Facebook Blames 'Technical Issues" for Its Broken Promise to the US Congress

Facebook is blaming 'technical issues' for its broken promise to the U.S. Congress to stop recommending political groups to its users, reports The Markup:

Facebook made the pledge once in October, in the run-up to the presidential election, and then falsely reiterated it had taken the step after rioters overtook the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a deadly event partially coordinated by users on the platform.

The Markup first revealed that Facebook was still recommending groups...in an investigation published on Jan. 19. Examining the top 100 groups recommended to roughly 1,900 users on our Citizen Browser panel, we identified 12 as political — including groups with posts calling for violence against lawmakers, spreading election-related conspiracy theories, and coordinating logistics for attending the rally that led to the Capitol riot.

Citizen Browser is a data-driven project examining the choices Facebook makes about what content to amplify.

A week after our report, U.S. senator Ed Markey sent a letter to the company, demanding an explanation, and on Feb. 10, Facebook replied in a letter to Markey. 'The issue stemmed from technical issues in the designation and filtering process that allowed some Groups to remain in the recommendation pool when they should not have been,' Facebook said in its response. 'Since becoming aware of this issue, we have worked quickly to update our processes, and we continue this work to improve our designation and filtering processes to make them as accurate and effective as possible....' Following publication of our story, recommendations for political groups dropped precipitously, as our Citizen Browser panelist data shows...

The 'technical issues' meant that, from Election Day on Nov. 3 to the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots to President Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20, Facebook was still recommending political groups to its users. Our analysis found that Facebook particularly pushed political groups to more conservative users... Facebook's own internal research has consistently pointed to the danger posed by political groups on its platform. Researchers warned Facebook in a 2016 internal report that 64 percent of new members of extremist groups joined because of the social network's recommendations, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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