Diving Deeper Into Facebook’s Fact-Checking Policies

Facebook’s fact-checking policies have shifted over the last few years to now go through a review process that approves or removes the content from their platforms based on certain criteria that they deem truthful and safe. The ethical theory that will be used in this case is going to be virtue theory by Aristotle and the justice theory being applied is John Rawl’s theory of justice. When looking through the lense of virtue theory you can see that Facebook should keep with the belief that virtue theory argues for, which is the honesty and morality of a person to help aid in their system of moderation. Ways that Facebook can effectively police content while keeping that balance of trusting the fact checkers to have an honest unbiased review of content on their platform. Through the lens of Rawls you can see that justice must be held to fairness and the moral equality of a person, keeping that in mind the decisions made by the moderators must hold fairness and morale for the vital decisions they are making in regards to content.

Facebook started getting more stringent on political advertising and overall posts on its platform mainly because of its role in in-directly aiding in Cambridge Analytica getting troves of Americans data to help swade their vote to Donald Trump. This happened by having advertisements, posts, and fake accounts that helped swade voters on the fence the NYT posted “eager to sell psychological profiles of American voters to political campaigns, acquired the private Facebook data of tens of millions of users — the largest known leak in Facebook history.” (NYT, 2018) just to give this argument some context as to why Facebook is trying to identify and address viral misinformation that lead to major hoaxes that never had any factual information while potentially helping get a president elected that wouldn't have been elected otherwise due to prevalence of fake news on their platform.
Looking at this through virtue theory you can put into question those who are reviewing the advertising content. How would Facebook know that the person reviewing the content is virtuous according to the theory? Proper function would be applied by saying that the ad checking system that Facebook has put in place is good to the extent that it is good and bad to the extent that it is bad. These ad checking would have virtue only by doing the right thing at the right time, basically saying that the judgment that they make on approving or disapproving the content would be virtuous only if it's towards the right people at the right time. If the fact checkers are truly virtuous they would know what to do all the time in accordance to the policy of course, knowing what's right and when would be vital for the fact checkers due to the nature of the job.

The fact checkers would need to have robust character traits to make them virtuous and stay within the sweet spot of the golden mean to remain under virtue not excess or under deficiency - that perfect balance mentioned earlier. John Rawl’s theory of justice used the concept of a hypothetical contract of knowledge and bargaining power. The veil of ignorance eliminates the person features which would aid in the reviewers being less biased towards the cognitive rationality if the post should be allowed or not. The veil of ignorance removing the biases would aid in this system of moderating content without being biased in effect making the system more effective in what it is meant to moderate.
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In order for Facebook to prevent situations like that of Cambridge Analytica the company needs to pay attention to whom they are appointing to moderate these reviews of the content on their platform and how they are moderating it. When Facebook drafts these policies up for future revisions they need to balance the sweet spot of judgment on the content. Just because some reviewers might deem an ad offensive does not make it right to outright sensor the content, but letting it go through a multi-stage review process with complete censorship of the content being the last resort. Facebook needs to learn from their mistakes on not fact checking politicians given Donald Trump used the platform to spread misinformation to millions of people along with a large percentage of Republicans repeating his same sediments to millions around the country this will be a grave mistake to not let the people viewing it that it might be fake or not factual.

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Credits
Confessore, Nicholas. “Cambridge Analytica and Facebook: The Scandal and the Fallout so Far.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 4 Apr. 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html. ​

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