A Question for Frances Haugen: Who Decides?

“The question, however, remains: Would politically motivated government officials make better decisions than executives at these companies, and would these decisions be fairly applied to all users?”

Frances Haugen, the whistleblower who worked at Facebook and who recently released tens of thousands of the company’s internal documents, has identified problems related to how profit-driven executives make content moderation decisions. These decisions aimed at increasing user engagement often result in harmful content remaining on the website. Much of the media attention surrounding Haugen’s October 5th testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee has focused on the harm to children caused by content such as this and the accompanying clamor for greater government regulation of online content. The question, however, remains: Would politically motivated government officials make better decisions than executives at these companies, and would these decisions be fairly applied to all users? While First and Fourteenth Institute (FAFI), the organization I co-founded earlier this year, agrees that company executives should not make content moderation decisions driven by profits, we believe that government actors would similarly allow their potential content moderation decisions to be driven by political considerations. As such, we propose an alternative, non-governmental solution.

Social media platforms have policies against propagating misinformation, yet they simultaneously claim not to want to be the arbiters of truth. These companies also understand that government’s preferred policies regarding social media platforms are likely to change materially as election results typically swing control of the federal government from one party to the other every four to eight years.

The question, all the while, remains: Who decides which information is true or false? To resolve this dilemma, the platforms currently rely on outside sources—typically government agencies or handpicked fact-checkers to discern whether posted content is true or false. However, this leaves unanswered questions: Who determines which content needs to be fact-checked; who determines the basis for the fact-check; who determines whether the fact-checkers are fair or simply disagreeing with the viewpoint of the content; and who adjudicates disputes between content creators and fact-checkers? Many so-called fact-checkers are actually businesses, funded by partisan backers, who leverage their opinions and biases to attract clicks to their fact-checking stories. Government agencies cannot censor content, and media companies cannot censor explicitly on behalf of government. To do so would infringe on Americans’ constitutional protections guaranteeing free speech.