In a Facebook group for gardeners, the
social network’s automated systems
sometimes flagged discussions about a common backyard tool as inappropriate
sexual talk.
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Facebook froze the accounts of some
Native Americans years ago because its computers mistakenly believed that names like Lance
Browneyes were fake.
The company repeatedly rejected ads from businesses
that sell clothing for people with disabilities, mostly in a mix-up that confused
the products for medical promotions, which are against its rules.
Facebook, which has renamed itself Meta, and other
social networks must make tricky judgment calls to balance supporting free
expression while keeping out unwanted material like imagery of child sexual
abuse, violent incitements and financial scams. But that’s not what happened in
the examples above. Those were mistakes made by a computer that couldn’t handle
nuance.
Social networks
are essential public spaces that are too big and fast-moving for anyone to
effectively manage. Wrong calls happen.
These unglamorous mistakes aren’t as momentous as
deciding whether Facebook should kick the
former US president off its website.
But ordinary people, businesses and groups serving the public interest like
news organizations suffer when social networks cut off their accounts and they
can’t find help or figure out what they did wrong.
This doesn’t happen often, but a small percentage of
mistakes at Facebook’s size add up. The Wall Street Journal calculated that
Facebook might make roughly 200,000 wrong calls a day.
People who research social networks told me that
Facebook — and its peers, although I’ll focus on Facebook here — could do far
more to make fewer mistakes and mitigate the harm when it does mess up.
The errors also raise a bigger question: Are we OK
with companies being so essential that when they don’t fix mistakes, there’s
not much we can do?
The company’s critics and the semi-independent
Facebook Oversight Board have repeatedly said that Facebook needs to make it
easier for users whose posts were deleted or accounts were disabled to
understand what rules they broke and appeal judgment calls. Facebook has done
some of this, but not enough.
Researchers also want to dig into Facebook’s data to
analyze its decision making and how often it messes up. The company tends to
oppose that idea as an intrusion on its users’ privacy.
Facebook has said that it’s working to be more
transparent, and that it spends billions of dollars on computer systems and
people to oversee communications in its apps. People will disagree with its
decisions on posts no matter what.
But its critics again say it hasn’t done enough.
“These are legitimately hard problems, and I
wouldn’t want to make these trade-offs and decisions,” said Evelyn Douek, a
senior research fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute at
Columbia University. “But I don’t think they’ve tried everything yet or invested enough
resources to say that we have the optimal number of errors.”
Most companies that make mistakes face serious
consequences. Facebook rarely does. Ryan Calo, a professor at the
University of Washington law school, made the comparison between Facebook and building
demolition.
When companies tear down buildings, debris or
vibrations might damage property or even injure people. Calo told me that
because of the inherent risks, US laws hold demolition companies to a high
standard of accountability. The firms must take safety precautions and possibly
cover any damages. Those potential consequences ideally make them more careful.
But Calo said that laws that govern responsibility
on the internet didn’t do enough to likewise hold companies accountable for the
harm that information, or restricting it, can cause.
“It’s time to stop pretending like this is so different from
other types of societal harms,” Calo said.
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