Facebook has once again made another pledge to depoliticize the platform. As reported by Gizmodo this means not recommending civic and political groups to its users as well as reducing the amount of political content users see.
Facebook has already made very similar pledges in the past and not really followed up on them. The platform has made some steps in the right direction mainly in regard to advertising.
Back in 2018 Facebook and Instagram began labelling all political advertising on the platform. This was to give users a better insight into what they were seeing.
There was then talk this year of going even further. In the run-up to the 2020 election reports surfaced that Facebook would ban political ads all together around the time of the election to further depoliticize the platform.
This commitment is a promising one from Facebook and its leaders. However, given the company’s track record in this area, many users will want to see the action before they believe the words.
Facebook pledge to depoliticize the platform
The pledge was made during a fourth-quarter earnings call with analysts. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reaffirmed his commitment to depoliticize his social media platform.
He said the Facebook would continue the “work we’ve been doing for a while to turn down the temperature and discourage divisive conversations”.
Zuckerberg went onto state that “people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services”. This insight comes from user feedback from the platform.
Zuckerberg stated that Facebook has already stopped recommending all “political content or social issue groups” back in October 2020. This was to try and minimize political discord during the 2020 election.
However, an investigation at the start of 2021 found that this was not actually true. Facebook continued to recommend political groups to its users throughout the month of December.
To make matters worse a number of the groups recommend housed users calling for political violence following the election.
This revelation is why many will look at this pledge and wonder how much will actually change on the platform. Many will want to see more detail on what action Facebook will take before believing any of this.
Zuckerberg and the rest of Facebook have begun brainstorming ideas to reduce the amount of political content that users see in their News Feeds. The question remains just how much the company really cares about making this happen or is it just rhetoric for public discourse.