Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1413221
OPINION 23.9.2021 Alexiei Dingli Prof Alexiei Dingli is a Professor of AI at the University of Malta and has been conducting research and working in the field of AI for more than two decades, assisting different companies to implement AI solutions. He forms part of the Malta.AI task-force, set up by the Maltese government, aimed at making Malta one of the top AI countries in the world W histleblowers are people, typically employees, who ex- pose information about a pri- vate, public or government or- ganisation. We've seen various examples in the past decades from the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, and many oth- ers. But there has recently been a relatively unknown exposure that might shatter our relation with technology in the coming years. It is known as the Face- book Files. ese Files are internal Face- book documents leaked to e Wall Street Journal and the American Congress. e full extent of the content of these documents is still un- known; however, these files clearly show that the compa- ny is aware of the ill effects of its platform. Even the US congress highlighted some of these issues, yet it failed to ad- dress them until today! e following is a synopsis of the most worrying discoveries so far: 1. On Facebook, all people are equal, but some people are more equal than others. According to the company, its rules apply to everyone. But these documents show that this is not the case, and there is a secret group of elites with special privileges on the social platform. On the one hand, Mark Zuckerberg boasts that his companies place people and high-profile individuals on the same footing, yet on the other hand, the company built a system that exempts them from some or all of its rules. e program responsible for this is called Cross-Check and shields millions of VIPs from the company's regular en- forcement. Unfortunately, this protection has led to many cases of abuse since these peo- ple are free to post harassing comments or even incite vio- lence—something which aver- age users are forbidden to do. Of course, such restrictions are essential to ensure that people act civilly online. Still, when you lift them for people who have a big following, you are essentially igniting a time bomb which may lead to troll- ing, online lynching and po- tential physical harm. 2. On Facebook, the virtu- al world is not the real world. When we browse through so- cial media, the program shows us what we want to see and not what's happening around us. It is so sensitive that we can easily hack it. To give you an example, if I want to buy a property, all I have to do is vis- it a handful of property sites, LIKE some property pages and kaboom; I start getting property adverts similar to my searches. Many people (especially the young ones) who do not un- derstand how Facebook works let the algorithm control them. ey start seeing tiny snapshots of their friends and acquaintances while they're having fun. Finally, they ex- perience the social pressure to LIKE those posts, thus in- structing Facebook to show them similar photos. So now they've entered a vicious cir- cle of seeing lovely photos and LIKING them. Since people can access Facebook from any- where, the effect of this is that while you're having a bad day and you try to escape by log- ging into social media, these photos will pop up and make your life seem miserable in comparison. Rather than re- lieve the person, social media eventually worsens the situ- ation, and study after study confirms that it may play a role in depression. is process is not an acci- dental byproduct of social me- dia, but the platform exploits this effect by design. e Face- book Files reveal that the com- pany is aware that Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) is toxic for many teen girls. eir internal studies confirm that Instagram is much more harmful to a sizable percent- age of teens than other social platforms. Rather than tack- ling the mental-health issues seriously, Facebook has re- peatedly played down these effects. 3. Money makes Facebook go round. In 2018, the com- pany noticed that user en- gagement declined, so they tried to improve it under the guise of making the platform better. e publicised reason was rather noble: making the social media site healthier by fostering interaction between family and friends. But in real- ity, according to the Facebook Files, these changes were hav- ing an adverse effect on people resulting in angrier interac- tions between them. e engi- neers at Facebook put forward some proposals to improve the situation, but Mark Zuck- erberg blocked them because he feared that people would interact less. 4. Facebook, the land where the law is weak. All sorts of people and organisations use the platform. us it is not surprising that drug cartels, human traffickers and ter- rorists are active on it. Docu- ments found in the Facebook files clearly show that many employees raised alarms about the use of Facebook, especially in developing countries where its customers are expanding rapidly. According to these re- ports, users in the Middle East use Facebook to lure women into human trafficking. Ethi- opian armed militia uses the platform as a megaphone to incite violence against eth- nic minorities. And the list of shame continues with epi- sodes of illegal pornography, organ selling, and government actions to quench dissent. In many cases, these alerts fall on deaf ears, and when they do take action, it is inadequate to cull the abuses. 5. Facebook losing control. Sometimes we wonder who is controlling facebook. e thought the Mark Zucker- berg and the board of direc- tors might be exerting all of this control on people is quite scary. But the reality is even grimmer. During the height of the pandemic, Mark Zuck- erberg decided to showcase Facebook as a global force of social good. In one of his memos, exposed in the Face- book Files, he wanted the global vaccination drive to be a "top company priority". e effect was the inverse. Anti-vaxxers and other ac- tivists used the platform to spread their message using Facebook's tools, effectively creating a "barrier to vacci- nation". ey sowed doubt, downplayed the severity of the pandemic and ruthlessly attacked the restrictive meas- ures in place. So even though Mark Zuckerberg set a goal, Facebook was not capable of controlling its content. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure that the coming months will reveal other issues related to the plat- form we all use. What's for sure is that we cannot turn a blind eye to many of them. Maybe the time has come to take a step back- wards, study these issues seri- ously and find solutions for the good of everyone, rather than proceed high speed towards a global brick wall. The Facebook leaks Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg