Social Media

Facebook has announced some tools for users to limit the amount of political ads served, yet they are not budging in refusing to fact check political ads on the platform. And, although this new tool allows you to reduce the number of political ads you see, it does not allow you to cut them off completely. If you are curious about what categories of ads you are being targeted with, the information is available in your settings, but Facebook’s stance remains that they should not be forced to act as referee in political debate and they are not in any position to say what is true and what is not in such claims.

The debate over Facebook’s freewheeling stance has led to more attention being paid to media organizations, who many opponents argue have essentially been incentivized to publish more divisive,  polarizing, and biased views in order to maximize engagement. Many critics say the divisions we are seeing in society today are the results of media being motivated by profit, and by allowing this to happen, Facebook has become the coliseum hosting the battles. 

TikTok, a popular app with teens, has revised its community guidelines and provides more specifics outlining 10 unacceptable content categories, including violence, hate speech, bullying, dangerous acts and threats to minor safety. As of yet, however, the platform did not detail how it will determine which content providers are breaking the rules.

School assemblies, poster campaigns and lectures are largely ineffective at curbing bullying among students, writes clinical psychologist Jeff Nalin. In a blog post, Nalin suggests seven strategies to help educators and parents address bullying behavior, including modeling the desired behavior, teaching coping skills and rewarding prosocial behavior.

A recent blog post from Cal Newport is challenging readers to commit to spending less time online this month by listing a number of analog commitments that will “reduce the anxious attraction of your screens”. Finding good books to read, connecting with others, and going to a meeting or taking up a hobby are all suggestions given in the Study Hacks Blog. "We fall into the traps of the digital only when we distance ourselves from the attractions of the analog," he writes.

Less than a year before the 2020 election, and false political information is moving furiously online. Avaaz, a global human rights organization, has reported that the top 100 false political stories were shared by Facebook users over 2.3 million times in the United States in the first 10 months of 2019. Still, few politicians (or their staff) are prepared to quickly notice and combat incorrect stories about them, according to dozens of campaign staff members and researchers who study online misinformation. Several of the researchers said they were surprised by how little outreach they had received from politicians. Campaigns and political parties say their hands are tied, because social sites such as Facebook and YouTube have few restrictions on what users can say or share, as long as they do not lie about who they are.

As a voter and a parent, what can you do? Review the basics on how to detect misinformation and share with your children. Misinformation hurts everyone by normalizing prejudices, and even justifying and encouraging violence.

Forbes recently highlighted data put together by ResumeLab, a company known for their job application-building software, on how 1,000 self-identified “highly successful” professionals use technology. The results show some interesting factoids about the tech habits of those that consider themselves successful: preferring laptops over desktops, using health apps, and only spending a small amount of time on social media per day, with Facebook being the most-used social media platform.

Facebook and Instagram already ban ads for guns and e-cigarettes, but now they have announced that they will also be banning "branded content" (influencer posting) that promotes weapons, tobacco and vaping. Enforcement for the new rules should take effect in the "coming weeks," Facebook says. They are also working on tools to help creators honor the new policy, such as setting minimum age requirements on their content. This is the first time Instagram is limiting what influencers can pitch in their feeds, and it's considered overdue by some. Facebook and Instagram have both come under fire for letting social media stars advertise harmful products, including those who stars who are sometimes underage themselves.

In an effort to make the platform a more positive place, Instagram has rolled out a new feature that prompts users when something they are about to post might be offensive. Users can ignore the prompts and proceed to post the content, but Instagram is hoping the alerts might make people think twice before posting something they might regret.

Whether or not this proves effective is still up in the air. Instagram said that its efforts to reduce bullying in comments have been "promising," but that doesn't guarantee similar performance for the posts themselves. Someone caught up in the heat of the moment might hit "share anyway," and not worry about the consequences. And there will be moments where a vicious tone may not represent bullying at all -- calling the policy of a politician or public figure stupid may not be constructive, but it's not bullying. Still, this could be helpful if it leads even a handful of people to mend their ways.

Facebook is trying a new approach to fact checking by using “community reviewers”, a diverse group of contractors hired through partners like YouGov, to check potentially false reports. Facebook will use its machine learning process to identify misinformation in posts, as it does already. When content is tagged as potentially false, Facebook's system will then send the post on to the new team of community reviewers. The community reviewers will be prompted to check the post by conducting their own additional research, and if they find the post to be incorrect, they'll be able to send their findings and resources to Facebook's fact-checkers for their official assessment.

By enabling more people to provide input into the fact-checking process, Facebook's aim is to improve both the relative accuracy of its findings, and to lessen accusations that it is favoring one side of politics over another. Critics, however, say this new ‘diverse’ review system is just cover for their policy on not fact-checking political ads and should be brought up when discussing misinformation with your children.

YouTube has promised to ramp up its fight against hate and harassment. The video service recently announced changes to its harassment policy,  which include a ban on implicit threats of violence and insults that target someone for their race, gender expression or sexual orientation. Under its new harassment policy, the service aims to also take down videos that simulate violence against an individual, or that suggest that violence may happen. The post specifically added the policy will also be applied to videos posted by public officials – a distinction that could set YouTube apart from its competitors. Twitter, for instance, has long exempted public figures from its hate speech policies, to the dismay of critics who have argued that President Trump repeatedly violates those policies. Instead, Twitter said in June that it would flag tweets from public figures that were violating its policies labeling the violation as such.