Facebook keeps banning Qanon and hate speech. It won’t ever work.
When the big internet platforms like YouTube and Facebook began to kick hate speech and harmful misinformation off their sites last year, a process that sped up as the pandemic flared and protests against police violence roiled the country, something comedian Sarah Silverman would often say about audiences came to mind: “People go towards love.”
If you begin to push people away from a community for believing bad things, those people, being human, will look for people who accept them.
The gist of her point is that if you begin to push people away from a community for believing bad things, those people, being human, will look for people who accept them, who will show them love, and who will welcome them inside. It’s a nuanced take, one that comes from a place of almost cringeworthy-levels of empathy, that feels relevant as we grapple with communities that have nurtured right-wing extremism and harmful misinformation. Their members, suddenly cut off from the online public square, have found other platforms where they feel more welcome.
Case in point: What did QAnon believers do after YouTube, Twitter and Facebook banned their content? They did not disappear. They went to Parler, briefly, and then to sites like Twitch, where, according to the New York Times, 20 large communities of QAnon and Q-adjacent subscribers have sprung up since last fall. Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, doesn’t think QAnon is a hate group. And, until the Times asked about it, it didn’t think the Proud Boys counted as a hate group either.
No shade against Twitch specifically: They face exactly the same cycle of content moderation headaches that befell Facebook and Twitter, as groups with aggressively controversial and hateful viewpoints colonized small parts of their server space.
Twitch is currently in what I call the “Whac-a-Mole arms race” phase: They’re dealing with smart ideological entrepreneurs who know how to manipulate hashtags and discourse markers (change a single letter!) to circumvent any attempts to moderate whatever pops up.
It is not illegal to believe in racist things, nor is it possible to shame people who believe these things from attempting to find people who think like them.
Misinformation researchers have worried about the “moving toward love” problem for a while. Censoring views does not, in the networked commons, get rid of them. Far from it, in fact. It is not illegal to believe in racist things, nor is it possible to shame people who believe these things from attempting to find people who think like them.
As much as we might complain about Facebook and Twitter and their echo chambers, the reality was that people with extremist views were exposed to contrary opinions fairly frequently, especially if their algorithm seemed to be tweaked toward engagement.
On the one hand, seeing the other side take umbrage at your content is a great motivator; on the other, it reminds you, on a subtle level, that you’re still part of a larger community and bear some responsibility to it. But if you suddenly find yourself in a smaller space where people believe the same things you do, your responsibility narrows.
Your beliefs become more virulent, even if you’re not able to spread them as quickly. When you do recruit someone new — say, to a Twitch stream, or to a Discord group, or to a private Telegram chat — they’re likely to be more like you, a true believer who has been kicked out of some other community.
And then there are the folks who decide to get violent. Say what you will about Facebook’s inability to take down #StoptheSteal groups before the January insurrection — and there’s a lot to say — at least Facebook had visibility, which meant it could (and did) work with law enforcement to find its users who used the platform to organize the storming of the U.S. Capitol.
Banned by Facebook, many turned to platforms where the anonymity of the content and the security of the interactions were the point. Even Zoom, the go-to app for pandemic meetups, wasn’t immune. PBS found a healthy migration of militia content to the online teleconferencing platform in the wake of Facebook’s post-election attention to election misinformation.
Similarly, Telegram and other apps that offer closed groups have become prolific spreaders of harmful misinformation. I don’t endorse wide surveillance of speech as a matter of principal, but there is no easy way for aspirational violent movements to be monitored after they’ve been forced to use platforms that can’t moderate their content without a tip-off.
The same goes for misinformation: A doctor friend of mine found his way into a closed Telegram group for teenagers who liked to spread beauty tips. My friend tried to correct what he considered to be harmful misinformation in real time, only to be kicked out of the group by the moderator. When I suggested that he might have taken a different tack — maybe contacting the moderator privately or building a community within that community of teens who wanted medically correct information — he told me that he simply did not have the time.
Indeed, who does have the time and the bandwidth? It takes significant, often herculean psychological resilience to stand up to purveyors of misinformation, and the costs to people who try can be significant.
There is no easy way for aspirational violent movements to be monitored after they’ve been forced to use platforms that can’t moderate their content without a tip-off
If I could re-engineer the internet, I would endorse the “protocols, not platform” approach that Mike Masnick, editor of the Techdirt blog, recently described. Masnick suggests far fewer restrictions on speech and far more interoperability between platforms in a way that allows for people to curate their own experiences with more agency. In other words, make it easier for people inside closed communities to pull in alternative sources of information. Dropping the “walls” that platforms have put up (think of how Twitter and Facebook operate as entirely different digital universes) and allowing for a marketplace of filtering mechanisms could change our entire online experience.
The end result would be that fewer bad actors are kicked off major platforms, but it would also mean that they don’t end up nurturing their grievances in private corners of the internet. This would require us to expand our empathy for atrocious viewpoints; but it could also mean the internet would, in the main, be a lot safer.
CORRECTION (May 4, 2021, 8:46 a.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated the parent company of Twitch. It is Amazon, not Google.
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Today, we are releasing Facebook Graph API v18.0 and Marketing API v18.0. As part of this release, we are highlighting changes below that we believe are relevant to parts of our developer community. These changes include announcements, product updates, and notifications on deprecations that we believe are relevant to your application(s)’ integration with our platform.
For a complete list of all changes and their details, please visit our changelog.
General Updates
Consolidation of Audience Location Status Options for Location Targeting
As previously announced in May 2023, we have consolidated Audience Location Status to our current default option of “People living in or recently in this location” when choosing the type of audience to reach within their Location Targeting selections. This update reflects a consolidation of other previously available options and removal of our “People traveling in this location” option.
We are making this change as part of our ongoing efforts to deliver more value to businesses, simplify our ads system, and streamline our targeting options in order to increase performance efficiency and remove options that have low usage.
This update will apply to new or duplicated campaigns. Existing campaigns created prior to launch will not be entered in this new experience unless they are in draft mode or duplicated.
Add “add_security_recommendation” and “code_expiration_minutes” to WA Message Templates API
Earlier this year, we released WhatsApp’s authentication solution which enabled creating and sending authentication templates with native buttons and preset authentication messages. With the release of Graph API v18, we’re making improvements to the retrieval of authentication templates, making the end-to-end authentication template process easier for BSPs and businesses.
With Graph API v18, BSPs and businesses can have better visibility into preset authentication message template content after creation. Specifically, payloads will return preset content configuration options, in addition to the text used by WhatsApp. This improvement can enable BSPs and businesses to build “edit” UIs for authentication templates that can be constructed on top of the API.
Note that errors may occur when upgrading to Graph API v18 if BSPs or businesses are taking the entire response from the GET request and providing it back to the POST request to update templates. To resolve, the body/header/footer text fields should be dropped before passing back into the API.
Re-launching dev docs and changelogs for creating Call Ads
- Facebook Reels Placement for Call Ads
Meta is releasing the ability to deliver Call Ads through the Facebook Reels platform. Call ads allow users to call businesses in the moment of consideration when they view an ad, and help businesses drive more complex discussions with interested users. This is an opportunity for businesses to advertise with call ads based on peoples’ real-time behavior on Facebook. Under the Ad set Level within Ads Manager, businesses can choose to add “Facebook Reels” Under the Placements section. - Re-Launching Call Ads via API
On September 12, 2023, we’re providing updated guidance on how to create Call Ads via the API. We are introducing documentation solely for Call Ads, so that 3P developers can more easily create Call Ads’ campaigns and know how to view insights about their ongoing call ad campaigns, including call-related metrics. In the future, we also plan to support Call Add-ons via our API platform. Developers should have access to the general permissions necessary to create general ads in order to create Call Ads via the API platform.Please refer to developer documentation for additional information.
Deprecations & Breaking Changes
Graph API changes for user granular permission feature
We are updating two graph API endpoints for WhatsAppBusinessAccount. These endpoints are as follows:
- Retrieve message templates associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
- Retrieve phone numbers associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
With v18, we are rolling out a new feature “user granular permission”. All existing users who are already added to WhatsAppBusinessAccount will be backfilled and will continue to have access (no impact).
The admin has the flexibility to change these permissions. If the admin changes the permission and removes access to view message templates or phone numbers for one of their users, that specific user will start getting an error message saying you do not have permission to view message templates or phone numbers on all versions v18 and older.
Deprecate legacy metrics naming for IG Media and User Insights
Starting on September 12, Instagram will remove duplicative and legacy, insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API in order to share a single source of metrics to our developers.
This new upgrade reduces any confusion as well as increases the reliability and quality of our reporting.
After 90 days of this launch (i.e. December 11, 2023), we will remove all these duplicative and legacy insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API on all versions in order to be more consistent with the Instagram app.
We appreciate all the feedback that we’ve received from our developer community, and look forward to continuing to work together.
Please review the media insights and user insights developer documentation to learn more.
Deprecate all Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 endpoints
Facebook Wi-Fi was designed to improve the experience of connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots at businesses. It allowed a merchant’s customers to get free Wi-Fi simply by checking in on Facebook. It also allowed merchants to control who could use their Wi-Fi and for how long, and integrated with ads to enable targeting to customers who had used the merchant’s Wi-Fi. This product was deprecated on June 12, 2023. As the partner notice period has ended, all endpoints used by Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 have been deprecated and removed.
API Version Deprecations:
As part of Facebook’s versioning schedule for Graph API and Marketing API, please note the upcoming deprecations:
Graph API
- September 14, 2023: Graph API v11.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 8, 2024: Graph API v12.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- May 28, 2024: Graph API v13.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
Marketing API
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v14.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v15.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 06, 2024: Marketing API v16.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
To avoid disruption to your business, we recommend migrating all calls to the latest API version that launched today.
Facebook Platform SDK
As part of our 2-year deprecation schedule for Platform SDKs, please note the upcoming deprecations and sunsets:
- October 2023: Facebook Platform SDK v11.0 or below will be sunset
- February 2024: Facebook Platform SDK v12.0 or below will be sunset
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Before today (August 28, 2023), advertisers could not promote images and/or videos used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API. This process created unwanted friction for our partners and their customers.
After consistently hearing about this pain point from our developer community, we have removed this unwanted friction for advertisers and now allow users to seamlessly promote their image and/or video media used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API as of August 28, 2023.
We appreciate all the feedback received from our developer community, and hope to continue improving your experience.
Please review the developer documentation to learn more.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Launching second release of Facebook Reels API: An enterprise solution for desktop and web publishers
We’re excited to announce that the second release of FB Reels API is now publicly available for third-party developers. FB Reels API enables users of third-party platforms to share Reels directly to public Facebook Pages and the New Pages Experience.
FB Reels API has grown significantly since the first release in September 2022. The new version of the APIs now support custom thumbnails, automatic music tagging, tagging collaborators, longer format of reels and better error handling.
FB Reels API will also support scheduling and draft capability to allow creators to take advantage of tools provided either by Meta or by our partners. Based on the feedback we received from our partners, we’ll now provide additional audio insights via the Audio Recommendations API and reels performance metrics via the Insights API.
Our goal in the next couple of releases is to continue to make it easier for creators to develop quality content by adding features like early copyright detection and A/B testing. We’re also excited to start working on enhanced creation features like Video clipping- so stay tuned to hear more about those features in the future.
Call-to-Action
If you are a developer interested in integrating with the Facebook Reels API, please refer to the Developer Documents for more info.
Not sure if this product is for you? Check out our entire suite of sharing offerings.
Tune in to Product @scale event to learn more about FB Video APIs and hear from some of our customers.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
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