Facebook Groups are Destroying America

I've been saying this for years. Yes, I have a vested interest because they are competition, but I have no problem with competition in and of itself - that is what forces us businesses to provide better service and lower costs. If you have a monopoly, there's no incentive to try harder.

My issue with the groups is that there's no accountability, no transparency, and they're a breeding ground for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and increasing confirmation bias/narrow world views. When Facebook began to get more popular, I touted forums such as this as being a better reflection of our community because each individual cannot control who is a member here and will be exposed to a greater diversity of viewpoints. On Facebook, a person is exposed only to the views of their friends and family or the Pages they follow, and that was before groups were a thing on that platform. The advent of groups has made the problem ten times worse for reasons explained in the article below.

This article is unfortunately biased toward the left, discussing things like Obamagate, but it's a problem for allowing ANY type of hate groups to form and organize. We're never going to solve the problems we face in this country if we continue to read content that stokes hate of "the other side" and dehumanizes our fellow Americans. We HAVE to work together to get through our difficulties, and that means listening, understanding, and compromising with those with whom you disagree and differ ideologically. Facebook does not foster this kind of environment, it feeds us more of what we already like to keep us happy and on their platform, furthering our misunderstandings of each other, distrust, and division.

I implore you to be careful which groups you join, be critical of all content you "Like" and share (i.e. don't just blindly accept it as true, but fact-check it), and try to use community groups less, and public, locally-owned community forums more.

Facebook Groups Are Destroying America
Nina Jankowicz Cindy Otis, Wired Opinion | 06.17.2020

As The Wall Street Journal found, Facebook’s own research showed that algorithmically suggested groups and Related Pages suggestions lead users further into conspiracy-land. They should be eliminated entirely. If users had to search out groups for themselves, they might be a bit more thoughtful about which they joined. Finally, very large groups should not be afforded the same level of privacy as family groups where Grandma shares recipes and cousin Sally posts baby pics. If a group exceeds a certain membership threshold—say, 5,000 people—it should be automatically set to public, so that any Facebook user can participate. That way, these groups can be observed by the researchers and journalists on whom Facebook now relies to police its platform.

Not to sound snarky, but you can Google it as easily as anyone here. Obviously Mark Zuckerberg owns Facebook and Instagram and has a Board of Directors, it's a publicly traded company. Jack Dorsey owns Twitter.

The point of the article is that there is very little transparency on who creates and runs the groups on Facebook. FB only recently started showing more transparency on Business Page owners, and requiring documentation if you are going to pay for political ads on the platform, but they are woefully behind on accountability for the hundreds of thousands of groups, tens of thousands of which that seemed to be American political groups were found in fact to be run by foreign actors following the last election. I don't want a foreigner telling me who I should support, do you?