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Why is Facebook limiting political content in Indonesia, Brazil and Canada? - ABC News

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Why is Facebook limiting political content in Indonesia, Brazil and Canada?ShareAhmad Lukman couldn't take it anymore when he decided to deactivate his Facebook account in 2020.Mr Lukman had begun to feel uncomfortable being on the world's largest networking platform in 2014, "The timeline had too many religious debates linked to politics," he said."Over time, I became annoyed and became disgusted by the majority of my friends on Facebook who have started to become divided by religious politicisation."On Thursday, the social media giant , in a ban that also briefly impacted . In other countries, however, Facebook news feeds were already looking quite different. Last week, Facebook started a trial in Canada, Brazil, and Indonesia to reduce the amount of political content some users are seeing.The company said users didn't want politics dominating their news feed. The decision comes after a series of high-profile controversies, including use of the platform to organise But experts say Facebook should focus more of its efforts on stamping out hoaxes and disinformation as opposed to outright limiting political content.Aastha Gupta, Facebook's product management director, said earlier this month that "as a first step", the company would "temporarily reduce the distribution of political content in [the] news feed for a small percentage of people in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia", followed by a rollout in the US."It's important to note that we're not removing political content from Facebook altogether," Ms Gupta said."Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to find and interact with political content on Facebook, while respecting each person's appetite for it at the top of their news feed."Facebook cited internal research showing Indonesia, Brazil and Canada as being countries where people most commonly said they saw too much political content in their feeds.In July last year, Facebook removed dozens of accounts linked to supporters and employees of Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, which the company said were being used to spread false news.The accounts had hundreds of millions of followers."People don't want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in late January.But for Francesco Bailo, an expert on social media in politics at the University of Technology Sydney, Facebook's decision is more about protecting the company's interests than improving the experience of users."From Facebook's perspective, political discussion is a minor topic," he said."Instead of investing in moderation, moderating this kind of speech, it's much more effective … to reduce engagement around this topic."Mr Lukman is not the only one to have given up on having a Facebook account.The platform has lost millions of daily users in the US and Canada since the middle of 2020.At the same time, Facebook has faced increasing scrutiny from governments around the world for being a place for extremists to organise and communicate.for violating the site's ban on hate and violence.In June 2020, it banned a But it had long been criticised in other countries, particularly non-English speaking ones, over the platforming of extremist views.Dr Bailo said that while the moderation of political content in the US might be "relatively simple", it was much more complex in other contexts.For example, in 2018, against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar.The hate speech was part of a military campaign that led to more than 650,000 Rohingya fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh and which has been Bali resident Gede Sumardika deleted his Facebook account in 2017 during Jakarta's hotly contested gubernatorial elections.He became frustrated by arguments between supporters of the Christian, and his Muslim opponent Anies Baswedan.Mr Purnama later lost the election "Even though it was not related to me in Bali, a lot of friends at work, or my high school friends fought and threw some nasty words [at] each other on Facebook because of their political preferences," he said.Mr Sumardika said hate speech had become commonplace on his Facebook timeline — mostly related to religious topics."On Facebook, just because of their political views, people can be completely different from the people we know every day."Sarah Kreps, a professor of government at Cornell University in the US, warned that Facebook's move to reduce political content could be counterproductive."Facebook's decision to tweak its algorithm to depoliticise news feeds has the possible virtue of turning down the thermometer in the political landscape if people are less exposed to vitriolic political content," she said.Professor Kreps said, however, that if Facebook appeared to be "manipulating the conversation by reducing the visibility of conservative voices … the consequence won't be more harmony but actually the opposite, more discord across the political spectrum."Many supporters of former US president Donald Trump to platforms they deemed more friendly to "free speech"."This marks a dangerous new phase as the fringe right increasingly embrace encrypted networks," Elliott Brennan, Hard-line Muslim groups have previously staged rallies outside Facebook's Jakarta headquarters over the deletion of their posts under the platform's hate speech policy.Muhamad Heychael, a researcher with the Jakarta-based media studies institute Remotivi, said Facebook's new restrictions had the potential to harm parties spreading positive and educational political content."The main problems [on Facebook] are hoaxes and disinformation," he said."But the solution [chosen] was as if Facebook wants to be a platform where people can only spread pictures of their pets."Dr Bailo said removing political content would "totally change the nature of the platform"."Probably what they're aiming to do is replicating the atmosphere of Instagram, where it's much more about families, nice things and nice pictures."It's really clear that it's in the interest of Facebook to do this."Does it make sense not to have political discussion online for the rest of us? For democracy? I don't think so."19 Feb 202119 Feb 2021Fri 19 Feb 2021 at 7:11pm, 20 Feb 202120 Feb 2021Sat 20 Feb 2021 at 12:39amMore on:

Why is Facebook limiting political content in Indonesia, Brazil and Canada?ShareAhmad Lukman couldn't take it anymore when he decided to deactivate his Facebook account in 2020.Mr Lukman had begun to feel uncomfortable being on the world's largest networking platform in 2014, "The timeline had too many religious debates linked to politics," he said."Over time, I became annoyed and became disgusted by the majority of my friends on Facebook who have started to become divided by religious politicisation."On Thursday, the social media giant , in a ban that also briefly impacted . In other...

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