If the Russian-bought election interference ads hadn’t been bought by fraudulent accounts, “Most of them would be allowed to run” Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said this morning. “The responsibility of an open platform is to allow people to express themselves” she said during the first of an Axios interview series with Facebook execs.
“The thing about free expression is when you allow free expression you allow free expression,” Sandberg said, noting that “we don’t check what people post” and that she doesn’t think people should want Facebook to.
The linchpin quote of the interview was when Sandberg said “The question is should divisive, political, or issue ads run … our answer is yes, because when you cut off speech for one person, then you cut off speech for all people.”
The perspective maintains Facebook’s neutrality across the political spectrum and absolves it from being the truth police. But it also means that it’s knowingly creating a platform where people can misinform each other.
That raises the question of how free speech scales to user-generated content sharing networks that lack the curation and editorial oversight of traditional news distribution systems. Sandberg dodged Axios editor Mike Allen’s question about whether Facebook is a media company, and wasn’t pressed about how it accepts money for ads like other media companies.
Facebook plans to hire 1,000 more human moderators to protect election integrity, make all ads transparent to everyone rather than visible just to those targeted, and increase scrutiny on political ad buys. But can the fake news issue ever be solved if Facebook actually permits fake news under the banner of free speech?
Image: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
During her talk, Sandberg also confirmed that Facebook will support the plan of congressional investigators probing election interference to release the Russian-bought ads to the public. She said she met with Congress yesterday, Facebook is fully cooperating, and that it will provide Congress any content investigators want. That includes non-ads. “A lot of them, if they were run by legitimate people, we would let them run,” Sandberg explained.
She also said targeting information about the ads will be released to the public, as well. “We have a responsibility to do everything we can do to prevent this kind of abuse,” said Sandberg. “We’re hoping to set a new standard in transparency in advertising.” Though at the same time, she blatantly dodged a question about whether the Russian-bought ads and Donald Trump’s campaign ads had matching targeting.
As for the accusation that Facebook causes filter bubbles by surrounding us with information shared by our social graph instead of a more impartial news source, Sandberg said Facebook actually broadens our perspective through exposure to our weak ties and acquaintances. She cited studies showing we see a wider view of the news through the lens of Facebook than traditional sources.
You can watch the full talk with Sandberg below:
Sandberg’s comments come alongside newly exposed information about the effectiveness of Facebook’s fight against fake news. In an email obtained by BuzzFeed, Facebook’s manager of news partnerships Jason White wrote to one of the company’s third-party fact checkers:
“Once we receive a false rating from one of our fact checking partners, we are able to reduce future impressions on Facebook by 80 percent . . . we are working to surface these hoaxes sooner. It commonly takes over 3 days, and we know most of the impressions typically happen in that initial time period.”
But while Facebook is willing to demote the News Feed prominence of a news story that’s unequivocally established as false by third parties, it still allows this content on its platform.
A Slippery Slope Worth Navigating
This all boils down to the fact that Facebook’s News Feed is sorted by engagement. Normally, low quality content simply receives too few Likes or comments to be seen by many people. But fake news is so tantalizing in how it stokes our biases and political leanings that it breaks this system. People will click-through, Like, and share this content because they agree with or are entertained by it, not because it’s high quality.
This, in turn, incentivizes publishers of false news hoaxes. Facebook demotes hoaxes when identified, and is blocking monetization and ad buys from these publishers. But these mechanics also incentivize publishing of highly polarized opinion, exaggeration, and sensationalism. And when advertisers pay to boost the reach of fake news, its click-baitness attains these ads a level of engagement that wins them a lower price in Facebook’s auction system.
That’s how Facebook profits from fake news and polarization, even as it vows to work harder to protect us from it. While Facebook might want to offer an open platform where it’s not the opinion police or even the truth police, it’s simultaneously earning money from some of the most malicious uses of free expression.
It’s all a slippery slope. One person’s fake news busting is another’s censorship. But at the same time, Facebook is not legally obligated to maintain a free speech platform. Its rules prohibiting nudity, hate speech, and graphic imagery for the sake of ‘safety’ already show it’s willing to make judgement calls about when free speech crosses the line. But fake news is unsafe too.
Some critics take a cynical approach, saying Facebook cracks down harder on that stuff because it scares away advertisers, while fake news actually brings in dollars. It’s certainly true that it’s easier to detect those banned content types at scale with algorithms searching for nipples, racial slurs, and blood. Yet even if Facebook could reliably spot not just unabashedly false news but sensationalized content, its current policy is to allow it as long as it doesn’t preach violence or pure hate.
Something has to change. Sandberg said the public deserves “Not just an apology, but determination” to fix the problem. Now it’s time to see that determination in action. In my opinion, either:
Facebook must evolve its policy to more broadly and forcefully define and delete fake news, whether that means taking the political heat of vetting content in-house and being accused of bias or massively funding third-party fact-checkers to staff up so they can handle the volume of moderation Facebook requires.
Or
Facebook must continue to technically allow fake news, but add overt “Report as fake news” buttons, strictly and swiftly demoting links that are reported so they’re hardly visible. This would require protection against abuse of the Report button, and again either in-house policing or funding for third-party fact checking at Facebook’s scale.
Or at least
Facebook should set a much higher bar for legitimacy of advertisers that buy ads promoting news articles. That might mean restricting ad buys from anyone who isn’t the original news publisher or that hasn’t been verified by Facebook. Or limiting ad buys promoting any content that’s been flagged as fake.
All of these enforcement options could potentially ensnare legitimate news, be misused by trolls, or prevent innocent ad buys. But if Facebook commits to minimizing these false positives, the result could better protection for democracy and civil society compared to the alternative of knowingly allowing false news to proliferate in the name of free speech.
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The misleading video was intercepted by Meta fairly quickly, but is apparently circulating widely on Facebook’s Russian counterpart VKontakte, according to the Atlantic Council\u2019s Digital Forensic Research Lab. DFRLab also observed that a pro-Russia Telegram channel published a deepfake Wednesday depicting Zelensky calling on the country to surrender.\n
National TV network Ukraine 24 also reported that its news ticker was hacked on Wednesday to similar ends. The ticker showed a message purportedly from Zelensky calling on the people of Ukraine to end their resistance against Russian invading forces.\n
\u2757\ufe0f Russian hybrid warfare in action. Ukraine 24 TV channel was hacked: the news ticker started displaying President Zelenskyy’s fake “capitulation” address. @ZelenskyyUa has already refuted the fake, stating the only people he can offer to lay down arms is the Russian troops. pic.twitter.com\/MaZjk2hGzA
— Stratcom Centre UA (@StratcomCentre) March 16, 2022\n
\n
Ukraine’s president was quick to counteract the disinformation with his own messaging on Telegram, shot in the same selfie video style that’s characterized Zelensky’s communications since the beginning of the invasion.\n
In early March, Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications cautioned that Russia might deploy altered videos to distort public perception of its invasion. The center, part of the Ukrainian government’s Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, focuses on “[countering] external threats, in particular information attacks of the Russian Federation.”\n
“Imagine seeing Vladimir Zelensky on TV making a surrender statement,” the center wrote on its Facebook page on March 2. “You see it, you hear it – so it\u2019s true. But this is not the truth… Be aware – this is a fake!”\n
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Ukrainian hackers say HackerOne is blocking their bug bounty payouts\n
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Meta removed an altered video falsely depicting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ordering troops to surrender Wednesday. The video is the latest alarming milestone in the parallel information war accompanying Russia’s brutal invasion of neighboring Ukraine, but it was a moment that Ukraine’s government and social media companies appear to have been prepared for. 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For a company named after a slow reptile, Silicon Valley startup Tortoise has made some quick pivots into new business models over the past year.\n
Co-founded in 2019 by ex-Uber executive Dmitry Shevelenko, the company began with a mission of being the operating system for micromobility vehicles, one that uses remote operators to reposition shared electric scooters to locations where prospective riders are or send them back to the warehouse for a charge.\n
In January 2021, Tortoise began working with shared micromobility operator Spin to test three-wheeled scooters embedded with Tortoise’s repositioning software.\n
But right before the company scored its Spin pilot, it started realizing the potential behind remote positioning and all the cameras and sensors the company had placed on scooters. With COVID-19 causing the burgeoning shared micromobility industry to take a nose dive at the same time as people, huddled indoors, began to demand quick delivery services, Shevelenko realized it “would be malpractice” not to pursue the robotic sidewalk delivery.\n
Tortoise started delivering with smaller local clients first, and then with big names like grocery story chain\u00a0Albertson’s, nationwide logistics company AxelHire,\u00a0and convenience store chain KRS. All signs were pointing to sidewalk delivery being a success.\n
But then\u2026\n
Shevelenko, who served as Uber’s director of business development and was behind its acquisition of Jump bikes, says these pivots are just the beauty of a startup that’s responsive to market changes. The founder has advised or been on the board of a number of mobility and tech companies, including Skip, Superpedestrian, Codi, Payfare, Skyryse, SpotHero and Cargo Systems.\n
While Tortoise is his first time starting a company, Shevelenko is well versed in the factors that can cause a startup to win and lose.\n
We sat down with Shevelenko to talk about everything from Tier’s acquisition of Spin and the future of micromobility, how to own changing business directions, the difficulties in sidewalk robot delivery and the agility of startups.\n
The following interview, part of an ongoing series with founders who are building transportation companies, has been edited for length and clarity.\n
TC: At Uber, you were behind a lot of new mobility segments and the acquisition of Jump bikes. What do you think is the value of companies having multiple pillars, instead of just doing one thing really well?\n
Dmitry Shevelenko: For Uber, as a consumer-centric company, it’s ultimately a strategy of capturing all your transportation spend. The ultimate end state here \u2014 and this is why I think they\u2019re putting so much money behind this Uber One subscription \u2014 is transportation-as-a-subscription product.\n
\t
It’s not really effective for Uber and Lyft to try to win your business one trip at a time by offering you special incentives. If people are constantly switching back and forth between Uber and Lyft, they both lose. So the way to win is not by competing on a per-trip basis, but almost on an annual basis. How can you lock somebody in to be yours for a year? I think the essential nature of that consumer lock-in means you need to have more than just rideshare, right?\n
I think in rideshare, bundling is essential, because rideshare will have ups and downs. But the demand for transportation is constant. So if you have multiple modes, you’re always going to be doing well.\n
Tortoise’s original idea of repositioning scooters didn’t pan out in part because of the pandemic, but do you think it’s still a good idea?\n
Oh, absolutely. It’s just purely a function of sequencing and relative prioritization. The only reason delivery got so good, and there’s so much demand for it is because of COVID, too, right? It’s not only shared scooters that became bad.\n
We spoke to Tortoise founder Dmitry Shevelenko about the future of micromobility, how to own changing business directions, difficulties in sidewalk robot delivery, and the agility of startups.\n”,”protected”:false},”author”:133574434,”featured_media”:2285248,”comment_status”:”open”,”ping_status”:”closed”,”sticky”:false,”template”:””,”format”:”standard”,”meta”:{“outcome”:””,”status”:””,”crunchbase_tag”:0,”amp_status”:””,”relegenceEntities”:[],”relegenceSubjects”:[],”carmot_uuid”:”503dc226-1a0e-3b4a-bc21-76cc982d3468″},”categories”:[424613844,449223024,449546991,20429,17396,2401],”tags”:[576706120,2621719,576856615,576860890,576638690,576966970,576721630,53259,53304683,576777962,11701,34926503,217609],”crunchbase_tag”:[],”tc_stories_tax”:[],”tc_ec_category”:[576796354],”tc_event”:[],”jetpack_featured_media_url”:”https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/shevelenko.jpg”,”parsely”:{“version”:”1.0.0″,”meta”:{“@context”:”http:\/\/schema.org”,”@type”:”WebPage”,”headline”:”iPad rumors abound! 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As BMW gets ready to debut the next generation of its 7 Series luxury sedan in April — and with that, the new all-electric i7 — the company today turned the spotlight on its overall portfolio of electric cars, including the upcoming iX1, an electrified version of its popular small crossover SUV.\n
These will join the company’s technology flagship iX and the sporty i4, which it announced last year. This, of course, is all happening against the backdrop of the global chip shortage and overall supply chain crisis, as well as now the war in Ukraine.\n
In a press briefing earlier today, BMW CTO Frank Weber noted that production of the i4 will start in the middle of the year, but for now, that’s really all we know. As for the i7, the company showed a few teasers at its annual conference this morning, mostly highlighting the car’s new (and large) kidney grille, which will surely get the BMW fans talking. For the i7, BMW promises up to 305 miles of EPA electric range, which is in line with everybody’s expectations. But as its flagship sedan, the 7 Series and especially the i7 are also where the company will debut a lot of new tech.
“The 7 Series is not just a product for us. The 7 Series is a collection of our capabilities. It is what we are really able to do. The i7 is not only the most powerful electric vehicle we will do, it has a cinema experience in the second row, the doors will open automatically and close automatically — and it has a long, long list of things. It has art mode, so it has real digital art inside,” Weber said — and he himself had to laugh a bit about the extravagance of it all.\n