Facebook has been acting irresponsibly and selfishly, and promising to do better without actually improving. But that’s not the whole story: The company has some positive qualities, too.
What causes a media business to bar the door?
yanin kongurai/Shutterstock.com
It could seem attractive to try to teach computers to detect harassment, threats and abusive language. But it’s much more difficult than it might appear.
The Canadian author made the mistake of questioning the #MeToo campaign and was savaged on social media.
Rohingya Muslim women who fled Myanmar for Bangladesh stretch their arms out to collect aid distributed by relief agencies in this September 2017 photo. A campaign of killings, rape and arson attacks by security forces and Buddhist-aligned mobs have sent more than 850,000 of the country’s 1.3 million Rohingya fleeing.
(AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
Facebook is unwittingly helping fuel a genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar. Does Cuba’s internet model provide lessons to manage social media amid political chaos?
It’s time to build trust.
Arthimedes/Shutterstock.com
Barbara Romzek, American University School of Public Affairs and Aram Sinnreich, American University School of Communication
Social media companies arose from libertarian, free-market origins but must embrace social benefits and democracy to survive.
Engaging with your teen’s online world will make it easier to have difficult conversations about some of the risks and ways to manage them.
Shutterstock
Parents should ask their teens to show them how they use social media and how it works so they can have conversations about what the risks are and how to reduce them.
Companies and governments should do more to prevent ‘revenge porn’ without asking potential victims to send their nude photos to Facebook.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially dismissed as “crazy” the warnings that Russia had been using Facebook to spread propaganda in the 2016 U.S. election. He has since apologized and introduced plans and tools aimed at fighting false information on the platform. In this file photo, he delivers the commencement address at Harvard University in May.
(AP Photo/Steven Senne)
In a fight for the global flow of information, social media firms must be regulated. Their billions of dollars in revenue put their financial interests in conflict with truth and democracy.