An executive at Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said on Sunday that individual humans are responsible for spreading misinformation.
Andrew Bosworth, who will become the CTO of Meta next year, said on the show that there is only so much Facebook can do to moderate speech.
It wouldn't eliminate people from seeing speech that they didn't like on the platform if we took every single dollar and human that we had. He said that it wouldn't eliminate every opportunity that someone had to use the platform.
The responsibility for what is shared on its platforms ultimately falls on people and society, according to Meta's vice president of augmented and virtual reality.
Individual humans can either believe or not. They are the ones who choose to share or not. I don't like what they say and I don't agree with what they say, so I don't think they have a voice.
December 12, 2021.
Facebook has come under fire for sharing false or harmful content on its platform, especially in relation to the 2020 election.
A study published in September found that posts from misinformation sources got six times more engagement on the platform than posts from legit news sources. A report published in the same month found that troll farms were spreading misinformation to 140 million Americans a month ahead of the 2020 election.
When asked by Ina Fried about how Facebook has contributed to vaccine hesitancy, Bosworth promoted the campaign to spread accurate information about the vaccine.
He said if people want to follow less reliable information they can do that.
They are allowed to do that. You have an issue with people. You don't have a problem with Facebook. "You can't put that on me," he said.
