The most important takeaway from Quinn's research, however, was that engaging with toxic content only made it worse. "When you get attacked, the instinct is to push back, call it out, say, 'This isn't true,'" Quinn says. "But the more engagement something gets, the more the platforms boost it. The algorithm reads that as, 'Oh, this is popular; people want more of it.'"
然而,奎因的研究中最重要的结论是,接触不良内容只会让情况变得更糟。奎因说:“当你受到攻击时,本能的反应是反击,大声地叫出来,说'这不是真的’。“但参与度越高,平台就越能推动它的发展。算法的解读是,‘哦,这个很流行,人们想要更多。’”
The solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place. "The platforms have policies against certain types of malign behavior, but they haven't been enforcing them," she says.
她得出的结论是,解决方案是向平台施加压力,迫使它们执行自己的规定,既可以删除传播虚假信息的内容或账户,也可以在一开始就对其进行更积极的监管。她说:“这些平台有针对某些类型的恶意行为的政策,但它们一直没有执行。”
Quinn's research gave ammunition to advocates pushing social media platforms to take a harder line. In November 2019, Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home, where they warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked. "It took pushing, urging, conversations, brainstorming, all of that to get to a place where we ended up with more rigorous rules and enforcement," says Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others. (Gupta has been nominated for Associate Attorney General by President Biden.) "It was a struggle, but we got to the point where they understood the problem. Was it enough? Probably not. Was it later than we wanted? Yes. But it was really important, given the level of official disinformation, that they had those rules in place and were tagging things and taking them down."
奎因的研究为推动社交媒体平台采取更强硬路线的倡导者提供了论据。2019年11月,马克·扎克伯格邀请9名民权领袖在他家共进晚餐,他们警告他,与选举有关的谎言已经在肆无忌惮地传播。瓦尼塔·古普塔是民权和人权领导会议的总裁兼首席执行官,他出席了晚宴并会见了推特首席执行官杰克·多西等人。(古普塔已被拜登总统提名为司法部副部长。)他说:“通过推动、敦促、对话、头脑风暴,我们最终制定了更严格的规则和执行。”“这是一场斗争,但我们终于让他们明白了问题所在。这就够了吗?可能还不够。是不是比我们想要的更晚?是的。但考虑到官方虚假信息的程度,他们制定了这些规则,给东西打上标签然后把它们删除,这真的很重要。”
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