Report: Facebook “Group Experts” Feature Is Helping Spread Misinformation

When Facebook created its “Group Experts” feature in the spring, the move was intended to help users identify “trusted, well-informed members.” However, according to a new report from the Tech Transparency Project, the feature may actually be having the opposite effect, lending respectability to militia groups and other extremists promoting misinformation on the platform.

The report says that Facebook has allowed some administrators of these dangerous organizations to get a “Group Expert” badge. Some of these groups have also been allowed to run ads promoting misinformation.

“When [Group Experts] was rolled out in April of this year, Facebook hadn’t gotten a handle on the vaccine misinformation, the COVID misinformation, the election misinformation, and yet they’re creating these new tools that they have to imagine are going to be used by nefarious actors inappropriately,” Tech Transparency Project director Katie Paul told VICE. “So while failing to address their problems they’re adding in new tools to make those problems worse.”

Of course, problems like this aren’t new for Facebook. The platform is simply too large to catch every error. However, this presents a compelling case that Facebook needs to rely less on AI and more on real experts to deal with these issues.




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