Facebook should create a “circuit breaker” to help prevent dangerous disinformation and incitements to violence from ever reaching a mass audience.
By the time millions of people have shared false information, it’s already too late.
A simple circuit breaker could have stopped disinformation about the pandemic and about the 2020 elections from reaching millions of people.
Disinformation and incitements to violence are nothing new. What is new is online platforms that spread controversial content at lightning speed, before anyone’s had a chance to check it for dangerous disinformation or incitement to hatred and violence.
That’s how the verifiably false Plandemic video spread to more than 8 million people in one week before social media companies took it down.
We deserve social media platforms free from attacks on our elections, free from pandemic misinformation, and free from threats to our physical safety.
Circuit breakers are used in the stock exchange when there’s a dramatic drop, to pause trading and allow traders to assimilate new information and make better-informed choices. Social media circuit breaking would work the same way, pausing the most high volume posts for fact-checking before they reach millions of people.
Facebook can and should build and flip the switch!
As Facebook users, we demand Facebook enact a circuit breaker policy to stem the flow of hate and lies!