2020 (rather than waiting until October), the platform could have stopped 10.1 billion estimated views of content on the top-performing pages that repeatedly shared misinformation ahead of Election Day," the report published by the online advocacy group on Tuesday reads.
The report also found that fake news posts were more viral in 2020 when compared to previous years. The 100 most popular false or misleading stories on Facebook related to the 2020 US presidential election received around 162 million views. Facebook's partner organizations provided a fact-check that ensured stories would be double checked, however, 24 percent of stories posted had no labels to inform users they were untrue.
Even after stories were labeled as untrue, the pages did not alter their content and Facebook users who had previously read the misinformation articles were not notified that they were faulty, the report suggests.
Avaaz explains that the report aimed to show "clearly how Facebook did not live up to its promises to protect the US elections" by allowing 44 percent of registered voters to see misinforming content about mail-in voter fraud (around 91 million people). Research suggests that 35 percent of registered voters (around 72 million people) believe this claim.
Several days prior to the voting polls opening up, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that "the US election was going to be a test for the platform," as quoted by the report.
The report concludes that there is "a huge transparency problem at the heart of the world's largest social media platform - Facebook only discloses the data it wants to disclose and therefore evaluates its own performance, based on its own metrics."
Avaaz introduces a 10-point plan to protect democracy and suggests that the Joe Biden administration and Congress must urgently work together to regulate tech platforms to reach transparency and detox the algorithm.
