The focus is primarily on Facebook. It is all the more helpful for the legislator that Frances Haugen, a former manager of the social media group, is involved in the debate about the DSA.
Haugen had passed on internal documents to the “Wall Street Journal” in the past few weeks, which weigh heavily on the company. They show how little Facebook lives up to its social responsibility.
According to a statement in the US Senate, Haugen also got together with two EU commissioners on Wednesday and spoke to them about the DSA. Justice Commissioner Vera Jurova felt strengthened afterwards: “The conversation showed me that Europe’s direction in terms of tech is the right one,” she tweeted. “We have to set up rules that make platforms more accountable, and not rely solely on voluntary regulations.”
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Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton said he went over parts of the DSA with Haugen and checked with her to see if they would make it possible to fix the problems Haugen identified. “And that was the case,” said Breton.
The Green MP, Alexandra Geese, who is involved with the DSA, was also in contact with Haugen. “Frances Haugen made it clear to us, among other things, that there is an official strategy on Facebook that forbids hatred, agitation and disinformation,” Geese told Handelsblatt. “But the group is afraid of damage to its image and has so far given all celebrities and influencers a license.” Almost six million people are currently exempt from the terms and conditions and can freely spread hatred, agitation and disinformation. “We want to change that: If there are general terms and conditions, they must also apply to everyone,” says Geese.
Study shows: Facebook is doing too little
The DSA could enable political control over the algorithms used to display content to users. The question of whether personalized advertising should be prohibited or whether the user only needs to be told why he is being shown an advertisement is controversial.
Geese advocates a ban: “If we switch off tracking in Europe by law, advertising will work again using traditional methods with reference to context.” Advertising revenue ends up on Facebook and Google.
Critics of a ban argue that personalized advertising is particularly important for small companies that want their offers to reach their specific target group as cheaply as possible.
An evaluation of Facebook’s influence on the German federal election also shows how important new rules are. The NGO Reset shows in a study, among other things, that Facebook fails to curb hate speech on its platforms and consistently mark disinformation as such.
The Digital Services Act could enable political control over the algorithms used to display content to users.
(Photo: Reuters)
In fact, in the past year the number of people who contacted the aid organization HateAid because of their hate speech experience on the Internet even tripled. Reset reports that there were many politicians among them.
This is also due to the fact that Facebook does not consistently apply the NetzDG, which was specially adopted in Germany for this purpose. Reset employees reported 100 comments with right-wing populist to right-wing radical and conspiracy-theoretical content, which, according to NetzDG, can be considered illegal.
In a third of the cases, Facebook rejected the report on the grounds that it did not contradict its own community guidelines. In addition, the comments had been online for an average of 409 days before Reset reported them to Facebook. The organization sees this as proof that Facebook’s internal monitoring does not work for comments, but only for the posts themselves.
Known false reports remain unmarked
The evaluation of Facebook according to its own community guidelines is also prone to errors. Out of 1000 comments that Reset reported due to violations, Facebook only responded to 100 reports, of which the company only deleted half of the comments complained about.
Facebook’s action against disinformation campaigns is even more hesitant. According to a study by the Sustainable Computing Lab, seven percent of Facebook posts relating to elections are problematic: for example, because they spread untruths.
But of the news about Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock, which were classified as false by the Facebook fact checkers, more than half remained visible on the platform without a corresponding note, as a study by the organization Avaaz reported, to which Reset refers. In general, there was significantly more misinformation about Baerbock than about Armin Laschet and Olaf Scholz, the candidates for chancellor of the CDU / CSU and SPD.
What Facebook decides to delete is downright arbitrary and apparently shaped by its own interests, write the reset authors of the study. In addition, the company continues to allow illegal advertisements to be published.
As an example, Reset names anti-Semitic and racist advertisements as well as those that offer therapies for non-heterosexual young people. These are illegal in Germany.
The alleged perpetrator, who shot a gas station cashier because he was angry about the Corona measures, radicalized himself in Facebook groups.
(Photo: dpa)
The biggest problem remains with how the Facebook algorithm works: namely by rewarding interactions with greater reach, which in turn leads to even more interactions and thus to even more reach.
Social networks are ideally suited to disseminating your views for outrage campaigns such as those carried out by far-right groups or the lateral thinking movement that denies Corona.
In this way, Facebook ensured the AfD’s wide reach in social networks. On the AfD sides there are on average five times higher interaction rates than on the sides of the other parties.
By automatically recommending content-related pages, groups and posts, Facebook contributes to radicalization. In order to prevent this, the group could revise its recommendation logic, but is probably reluctant to do so for reasons of reach.
The conclusion of the study authors: “Each platform offers incentives and monetizes certain types of behavior and content via others – these are the results of conscious business decisions.”
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