Inside Facebook’s Transparency Report And A Theory About Musk’s Endgame

“The conversation about social media platforms censoring free speech always takes place on the most abstract level. People will complain about individual posts that get removed, sure, but only rarely does anyone drill down into the details: on what categories of posts are removed, in what numbers, and in what the companies themselves have to say about the mistakes they make.”

Facebook released their biannual transparency report for the second half of 2021. It’s filled with numbers, intentionally confusing and hard to decipher. A few things, however, are relatively clear.

• Despite what you might hear in the media, most of content moderation isn’t about politics or free speech. It’s taking down or policing content such as hate speech, bullying, child exploitation and nudity.
• Millions of posts are taken down by mistake and later reinstated with little to no explanation for users, creating frustration and providing easy fodder for critics to complain about foul play.
• Most reporting and data seems focused on individual posts rather than on offensive user accounts or users who are repeat offenders.

One conclusion from digging into this research is that Facebook (and perhaps other platforms as well) might be better served by focusing on reducing the number of fake, spam or anonymous accounts that people are allowed to have on their platforms. Based on the assumption that people might be more reluctant to post illicit content or be a bully or post racist remarks if that were more directly tied to their identity in real life, that move alone could cut down offensive posts significantly. If it worked, that might allow the platform more time and space to improve the way content gets moderated in the first place. Not to give him too much credit, but perhaps a similar thought is actually Elon Musk’s strategic endgame with his latest reason for putting the Twitter deal on hold.