Facebook employees criticize fact-checking policy among politicians in an open letter

A group of Facebook employees has sent an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg urging him to reconsider Facebook’s stance on fake news. The employees believe that Facebook should also fact-check political advertisements.

The letter was signed by more than 250 employees. The New York Times managed to get their hands on it. The employees believe that the policy Zuckerberg proposes “threatens what Facebook stands for.” They are referring to the policy on disinformation surrounding political campaigns. In recent months, Zuckerberg, among others, stated that political ads no longer fall under the social medium’s fact-checking program. Politicians can lie in an advertisement they buy, for example to give a certain demographic the wrong date for when to vote.

“Our current policy of fact-checking politicians is a threat to what Facebook stands for,” the employees write. “It doesn’t protect anyone, but let politicians use our platform as a weapon against people who believe that content from politicians is credible.” The employees also write that they are afraid of the image. There could be an image that Facebook thinks it’s fine to earn money from misinformation.

The letter is not just about the fact-checking program. It also describes the ways politicians can buy ads on the platform. For example, it is still possible to target advertisements to groups of users who are specifically vulnerable to incorrect information, or users who are more or less inclined to vote. This would make it possible, for example, to persuade users from a largely progressive or conservative voting area to go to the polls less quickly. Such practices were deployed during the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal.