Andrew Bosworth is a former Facebook developer, and was just appointed Meta Chief Technology Officer. Bosworth shunned the responsibility for the harmful content on social media platforms. Instead, the blame should be transferred to the users. Bosworth also referred to misinformation and its impact on society as a problem.
‘If we took every single dollar and human that we had, it wouldn’t eliminate people seeing speech that they didn’t like on the platform,’ Bosworth said in an interview with Axios’ Chief Technology Correspondent Ina Fried.
Fried wondered if Facebook could move faster to end misinformation. He cited revelations made public by Frances Haugen through the Facebook Papers and stated that “Facebook does not address things until they become dire.”
Bosworth described it as a demand issue when Bosworth was asked if Facebook or other social media platforms are helping to spread misinformation.
Bosworth stated that people want this information. “I believe it is impossible to answer that question. I won’t deny them the information they need and will make my demands on them.
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Andrew Bosworth, a long-time Facebook developer who was recently appointed Meta CTO (left), shifted the responsibility for damaging content from social media platforms onto those using them. He characterized misinformation as an societal problem and attributed it to the people who use them.
Andrew Bosworth [(eft) whether he could ‘do more’ to stem the flow of misinformation on the platform when he steps in as the Chief Technology Officer of Meta next year. Bosworth has been working with Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg (right) since 2006, and conceived of Facebook’s scrolling ‘news feed’ design, now used by the platform and its affiliates like Instagram
She asked Bosworth whether he could ‘do more’ to stem the flow of misinformation on the platform when he steps in as the Chief Technology Officer of Meta next year. Bosworth has been working with Facebook since 2006, and conceived of Facebook’s scrolling ‘news feed’ design, now used by the platform and its affiliates like Instagram.
‘It wouldn’t eliminate every opportunity that somebody had to use the platform maliciously.’
Although Bosworth acknowledged that ‘the speech of people can be dangerous,’ he maintained that ‘individual humans are the ones who choose to believe or not believe a thing’ – and the ones that choose to ‘share or not share a thing,’ too.
‘At some point the onus is, and should be in any meaningful democracy, on the individual.’
He characterized Facebook as a ‘fundamentally democratic’ technology, despite revelations in October that the company used its ‘XCheck’ program to allow celebrities, politicians and high-profile users bypass its rules of conduct when they posted on its platforms.
Misinformation on Facebook is thought to have played a role in the January 6 riots on the Capitol, during which disenfranchised Donald Trump supporters rampaged in Washington D.C., fueled by the belief that the election had been ‘stolen’ from their candidate
‘I’m uncomfortable that we possess enough fundamental “rightness” – even in our most scientific centers of study – to exercise [the censorship ideas that we deem harmful] on another human… and what they want to say and what they want to listen to,’ he said.
‘Instead, we have what they want to hear, which is really the best way to approximate the algorithm.’
‘You talk to a random person – “do you use Facebook, do you use Instagram, do you use Snapchat?” they do and they like it.’
But, for many critics, it doesn’t matter whether users ‘like’ the experience social media apps give them. As Fried pointed out in her questioning, ‘there are people that believe these tools are fundamentally unsafe, that our democracy is less healthy, our health is less sound because we have misinformation.’
‘If we took every single dollar and human that we had, it wouldn’t eliminate people seeing speech that they didn’t like on the platform,’ Andrew Bosworth (pictured) said in the interview
‘I love the way that I’m able to connect with my cousins that live far away. I don’t feel better that COVID is worse in our country because of the spread of misinformation, some of which is happening on Facebook,’ she stated frankly.
‘Are you confident that the overall impact of what you do, not just the good… is better than if we didn’t have these tools?’
Bosworth didn’t address the question.
‘I don’t feel comfortable at all saying [a person using a social media platform] doesn’t get to have a voice because I don’t agree with what they said.’
Twitter users mocked Bosworth’s evasion of Facebook’s role in the spread of misinformation on its platforms.
Twitter users mocked Bosworth’s evasion of Facebook’s role in the spread of misinformation on its platforms
‘Andrew Bosworth is completely out of touch,’ wrote one user. ‘Facebook has amplified societal problems, and they’re not accountable at all. If not for Facebook, the size of our problems and divisions would not be as large as they are.’
Other users were more crass with their scrutinization.
‘We here at Meta give smooth-brained s***gibbons gasoline,’ wrote a cheeky Twitter user. ‘Just because they run around lighting everyone on fire doesn’t make us the bad guys.’
Other users were more crass with their scrutinization