Facebook Opens a ‘Hard Questions’ Blog to Openly Discuss the Big Issues Raised by the Community

Menlo Park-based social networking firm, Facebook Inc. launched in 2004 by now the CEO and Co-Founder; Mark Zuckerberg – is today’s the world biggest and largest social media platform with over two (2) billion people globally. A platform where they come to connect with family and friends, or celebrities/politicians connecting with their fans, and so forth.

Being the biggest social media platform, the social firm faces a number of issues, challenges, and unanswered questions that does not pleasure users in one way or the other. Issues such as; Fake News, extremist content, hate speeches, terrorist propaganda, and so forth, of which the company says it’s trying to fight out. Notably, last week on Thursday the company offered additional insight on its efforts to remove terrorism content, a response to political pressure in Europe to militant groups using the social network for propaganda and recruiting.

On Thursday they introduced a new blog dubbed ‘Hard Questions’ to openly discuss the big issues for society raised by social media. Facebook in a blog post writes saying they face challenging new questions — everything from how best to safeguard personal privacy online to the meaning of free expression to the future of journalism worldwide.

“We debate these questions fiercely and freely inside Facebook every day — and with experts from around the world whom we consult for guidance. We take seriously our responsibility — and accountability — for our impact and influence.”

“We want to broaden that conversation.”

Facebook starting this blog is hoping to be a place not only to explain some of their choices but also explore hard questions — some of which the company had listed such as;

• How should platforms approach keeping terrorists from spreading propaganda online?
• How aggressively should social media companies monitor and remove controversial posts and images from their platforms? Who gets to decide what’s controversial, especially in a global community with a multitude of cultural norms?
• Who gets to define what’s false news — and what’s simply controversial political speech?
• Is social media good for democracy?[related-posts]

Facebook’s Elliot Schrage, Vice President for Public Policy and Communications said, they don’t expect everyone to agree with all the choices they make.

“We don’t always agree internally. We’re also learning over time, and sometimes we get it wrong. But even when you’re skeptical of our choices, we hope these posts give a better sense of how we approach them — and how seriously we take them,” he said.

Mark Zuckerberg in his post of Facebook said, “Our goal is to create more discussion and hear your feedback on how we can have the most positive impact in the world.”

The first issue that was discussed was how the company Counters Terrorism, including how they also use artificial intelligence (AI) to keep terrorist content off Facebook, something they have not talked about publicly before.