I continue to have mixed feelings about Facebook. Obviously they do some bad stuff in the service of making stupendous amounts of money, but every corporation does this. On the other hand, they obviously provide a service that a huge number of people like and use regularly. What's more, I don't have mixed feelings about government interventions designed to influence the content on their site. When it comes to speech, I trust virtually everyone—even Mark Zuckerberg—more than I trust government officials.
But I would like to unmix my feeling a bit. The recent series of whistleblower articles in the Wall Street Journal didn't impress me all that much, so that wasn't of much help. What I would like is a nice, readable, balanced summary of all the research that's been done regarding Facebook.
So far I haven't been able to find one. At various times I've googled everything I can find, but as a non-expert it's inevitable that I'm not really getting a thorough look at everything that's been published. Nor am I sure that I can accurately distinguish the quality of everything I read.
Does anyone know of such a thing? And please: I really, really don't want something from someone with an axe to grind on either side. I want just the facts as we know them today. Surely there's someone well-versed in this field who has done something like this?
I don't know the answer, but I know where I'd look. The NY Times and The New Yorker seem to be blessed with some fine investigative reporters who combine thorough research and excellent in-depth writing, not just hatchet jobs. Those are the first two sources I'd be checking.
I'll add my two cents worth here, because thats all it's worth
I DO NOT use facebook, instagram, snapchat etc.
Why? Well the first is ignorance. I'm still getting used to this internet thing that Al Gore invented.
But what got me was my grand daughter showed me how Facebook looked etc. The first thing I read was a very sexual comment about her pic etc. Ok, I'm no prude and she admitted she had to change her settings to get rid of stuff like that. So, I said to her - "you have to CHANGE a setting to eliminate stuff like that?"
I told her this is like looking at a girlie magazine then being told its better if you buy it then we can sell it to everyone under the guise of being a "business". By the time you read it you're already tarnished so to speak.
My desire for privacy is only exceeded by my desire to see the good in strangers and quite frankly, social media seems to have brought out the worst in many of "us". Being UN friended is apparently the new "time out", which used to be loss of privileges which used to be a yard stick or belt across your butt. Which one was more successful as a punishment? Oh, I still remember the sting of the belt from Dad and NEVER did what caused the punishment again,
If he had just UN friended me instead?
Yeah, you get the picture
Social media is a cesspool of intellectual syphilis.
It had great promise mind you but damn, it's morphed into something else entirely. Not for me thank you. I'll stick with commenting on news blogs, and emailing people. Or, calling someone.
A lot of research shows spanking is absolutely abuse.
Anyhow being able to watch sexy girls put themselves out there for free is the best thing about social media.
First, as we're all well aware, Facebook is a data analytics company that uses a social media platform to collect information about its users to sell to advertisers. It makes jawdropping amounts of money doing this. It has also found that people hang around on a site and click more stuff if it's negative, polarizing, and "angers up the blood" as they used to say. This is really, really bad for civil society. So what happens when a company's first amendment rights run up against the fact that it uses a bullhorn set to shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater as its business model? The government can't force Mark Zuckerberg to be less evil -- he is what he is. But it can, say, put limits on the kinds of data companies are allowed to collect from users (mandatory "opt in", etc.). That would put the kaibosh on a lot of Facebook's antics. Government regulation eventually reigned in Big Tobacco without making smoking illegal. Maybe we can do the same with social media.
It is a conundrum.
If the government can regulate speech, it can do it for propaganda. What Trump tried to do with the VOA could be done to Facebook. That would be bad.
Now, what happens if many people are, in effect, "yelling fire in a crowded theater"? We are in the middle of a pandemic, and people are attacking mask wearing--and making money off of that. Ok, maybe there is a fire in the theater because they started one.
Social media is a great way to conduct what used to be called a "whisper campaign". The problem with fighting this disinformation is...who decides what is disinformation?
Sorry, can't really help you.
Well, you didn't ask for my opinion of Facebook, you asked for sources. I am not aware of any.
AND, my concern about them is not just that they gather data, but they provide a platform where advertising that doesn't look like advertising and appears alongside messages from one's "friends", appearing to have their endorsement. Advertisers kill for this kind of placement. You don't have to believe me, I think this is something you can research.
The other aspect of the advertising they sell is that it is almost completely opaque to the general public. You might never know what lies are being told Uncle Harold (and wow, am I glad my Uncle Harold died before Facebook started), because he's targeted and you aren't. With magazine and broadcast media, there's much more accountability, because anyone can pick up a magazine or change the channel.
And furthermore, the targeted aspect means there will be no pushback on the lies, and this is a big boost to its effectiveness. Again, you can research this stuff, I'm going off of social psychology books I've read.
Here's a good discussion of Facebook's role in the Analytica case: https://www.vox.com/2018/3/21/17146674/zuckerberg-hearing-facebook-cambridge-analytica
I left a few years ago over this and not for the politics. Facebook has been caught many times stealing its customers' data to sell to third parties, Zuckerberg says "we didn't know but we'll take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again", and then a month or two later they get caught again having done nothing. I didn't find the whistleblower's revelation added much I haven't heard about for years.
Data protection laws with eye watering fines for violating them would get their attention. Of course lobbyists always shut down efforts to do this, saying it will "stifle innovation" or some such bullshit gobbedlygook.
"When it comes to speech, I trust virtually everyone—even Mark Zuckerberg—more than I trust government officials."
If that's your thing than I got nothing for you because this is a pretty wrongheaded take.
He apparently trusts corporations more than government. The whole point of the Republican Party is to sow distrust in government and that there is such a thing as good government. I really don’t see any difference between one person trusting Mark Zuckerberg over the government when it comes to speech and another person trusting Joe Rogan over Dr. Fauci (a government official) when it comes to vaccines.
I thing Kevin’s comment was a sweeping statement unworthy of him.
If you don't see the difference, I'd say the problem is with you, not Kevin.
The only serious enemy of free speech in the history of our country has been government. There have been fringe elements who were against free speech, but they had no serious power. Government, on the other hand--Federal, state, and local--has an inglorious history of suppressing free speech throughout our two and a half centuries.
"The only serious enemy of free speech in the history of our country has been government."
That's absurd. Plenty of organizations and individuals have set out to stifle speech they didn't like. When they could co-opt government to their purposes, they did so; but when they couldn't, they resorted to other means. Burning crosses, for example.
And apparently you ignored the word serious in what I wrote.
Individuals and fringe groups had little success in stifling free speech. It has always been when the government came to the action that the action was seriously successful.
As for your “for example,” that’s a total red herring.
If someone said to you that they trusted “corporations” more than they trust “The Government” and I asked you to tell me whether that person is a Democrat or a Republican, what would you say?
I used to think that Kevin was what was called in a different era a Rockefeller Republican. Recently, I come to suspect that Kevin is in fact a Reagan Democrat.
Yes! Kevin needs to think this through - government officials Trump's administration not withstanding take an oath of office and self sort for folks who are usually competent and want to do good (but of course the scary part is what is considered "doing good").
Mark Zuckerberg has proven time and time again that he only cares for making money and gaining power. I trust Zuckerberg - I trust him to do whatever it is that will gain him what he most desires in the world - and that is NOT about preserving the well being of the country he was born in, lives in etc.
👍👍👍
I don't think it's reasonable to hold them accountable for content that other people generate and share on their site. I do it's fair to hold them accountable for the ways in which their algorithms promote and disseminate stories.
They don't have to do this. They could display items strictly in the order they're posted. They could let users choose which of their friends they'd like to have posts promoted. Facebook has decided to rely heavily on their algorithms for profit. That's understandable but shouldn't come without liability.
I also think free speech law (which I support) is too tolerant of fraud and libel. Corporations and news outlets should face a real risk of sanctions if they deceive the public.
But there is a more fundamental problem that as long as people believe statements based on whether they are easy and emotionally satisfying rather than true, our society is going to struggle. And in an information age, that's going to be a challenging problem no matter how you try to regulate it. I don't have an answer for that, sadly.
I left FB years ago. On Twitter and Reddit I can choose people/topics to follow and I never run across political lunacy or culture war bullshit. But my topics of interest never cross into those realms. I also do not follow family - which brings me to why I left FB.
The most deranged postings I have ever seen on FB were from family. I mean, lengthy and unhinged Trumpian manifestos. Not posts they shared, but actual posts they must have spent a fair amount of time writing. These people are not political analysts - they are hairdressers and HVAC mechanics. Even just following friends, my feed would be littered with third-party lunacy from friends or families of theirs.
Now, really, there is no way to avoid that unless you unfriend and start blocking people. It got to the point where it made no sense to be on FB if I was avoiding the whole "Friend" side of things. So choosing your topics and blocking posts from lunatics probably goes against the very basic reason why anyone would even use FB,
I mostly agree with this. I'm not convinced placement order is sufficiently "evil" or "bad" that providing algorithmically presented feeds should be banned. Just allowing more user control over the feed would be enough (IMO.) Esp. as many requested posts (from friends etc.) are basically disabled as a result.
Also IMO, showing who and what price the ads ("posts") are appearing in my feed would go a long way to improving the information flow to me.
Heck, maybe there should be a movement (hello micropayments) to give me a slice of that advertising dollar. They are my eyeballs after all, and I will submit the value proposition I'm being currently offered in a walled garden is closing on being ripe for disruption by another platform. I am member of groups that'd be more than happy to move off FB but there is (currently) no sufficiently easy/valuable/effective place to go.
I think FB will always be a place for Aunt Susie to post her african violet pictures and get info on the latest Starship cover band event, but we can only hope Something bubbles up to take a large chunk of the activity. Making their market smaller (via competition and merger denials - heck let IG free!!) is probably our best soln to the problem.
One possible source is the department of Human Centered Design and Engineering at the U. of W., and its founder, Prof. Kate Starbird. It's a fluke I know of this; my only connection is that I watched Kate play basketball at Stanford where she was a superstar, and have kept tabs on her career since.
Anyway, she and her Department? Center? (dunno what they call HCDE) anwya it/they research pretty much what you are asking about. From her faculty home page[1],
> "...we were not just seeing accidental misinformation, but that we were witnessing pervasive disinformation that seemed to be perpetrated by increasingly dense and often oddly connected networks of accounts. In 2016-2017, we began to focus more intently on online disinformation — the intentional spread of false or misleading information for political or financial objectives..."
Anyway, I am sure they welcome press queries and should have data that helps.
[1] https://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/
[2] https://www.hcde.washington.edu/
[1] https://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/
Facebook is organized around the idea of being a monopolistic delivery system for a specific kind of addictive engagement, monetising the data the engagement generates. In this way, it is no different from gambling, drugs, tobacco or alcohol monopolies.
The only possible unmixed feeling about Facebook is that it is evil and should be regulated out of existence in its present incarnation.
Through its logarithms, Facebook has found the perfect hate machine that will lead to the destruction of the country and the planet, but God forbid KD in allowing any government involvement. Less I exaggerate, look at the genocide of the Rohingya by this modern day doomsday machine. How long will it take for it to affect every society in a similar way.
Facebook and social media are like radio in the 1930s or newspapers in the late 1700s. It's a new medium that does a great job of amplifying dangerous groups. It's a mixed bag. We got the French and American revolutions, and we got World War II. Mix and match. I'm always surprised no one cites McLuhan anymore. He understood media. There's a reason radio and social media are so good at mobilizing reactionaries while television doesn't cut it. He just sounded incoherent because his ideas were so different.
Back in the 1930s, Father Coughlin was a big right wing radio speaker preaching good old American fascism. This was back when radio preachers could still own stations. He had a big following. FDR managed to shut him up thanks to a deal with the Vatican. FDR agreed to accept a papal nuncio if the pope would get Coughlin off the air.
What should we do about Facebook? I think the best thing would be enforcing interoperability of any system that collects personal data. This would make it a lot easier to choose a curated platform without having to give up general access. The profitable move is towards walled gardens. Facebook and Google would love to ditch TCP/IP and they could build the infrastructure to do so. The government forced Kodak, IBM, Xerox and others to be interoperable. They can force Facebook and its ilk to do so as well.
P.S. I don't share your worry about the government. It seems easier to get the government under control than multi-national corporations. The courts usually defer to private entities no matter the harm, but will often enforce things against government entities. Sure, they might fine the corporations a few days' profits, but that's just the cost of doing business, like bribing politicians. In contrast, they rarely let the government buy its way out. They demand specific remedies and often get them.
Here is a question for you: Does an algorithm have free speech rights? To me the answer is obvious. Taking "free speech" away from an algorithm does not take anything away from Zuckerberg (though if I had the power I would silence him...) nor from his business.
Facebook and Zuckerberg (regrettably) have a right to say whatever they want* but it does not follow that that gives their algorithms the right to send people into rabbit holes of hate and extremism. It is not any real person that does that it is an algorithm (which is almost literally Zuckerberg's excuse for all the mischief that facebook inflicts).
* Actually, rich people like Zuckerberg have more free speech rights than us common mortals as per election finance SCOTUS decisions... How can that be right?
The wingnut media business model is to pour gasoline on a fire, and that's the same as Facebook's business model.
So, my feelings about it aren't mixed at all.
OMG Kevin, I'm guessing it's like someone who cannot smell not detecting the smell of burning dinner on the stovetop, or someone colorblind not being able to tell the difference between a red light and a green light. I'm thinking Kevin's emotional detachment from so many things while an advantage in some things, is a clear disadvantage here.
The stovetop is on fire and we need to work together to put out the fire without causing further damage.
Folks are being force fed a steady stream of emotionally triggering stories in the name of getting your eyeballs to gaze upon advertisements in proximity to the story. There's money to be made in an oil slicked bird killed by the evil oil companies, an old crusty veteran being honored, a pretty missing white woman.
Somewhere along the lines the old school conservatives who pioneered mass mailings to bilk old folks out of $$$ via scare tactics, the radio guys and old communists types put out by the end of the Soviet Union mixed together in a dangerous stew, this evolved from the John Birchers to the Movement Conservatives to the Milita Movements of the 1990s and finally to Trumpism.
Some of the guardrails that used to keep the stew in check are long gone. The limitations of mass mailings and broadcast TV/Radio all keep the stew to a less powerful minority. But then Cable TV, USENET and the World Wide Web helped provide a bigger firehose to spread the dangerous stew to more folks. Then broadband and faster computers allowed the firehose to get even bigger and better still the computers allowed folks to pinpoint what really worked and what was a dud.
Zuckerberg when faced with the moral dilemma of the toxic stew using his networks for evil shruged and said, not my fault, pocketing all the extra $$$ the toxic stew brought him.
How do we fix this? I think we have to fix US government and how we run elections. There's too much dark money floating around too much election chicanery accomplished via analytics thanks to super computing so also throw in eliminating the Electoral College and institution non-partisan gerrymandering in all 50 states.
Facebook and similar enterprises are able to escape the restraints that are on traditional media because of libel suits. They are exempted by Section 230 of the Communications Code, which was really put in to protect Internet Service Providers, not things like Facebook. Rather than have some super-censor decide what goes on Facebook, repealing Section 230 would put things back in the hands of the courts. This has certainly been a restraint on traditional media. Would Facebook not change its own actions if it could be sued for every crazy thing that it publishes? Yes, publishing is an appropriate term for Facebook, but not for ISP's - that is something that should be decided by Congress, not the Supreme Court.
Kevin would also shut down this comment section instantly. He'd be a fool not too.
This is kind of sad. Kevin is "not impressed" and has "mixed feelings" when FB knowingly allows it's platform to be used to (for example) to promote killings of Rohingya muslims, or to guide pre-adolescent looking for posts on food groups promoting bulimia/anorexia. And their own algos show this . I mean, really?
I'm disappointed in this comments thread.
I posted the first comment in the thread; that was a little over four hours ago. In it, I answered Kevin's question as best I could--not with a specific citation, but what I thought was a responsive answer to where to look for an objective in-depth examination.
In the intervening four hours, not one other commenter has addressed Kevin's question, nor even to comment on my original suggestion. Instead, we have all this blather about exactly what Kevin stated he was NOT interested in.
Pfui.
Please keep trying.
@ Ken Rhodes:
I think "Owns 9 Fedoras" made an attempt to address Kevin's question:
https://jabberwocking.com/please-help-me-unmix-my-feelings-about-facebook/comment-page-1/#comment-33377
You’re absolutely right. When I red 9 Fedoras’ comment I saw it as another critique of Facebook. But after I red your note here, I went back and looked again, and I comliment you on your good catch.
Ken we reacted the way we did because the house is on fire and Kevin is far too blase about it. We responded with the implied question asked - I do that all the time at work, folks will contact me with a question but then after skyping I suss out the real problem and tell them how to fix that.
Two points: You addressed Kevin's concerns indirectly (by recommending reading certain reporters). Quite a few other have addressed them indirectly in different ways as well. I would not complain too loud if I were in your shoes.
No, I didn’t address Kevin’s concerns directly, or indirectly, not did I try to convince him of anything. I assumed he meant to ask the question he asked, so I answered a direct question with the best direct answer I could come up with. 9 Fedoras did that too. Everybody else thought they knew better than Kevin what he *really* meant.
Pfui!
He has the same info we do. If he doesn't think Facebook's conduct is a big problem then he's not going to be convinced. It's no different than an anti-vaxxer like Kirk Cousins getting a 1-on-1 with Osterholm about vaccines and still not getting vaccinated.
I know this isn't what you asked for (sorry Ken), but my advice is:
Read facebook. Spend an hour clicking on the most conservative stuff that makes it to your feed, then follow those and watch what happens. If that's not enough of a wake up call about one of the most poisonous things going, I am not sure what will be.
Ken Rhodes: isn’t ironic that KD asked for something and then threw a non-sequitur anti-government screed and people responded viscerally? That’s the way FB works, so the thread provides the answer to the question. The difference of course is that the commentators here are not threading in hate.
March your ass down to your local University library, obtain guest privileges, and search their subscription databases. There's LOTS of published social scientific research on the influence of Facebook on individuals and society.
I'm assuming you've read what your former magazine, Mother Jones, has published on the matter. It was even part of their fundraising letter last year, since (as they documented) Facebook had appeased certain conservative "news" sources by reducing a score based on accuracy in favor of one based on "balancing" political viewpoint. This isn't much different from what other news sources have done in response to entreaties and threats from the Breitbarts and Fox Newses of the world.
Just looking over my own small world of readings, The Atlantic has had several articles on Facebook over the past few years; here are a couple:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/facebook-boz-memo/604639/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/facebook-doomsday-machine/617384/
The articles have links to other sources that are worth investigating. MIT's Technology Review is another source of articles, though they are about as pro-tech as The Atlantic is anti-tech. Still, this brief article on the last election outlines some of the dangers Facebook poses:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/21/1010986/how-to-delegitimize-an-election-rigged-misinformation/
And there have been a number of articles in the NYT (though I no longer subscribe to them so I can't post links). Some of them have been reprinted in a recent book, however:
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/an-ugly-truth-sheera-frenkelcecilia-kang
(Available from a bookseller near you.)
But really, a lot of the issue boils down to "The Algorithm" -- Facebooks machine learning model that determines what Facebook presents to users as they scroll their feed. It isn't designed with particular politics in mind, but rather to maximize time-on-site, user interaction, and other metrics that affect Facebook's income from advertising -- as well as interfacing each user's history to Facebook's enormous targeting database for advertisers. Like a lot of complex technologies, it can create unintentional bad results. And the fact that an "advertisement" can be nearly any piece of content allows the system to be gamed in a myriad of ways.
" a nice, readable, balanced summary of all the research that's been done regarding Facebook."
doesn't exist. So we have to cobble together a worldview as best we can.
There are multiple aspects of the Facebook problem unfortunately, so each specialist in researching its enormities has only a partial view.
The following are the writers I tend to rely on.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611806/how-social-media-took-us-from-tahrir-square-to-donald-trump/
and generally anything Dr. Zeynep Tufekci writes. Dr Tufekci started as a programmer and is now a social scientist, thoughtful, careful and smart.
It's really not just Facebook though they are the most egregious offender.
The problem is data collection and microtargeting. See
https://idlewords.com/talks/senate_testimony.2019.5.htm
On top of that there is the way that Facebook et al are changing the actual technical infrastructure of the web. Maria Farrell has worked in internet governance for decades, and says,
https://crookedtimber.org/2021/05/04/what-is-ours-is-only-ours-to-give/
"Facebook/Google have reached down from the web and into infrastructure provision, binding it together with their profoundly damaging adtech-driven radicalization engines to offer all the Internet connectivity you want, and all the rage that goes with it, as long as you remain trapped in their open prisons. Both companies – and Amazon, who through back-end service provision now grip countries’ entire SME sectors – now occupy and are consolidating the entire Internet ‘stack’, from pipes / satellites / undersea cables to protocols / standards / proprietary APIs and all the way to trade associations / regulators / parliaments. These companies dominate most open standards and protocol development, both through numbers of employees who dominate working groups, and market power to determine standards adoption or rejection. The open standards process is nominally open, but increasingly, if a new standard or protocol doesn’t fit big tech’s business model, it either doesn’t happen or never gets implemented. At the same time, these companies use the open processes as a rubber-stamp for their own, all-but-proprietary standards. Back up the stack to the apps layer, and especially in developing and middle income countries, you cannot build or do anything Internet-connected at any level unless it’s contributing to the big US firms’ business model. (Apple occupies a different, troubling, but not equally catastrophic niche in the Internet ecosystem.)"
More, https://medium.com/@maria.farrell
also see Josh Marshall today,
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/dont-be-surprised-about-facebook-and-teen-girls-thats-what-facebook-is
"These aren’t some weird unintended consequences that can be ironed out of the product. It’s also in most cases not bad actors within Facebook. It’s what the product is. The product is getting attention and engagement against which advertising is sold. You use algorithms and machine learning to figure out how to keep you engaged with Facebook as much as possible. How good is the machine learning? Well, trial and error with between 3 and 4 billion humans makes you pretty damn good. That’s the product. It is inherently destructive, though of course the bad outcomes aren’t distributed evenly throughout the human population.
The business model is to refine this engagement engine, getting more attention and engagement and selling ads against the engagement. Facebook gets that revenue and the digital roadkill created by the product gets absorbed by the society at large. Facebook is like a spectacularly profitable nuclear energy company which is so profitable because it doesn’t build any of the big safety domes and dumps all the radioactive waste into the local river."
I don't think the nuclear power analogy works particularly well, but otherwise I think Josh's read on Facebook is dead-on.
Never forget: Mark Zuckerberg was basically the Goebbels of the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar.
What positive aspect of Facebook doesn't apply to other forms of social media and competitors? I think once you accept that without FB social media would be perfectly fine, then, most people come to see FB as necessarily evil.
As for people without axes to grind, why not read Cory Doctorow or Kara Swisher?
Also, history of the newsfeed algorithm changes: https://wallaroomedia.com/facebook-newsfeed-algorithm-history/
You know about Google constantly changing its search algorithms and the entire industry dedicated to hijacking that, called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), right? Same goes for FB's newsfeed algorithm.
They did live stream a terrorist committing mass murder. Isn't that bad enough? People have live streamed crimes, suicides, and who knows what other awfulness.
My question for Mr. Drum is this, "What would it take for you to see it as evil?" Because I'm quite sure we could find it on Facebook.
I agree with you Kevin. I mean those who want to blame Facebook are lot like those who wish to blame God for all the evils because it's easier not point the finger at oneself. I mean, you're not alone in wanting to connect with family and friends and share interest with like-minded groups. Is that so bad?
What's bad is people who wish to use technology for bad things and whoo boy! do we have a lot of examples of that over the years: radio used for racist propaganda, the atom bomb, napalm, and now computerized algorithms which intensify hatred and destruction. We don't want to blame ourselves for our own bad intentions because it is so much easier to blame the inanimate object which in our minds makes us act upon on our horrible impulses, make its easier to do so, make it more destructive.
I will say this to other Facebook users: Why do you think I care or wish to know or want to see what your political persuasions manifest themselves in your posts? Hmm? I have lots of friends and I know they have diverse views. Why would I wish to alienate them? Because I want speak out? Wonderful! There are plenty of venues you can speak out in that doesn't require me to be dragged along or have to spend the time hiding. Save the politics and send more puppy videos. That I want and I'm sure a lot of other people do too.
Good article in the Atlantic today that might answer your questions about Facebook: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/facebook-midlife-crisis-boomerbook/620307/
Not sure what Kevin's question is.
The problem is relatively obvious at the fundamental level. FB is not designed, in any way, to produce content, its an aggregator of content produced for free by its users.
Originally, FB was not, in any way, like a "publisher" but over time, as its users grew, it first became a source of direct advertisement (as in, your business needed a FB page), and then, a way for people to spread information, including political information, opinions, and opinions without any basis.
FB would not be profitable if each post was reviewed, like a newspaper. Too many users.
So FB is trying to do the absolute minimum amount of oversight of posts that it can do, after all, they are not "FB posts" but posts by users.
There's the problem, and the leaks this week are from someone saying that FB can see how its being "used" -- well duh.
The conundrum is that FB is not making the posts.
The answer is probably found in analyzing algorithms. But, of course, its the algorithms that make FB more interesting to the user. This is proven.
Its like here on Kevin's blog. I don't know what it takes to get kicked off, but these replies are not Kevin's replies.