Phil Howard INFORMATION · TECHNOLOGY · SOCIETY

Commentary: Facebook and Twitter’s real sin goes beyond spreading fake news

Social media companies are taking heat for influencing the outcomes of the U.S. presidential election and Brexit referendum by allowing fake news, misinformation campaigns and hate speech to spread.

But Facebook and Twitter’s real sin was an act of omission: they failed to contribute to the data that democracy needs to thrive. While sitting on huge troves of information about public opinion and voter intent, social media firms watched as U.S. and UK pollsters, journalists, politicians and civil society groups made bad projections and poor decisions with the wrong information.

(Continue reading in Reuters.)

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