If Facebook Goes Private, Where Will the Misinformation Go? | Nieman Journalism Lab

What would Facebook’s turn to privacy mean for misinformation? This week Mark Zuckerberg published his “privacy-focused vision” for Facebook, writing, “I expect future versions of Messenger and WhatsApp to become the main ways people communicate on the Facebook network…I believe we should be working towards a world where people can speak privately and live freely knowing that their information will only be seen by who they want to see it and won’t all stick around forever.”

If such a shift really happens, what sort of impact would it have on misinformation on the platform?

“It would push some of Facebook’s biggest PR problems under a rug, such as fake news, hate speech, election interference, and harassment, which would become much harder to police — or to hold Facebook accountable for,” Will Oremus argues at Slate. “And it would open new ones, creating ‘dark social’ networks that could be havens for criminal or even terrorist activity, while giving equal shelter to everyone from dissidents to hate groups.”

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