I also use Facebook to share my articles with my 3,000 over Facebook friends, most of whom I have never met personally. They are friends, or friends of friends, and readers of The Straits Times.
I enjoy the interactions on Facebook on my own page, and on pages of my friends. I catch up on their holiday plans; I laugh at their descriptions of funny incidents of the day; and express sympathy when they share about their hard times. I also enjoy reading their comments on the news articles they share on their posts.
Users often don’t distinguish between news about their friends, or news their friends share about the society they live in. Which makes it a bit disappointing when we learn that Facebook wants to “deprecate” news on the app – whether it is deleting news or downgrading it, the net effect is to remove stories from news publishers on the app.
The warm fuzzy feelings I may have towards Facebook come however with a severe undertow of unease.
Poor track record on privacy and scams
Facebook has a history of abusing users’ privacy and selling their data wholesale, without user consent, to third parties. In recent years, it has come under attack in several jurisdictions for not doing enough to fight scams on its platforms.
In Singapore, Minister of State for Home Affairs Sun Xueling called out Meta in Parliament for its weak actions against scammers in February, chiding it to “step up, to do right by your users”.
Instead, she said, Meta had pushed back against calls for it to verify sellers’ identities against government IDs,and set up a secure payment system for those who use its Marketplace to buy and sell stuff. She disclosed that Meta products, in particular Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, accounted for 43 per cent of scam cases in 2023 and around $280 million of losses.
The problem isn’t confined to Singapore. Worldwide, Meta and its social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, attract the lion’s share of scams.
Leading mobile security company Zimperium, which protects the mobile phones of American troops and other users, detected 99,690 scam hits on Meta’s platforms since October 2023. Facebook accounted for over half of these, or 53,275, followed by WhatsApp with 30,612 and Instagram 15,803. In comparison, there were 3,344 hits on X, formerly known as Twitter, 11,612 on Telegram and 148 on Reddit.
These figures were gleaned from 200 million mobile devices that Zimperium protects, out of the estimated 6.84 billion smartphones in use globally, reported The Australian newspaper in March 2024.
Its poor track record in protecting users is a blow to the legion of Facebook users who depend on it to stay connected with friends, and who get their source of news and information on it.
Deleting news
The latest move by Meta is to remove news from Facebook, which would considerably narrow the information users receive on their feeds. Meta announced recently: “In early April 2024, we will deprecate Facebook News – a dedicated tab in the bookmarks section on Facebook that spotlights news – in the US and Australia. This follows our September 2023 announcement that we deprecated Facebook News in the UK, France and Germany last year.”
“Deprecated” – which means to disapprove of, belittle or reduce the importance of – is an odd word to use, when Facebook meant it will remove the Facebook News tab and sideline all news. But it is apt, if it sums up the disparaging attitude Meta has towards news – that it doesn’t find it useful to generate revenue or engagement.
Meta justifies its move by saying only 3 per cent of what users see globally is news anyway – which might be convincing about users’ lack of interest in news, until you remember that what people see is algorithmically determined and that Facebook has since 2022 shifted focus away from news to its pushing its creator economy of AI-curated content for creators – a case of mistaking cause for effect.
The shift away from news on Facebook will have major consequences worldwide.
For one thing, the three billion people who are active users on Facebook will have access to no news or information from reputable news publishers. As many experts warn, they may end up consuming misinformation or fake news. With Facebook becoming an important public square where people gather to exchange personal news and discuss events of the day, this shift could lead to people becoming less well-informed about current events.
In some rural communities, residents depend on Facebook and other social media to get urgent alerts on emergency and extreme weather information from government agencies. Anxiety levels are rising that if news, and public service information from such agencies get downgraded on Facebook, they may find out, too late, about a rising flood or a bush fire heading their way.
News publishers are the other group that will be severely affected by Meta’s move to delete news. In America, Meta spent about US$105 million (S$142 million) in three-year content deals for news (plus another US$90 million for news videos), including US$10 million for The Wall Street Journal, US$20 million for The New York Times, and US$3 million for CNN, according to The Verge, a technology news website. Meta has let the deals lapse with no renewals.
In Australia, the News Media Bargaining Code introduced in 2021 compelled digital companies to negotiate with news publishers to pay for news content. If they can’t agree to a deal when negotiating, both sides have to submit to arbitration and abide by terms set by the arbitrator.
Since then, Facebook and Google have signed dozens of deals with media companies like Sky News Australia, News Corp, Seven, and Nine, with about A$250 million (S$220 million) a year in total of deals agreed to. As in America, Facebook has said it will let the deals in Australia expire, and it will not negotiate new ones. It also does not plan to have new offerings for news publishers.
What are Australia’s options? The government can invoke the law and “designate” Meta such a digital media company, which would force it to negotiate to compensate publishers, or face fines of up to 10 per cent of its annual revenue in Australia.
An alliance of digital publishers has suggested having a “must carry” rule, to compel social media platforms to carry public interest news.
Such laws came to the forefront in the days of cable television, to require cable networks to carry, news and current affairs programmes created by public broadcasters, also called free-to-air broadcasters. This was done to ensure that news and public service information would reach audiences, amid cable networks’ offerings of more compelling movies, TV shows and music videos.
A similar “must carry” rule would give news publishers reach into Facebook and other social media communities. As with cable news, such must-carry laws might come with requirements that the platform pay for such content, in exchange for the right to do business in the country.
But unless social media algorithms also prioritise such content, there is every risk that news continues to be “deprecated” and languish due to poor readership, poor reach and poor engagement.
Individual users
What does it all mean for Singapore, and for individual Facebook users?
In Singapore, a forward-thinking government has acted to make sure public interest media companies like Mediacorp and SPH Media have public funds to help them remain sustainable. Public funding comes with its own challenges, including perceptions around editorial independence. But public-funded media companies are at least not dependent, or less dependent, on the whims of Big Tech.
What about the three billion or so active Facebook users – you and me?
I think users have an increasing responsibility to be aware of the big power battles being fought over their heads and to take a stand. Some people have quit Facebook altogether, in protest against its lack of privacy standards, or over its cavalier attitude to protecting users from scams. I’ve deactivated my account periodically in short boycotts, but always found reason to return.
While Meta is right to say that many Facebook users enjoy the platform as a way to get updated on friends’ lives, it is also fair to say that many people share, comment on, and engage with news and current affairs events on their feeds.
On my Facebook feed this afternoon, the top post is a short comment by former Nominated MP Calvin Cheng on Olympic gold medallist Joseph Schooling’s retirement from competitive swimming at the age of 28. Mr Cheng said that “our society and system just doesn’t allow sportspeople and creatives to flourish. It’s OK. It’s also admirable to be the best humourless, money-making robots in the world.” In the hour since the post went up, it had over 320 likes, 57 comments and 27 shares.
Facebook is wrong that users do not read news. The very lifeblood of social media platforms is news and stories – stories about our own lives, about our friends’ lives, about the lives of others in our community.
To be human is to be interested in each other’s lives and stories. When we click on friends’ posts about their travels or their life updates, we do so because we are interested in news about our friends.
News about politics, policies, and interest rates, and wars in Ukraine or conflict in the Middle East, when drilled down to basics, is all about people and their stories and how their lives are affected by big decisions made by other people.
In pulling the plug on news, Facebook has forgotten what makes people human and interested in each other. In doing so, and in “deprecating” news, it is saying people, and the stories of how their lives are impacted by the news of the day, are not important.
In treating news in such a manner, and in the many ways it has shown the world how it disrespects the users who form its global community, it must realise that it is making people wonder if they too should just pull the plug on Facebook.
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