Social media platforms, where we all spend most of our time, are getting more and more popular day by day. When this is the case, harmful content such as disinformation on these platforms continues to come up.
Facebook, owned by Meta and used by millions of people around the world, is among these platforms. We recently shared that it was revealed that Meta was paid to talk badly about another popular social media platform, TikTok. Now it has been revealed that Facebook ‘accidentally’ increased harmful content.
Harmful content featured
According to information obtained by The Verge, Facebook caused users to see more harmful content containing false information. According to the statements, this ranking problem in the stream caused the disinformation on the platform to spread further ‘accidentally’ instead of being restricted, causing harmful content to increase by 30% worldwide. According to the statements, this happened even in posts containing Russian state propaganda that invaded Ukraine.
This problem, which causes the content to appear in front of users while browsing the stream, has been experienced since 2019; however, it was stated that it started to be noticed last October. This showed that harmful content may have been climbing the rankings for at least six months.
Meta spokesperson Joe Osborne also told The Verge, “We investigated the root of this problem, which is a software bug, and made the necessary corrections,” arguing that the bug has no long-term impact. It’s also long been suggested that he be more open about how he manages their content; however, it also revealed that Facebook, which does not do this, may be experiencing problems that may harm many people.