Facebook has recently taken off a feature that had the potential to sway conservative voters from President Trump.
The realization that information or the lack of it could topple governments and manipulate whole countries has led to a very interesting debate about information and the dissemination of it.
The allegations that Russia meddled in America’s 2016 elections had everything to do with the dissemination of information.
READ: Fake news threatens national security, operations – Buratai
According to the CNBC, Facebook has now killed a feature meant to expose its users to different political perspectives with fears abounding that exposure to information might mean more conservatives could have their minds changed over certain political issues.
According to the CNBC report, Facebook’s most prominent conservative executive and global policy head Joel Kaplan was at the heart of this shut down.
It is feared that such a dissemination of information could paint Facebook in a Liberal light, a problem that Google faces with allegations that they suppress good news about Donald Trump giving them a decidedly liberal slant.
Facebook currently runs a Common Ground initiative which partly boosts articles in the News Feed that have a high number of likes and comments by a range of users across the political spectrum with the aim of opening people up to all sorts of viewpoints.
This could be seen as a way to sway views and potentially, votes, from President Donald Trump who is a widely polarizing figure with people either fastidiously averse to him and his ideas or people completely devoted to his dreams and ideals.
According to Kaplan, a cacophony of voices and opinions could kill conservative voices from being heard on the platform, and with conservative voices already in a marginalized state, this could be a horrible move.
In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said about the Common Ground Initiative, “Understanding a wide variety of perspectives is an important part of our product development process and is essential for building products and services that serve everyone. The public policy team, led by Joel Kaplan, is tasked with understanding the perspectives of groups, regulators, governments, NGOs and other stakeholders from around the world and using that knowledge to inform product discussions and decisions. The team plays an essential role in ensuring that we adopt objective standards and that our policies are applied fairly and consistently.”
The information war is going to continue and it’ll be interesting to see how Facebook plays a role in the way it plays out.
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