By: Rodney Artida
Last week, Facebook launched another feature to entice their netizens. The social media giant added Community Action in its News Feed in selected areas in U.S. The new feature can unite locals, fellow citizen to unite, to advance their advocacies and to request change from their local and national leaders.
Facebook says the new tool called Community Actions, will be moderated using algorithms, human staff, and user flagging.
How does it Work?
Similar to the website called Change.org, through Community Actions, Facebook users can create their own petition or find a cause to support. If a friend shares a petition, the Community Action will also pop up in News Feeds.
Users can also tag a politician or government agency to contact them and this could put pressing issues in front of local representatives. The local representatives or leaders meanwhile, when notified, can see the number of people who supported the petition.
People can share videos and stories explaining why the issue is relevant. Events can also be tagged in Community Actions and the new feature also supports Fundraisers to encourage people to contact officeholder concerned.
While anyone can create any type of petition they want, “Facebook is purposefully trying to focus Community Actions to be more narrowly concentrated on spurring government action than just any random cause”. But wait, Facebook will give ‘constituent’ badges so that officials concerned can give more attention to relevant petitions.
Potential Threats and Issues
The question will be where Facebook’s mediators draw the line on what’s appropriate as a Community Action, how will they censor and manage the public’s sentiment and the subsequent calls of bias when one group or petition is censored.
Another issue that may arise is Facebook’s consistency when it comes to enforcement of guidelines. Since Facebook’s community rules are open to interpretation, which means we will expect inconsistent enforcement as this new tool will launch. This feature will surely test Facebook’s limits and tolerance when it comes to freedom of expression and censorship.
The Facebook moderation algorithms and staff have been criticized for allowing fake news to thrive in the social media giant.
Politicization of Social Media
Moreover, Facebook said that it will tighten rules for political ads in countries with elections scheduled in the first half of the year, building on transparency efforts already underway in the United States, Britain, and Brazil after a series of scandals.
Aside from that, Facebook has been criticized for their tolerance on fake news proliferation and disinformation efforts of cause groups. Facebook has been weaponized in politics for misinformation and disinformation propaganda of political parties. Propaganda is widespread in the social media site gaining thousands of likes and shares.
In 2018, Facebook was forced to admit that Cambridge Analytica, a political firm working for Donald Trump in 2016, had hijacked the data of tens of millions of its users.
Undeniably, Facebook is having a hard time dealing with disinformation and fake news given its wide reach and various regulations imposed of nations when it comes to the internet and new media. One strategy might be effective in one country while some may not.
Certainly, such an addition will require extreme supervision by Facebook to ensure that petitions won’t go out of control or even result with dangerous, risky or cunning manners. This is a clever and easy way to encourage members of localities to become more involved and bring change in their community. Whether this new feature will bring social transformation or benefit vested interests, we’ll have to wait and see.
Young ECHO 
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