Over the four years of the Trump presidency, social media platforms generally took a soft line in enforcing their policies against threats and misinformation, allowing most borderline speech, including the president’s, to stand. In the wake of a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol aimed at disrupting the transfer of power, and ahead of an inauguration feared to provoke new attacks around the country, those same social media are taking a notably more aggressive approach. MediaJustice Executive Director Steven Renderos talks to The Daily World.
“[Sandberg’s remarks that the Capitol riot was] largely organized elsewhere showed that the company is divorced from reality and still trying to deflect. Internally, the company knows. They’ve known for a long time that toxicity exists on their platform. Yet their algorithms are tailor-made to amplify the content that drives the most engagement — and that’s the stuff that upsets people or outrages people…Facebook makes a lot of decisions based on trying to win the headlines and not necessarily because it’s the right thing to do.”
Steven Renderos via The Daily World
