I largely agree with this, not just in the context of COVID misinformation but a lot of the stuff Meta gets flak for in general.
With respect to Instagram's effect on teens, people seem to conspicuously omit the fact that this leaked internal research showed that users were twice as likely to say that Instagram improves their well-being than harms it. It's really not clear to me how much of this is due to Meta products themselves, versus inherent challenges people tend to experience during adolescence. And also "Facebook knew instagram was hurting teens" is reductive at best, disingenuous at worst given that teens were twice as like to say it benefitted them.
Similar analogies can be made with the Rohingya issue. Talk radio played a big part in inciting the Rwandan genocide. Is it right to say that talk radio was responsible for the genocide? I don't think so, the underlying social issues are mainly the cause and radio was part of the landscape in which in played out. I think it's a similar situation with Facebook. Like radio, they were a communication mechanism in societies that were perpetrating genocide. Facebook did their best to shut it down, but the challenges of suddenly scaling up moderation in a foreign language is hard. Yet people seem to genuinely think that Facebook was knowingly endorsing the genocide.
With respect to Instagram's effect on teens, people seem to conspicuously omit the fact that this leaked internal research showed that users were twice as likely to say that Instagram improves their well-being than harms it. It's really not clear to me how much of this is due to Meta products themselves, versus inherent challenges people tend to experience during adolescence. And also "Facebook knew instagram was hurting teens" is reductive at best, disingenuous at worst given that teens were twice as like to say it benefitted them.
Similar analogies can be made with the Rohingya issue. Talk radio played a big part in inciting the Rwandan genocide. Is it right to say that talk radio was responsible for the genocide? I don't think so, the underlying social issues are mainly the cause and radio was part of the landscape in which in played out. I think it's a similar situation with Facebook. Like radio, they were a communication mechanism in societies that were perpetrating genocide. Facebook did their best to shut it down, but the challenges of suddenly scaling up moderation in a foreign language is hard. Yet people seem to genuinely think that Facebook was knowingly endorsing the genocide.