What if automated takedowns of harmful and hateful content do not work? Or at least, not to the extent proposed by social media platforms in response to right-wing extremisms?
In the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, Facebook promised to remove all content delegitimizing the last election. But recent reporting suggests that Facebook’s past efforts failed to address the growth of a violent movement against the election. More troubling, Facebook’s recent content moderation efforts have done little to dampen public support for election disinformation with 55 percent of Republicans believing that Biden’s election was “the result of illegal voting or election rigging.” Even as content moderation’s utility is questioned, the insurrection precipitated a new push to increase automated content moderation to combat right-wing extremists.
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