If anything, 2021 served as a year of revelation for social media giant Facebook. After the ‘Facebook Files’ shed some light on some of the company’s darkest kept secrets, Facebook was battered left and right with criticisms, adding to the already mounting pressure that Facebook was facing prior. With its big Meta name change, and even bigger plans in the foreseeable future, how can Facebook be ‘fixed’ to bring about true, and better change?

From the thoughts of several researchers, activists, tech experts, and analysts, it all boils down to if Facebook can make changes in 3 identified major areas.

A 3-Step Plan

When it comes to ‘correcting’ key Facebook problem points, three prominent areas of concern always come to mind, resulting in the proposal of these three solutions.

First off, Regulation. Especially in the U.S, the path towards regulation is likely to be a long one. Not only that, but Facebook has, time and again, encountered several challenges regarding the regulatory compliance of its massive network. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act even protects Facebook from all and any lawsuits involving users posting illegal content. This of course has repeatedly come under scrutiny, with various calls for amendment not too far behind.

Several lawmakers have, in fact, introduced bills that would respectively fund research into Facebook’s effect on young people, as well as address the platform’s often inscrutable algorithms. Javier Pallero, the policy director at the Digital Civil Rights Organization Access Now says that any regulation must consider human rights and tags Facebook’s current moderation model as being ‘flawed’. Pallero went on further stating that “They either allow too much or they take down too much and they end up basically censoring entities, activists, and so on around the world. So you need human moderators, ergo, you need more investment, you need more people.”

Next comes Breaking It Up. Facebook is simply too big and too far reaching to allow for any inclusive development. Several parties have called for a rather simple solution in that the social media giant should be partitioned. Matt Stoller, research director at the American Economic Liberties Project, terms Facebook’s vast power as “the greatest threat to democracy”, essentially labelling Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg as nothing more than a greedy sovereign who seeks nothing other than influence and money and through questionable and shady means.

Lastly, and everyone else would likely agree, but Facebook should be made to Open Up. Transparency has never been a strong point of the platform and some of the biggest efforts to change it come from the ranks of its own employees and former staff, including now-renowned Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen. Former Facebook employees Jeff Allen and Sahar Massachi, who now run their own non-profit organization named The Integrity Institute, believe that the platform is way below the integrity standards.

Massachi says that Facebook’s present culture incentivizes making use of harmful and fallacious content in order to drive engagement and bump up usage times. Likewise, he proposes introducing an inter-company monthly metric that ranks companies based on integrity. When the call is made for Facebook to ‘Open Up’, it’s literally a petition for the company to improve transparency and access to its data records. It’s recent involvement with academic research after the Cambridge Analytical Scandal only left research partners frustrated with the amount of data made accessible to them, which is something that should definitely be addressed if Facebook is to succeed in any future collaborative research efforts.

The Wrap

Summing it all up, 3 big things Facebook SHOULD, not could, do is to have more stringent and defining regulations concerning how, where, and to what extent will it be held legally liable for its operations; that it should be broken up or segmented so as to allow for more fairness; and that Facebook should be more transparent about its various policies and available data sets, putting integrity as a priority company value.

Of course, these are but proposals, and any actual attempt to incorporate any of them is, at least for now, Facebook’s call. What we can be sure of is that if Facebook continues to disregard these calls of refinement, then they may not have much of a future to look forward to; with their internal files exposed, continuing to make use of the same tactics will only further displease users, cutting their longevity shorter with each instance.

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Sources

https://bit.ly/3eugltw