Do you know people are recruiting for hate groups, street gangs, even terrorist organizations through Facebook? People are also selling Nazi stuff through Facebook. So this begs two questions. Does Facebook enable hate? How do they fight it?
Then I read an article that leads me to believe they are fighting it. Because Facebook shuts down ‘self-targeting fields’. These self-targeting fields will shut down indefinitely. We can thank Pro Publica for their exposure of this flaw. They also exposed categories so vile that I won’t even include them on this blog. But you can imagine. However, now, if someone types something like “Hitler was right”, or other vile,hateful field of study, they will find nothing.
Furthermore, the hatemongers will use this to target advertisers and sell products. Therefore, they make money off their hate. This is a blind spot they exploit, more than you may think. This came at an already trying time. You see, some accuse Facebook of selling ads to a Russian networks that don’t even exist. You don’t think haters are going to expose that. Of course it wasn’t intentional. But you know the old saying…the road to (fill in the blank) is full of good intentions.
Does Facebook enable hate? Not intentionally. But there are two red flags here. The first one: People will exploit loopholes for their own hateful purposes. Facebook’s biggest source of revenue are advertisers. Why do you think it’s free for the users? So the money has to come from somewhere? However, are they so desperate that they’ll sell ad space to hate groups, or non-existing groups. Then there is the second red flag. What is hatred? I always worry that some will use crack down on hatred as an excuse to crack down on any speech they don’t like. Don’t think they won’t do it. And don’t think people won’t fall for it, either. So how do you walk that line without falling off either way?