Facebook Vice President Nick Clegg conceded that the company’s fact-checkers can inject their own biases when determining the faith of posts on the platform.
The story: Clegg made the comment during discussions with European Commission VP Vera Jourova in November, the Daily Mail reported, citing a European Commission document. The meeting, according to the outlet, focused on Facebook’s efforts to combat the spread of misinformation on the platform.
During the talks, Clegg acknowledged that these companies have their own biases and can act on them when fact-checking a claim, to fit their agenda.
He reportedly said that “independent fact-checkers are not necessarily objective because they have their own agenda.”
How we got here: Facebook’s fact-checking system was introduced in 2016 as a way for the company to reduce misinformation on the platform. Namely, Facebook works with more than 80 fact-checkers worldwide that determine whether certain claims are true, false, or misleading.
If fact-checkers conclude that a claim is false or misleading, Facebook adds a label to it and reduces its visibility on the platform.
Critics have highlighted that this method stifles free speech.
A recent example: Most recently, Facebook came under scrutiny for spending most of last year censoring claims that the coronavirus might have originated in a lab in Wuhan, China. But, as the lab-leak theory gained more traction in recent months, the company was forced to backtrack.
In late May, Facebook said it will stop censoring posts asserting the pandemic might be the result of a virus leak from a laboratory in Wuhan.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made from our apps,” a spokesperson for Facebook said, according to Politico. “We’re continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge.”’
Why it matters? Former Cabinet Minister David Jones told the outlet that comments are “deeply worrying.”
“The admission completely destroys the credibility of Facebook’s own procedures. It offers news organizations no right of appeal when it censors them, even though it may have acted on the advice of fact-checkers who are motivated by ‘their own agenda’,” he added.
