Will limits political ads before americans go to the polls in november that message from facebook the giant tech company says it aims to stop election misinformation but does this convince everyone would it work this is inside story. How welcome to the program. Facebook has announced steps to prevent its platform being exploited in the week leading up to the u. S. President ial vote it will stop accepting new political ads 7 days before november 3rd election but it will continue to show whats already in the system the social media giant has been criticized for allowing political as to be micro targets only seen by small and select communities instead of being debated by a wide audience its also accused of not. Doing enough to fact check articles on his platforms c. E. O. Mark zuckerberg unveiled the new measures in a Facebook Post he says this election wont be business as usual and admits he has a responsibility to clear up confusion he says hes worried about divisions in the country and the could increase the risk of civil unrest he believes there could be intense claims and counterclaims as ballots are being counted so facebook will put labels on posts from candidates attempting to declare victory before the final results come in over the past 2 years facebooks been scrutinized for how it handles misinformation last november were summoned by the u. S. Senator answer questions about russias to sway the 2016 president ial election here method 470. 00 fake accounts were linked to a shadowy company with ties to the kremlin and that he spent a 100000. 00 to put chase ads on divisive issues facebook confirmed data from tens of millions of users was improperly shared with cambridge anality the london based Consultancy Firm worked for Donald Trumps president ial campaign as well as groups that pushed for brag that in the 2016 your k. Referendum into 1018. 00 un human rights acts 1st blamed facebook for helping spread hate speech against a range of muslims in myanmar the social media giant admitted it was used to for man division and inside violence in the militarys brutal crackdown against the ranger. Lets bring in our guests from horowitz kentucky is james warren executive editor of news gone if Fact Checking platform from new york is jim anderson c. E. O. Of social flow a tech company which helps media platforms distribute social content from albuquerque is Alan Schroeder a professor at Northeastern University and author of president ial debates Risky Business on the campaign trail thank you for joining us jim before we get into the details now. That it is limiting political facebook taking a lead position or is it purely the move im not sure theyre taking a lead position but facebook we need to remember is a dominant company at 60 times larger than twitter by market capitalisation so its easy to sort of think that Facebook Twitter snap ticktock theyre all the same size theyre not facebook is a giant so i wouldnt expect them to have necessarily taken the lead and i think weve heard Mark Zuckerberg say time and time again that he doesnt want to be the arbiter of truth is the phrase hes used often in testimony to the u. S. Congress i think theyve realized well they may not want to be the arbiter of truth but clearly they have a role to play and elections and in the u. S. Election and they have to do something germ this is a company that came under the spotlight particularly since 2060 where many people said that it was responsible for undermining democracy then do you think that. Facebook is just trying to take a pic cautionary stance this is my question to understand yeah i think they are i mean they have like i said theyve got to react and do something you know this is in some ways a fairly mild you know banner one week ahead of the election no new ads you can continue to run the ads that youve had you just cant introduce in a new ad. And i think that was probably the subject of a considerable amount of debate internally should they start to try to do that immediately now roughly 60 days out from the election should they do it 30 and so you can imagine you know heated debates where they finally compromised on lets do it a week ahead of time so the political candidates and the campaigns can still run their ads all the way up to the election but starting a week beforehand no new content so that sort prevents the last minute surprises and theres been a lot of questions about well truthfulness who gets to define whats true or not one persons free speech is another persons hate speech and then you know theres just all kinds of controversy built into that james swan and how do you see the whole thing unfolding. Well i think most of the bases were just. Touch right there you know its interesting i was looking at a piece in the read code which is part of the fox network now right tech writer named peter pascoe who mentioned that he had a conference last october november and asked the same question to keep facebook person and this was a matter that they were discussing the area also why now i mean clearly they feel pressure a lot of it internally to do something but devils in the details this does not prevent campaigns d at all from running the existing ads or ramping up the distribution of those ads which may be full of false the advent doesnt prevent politicians at all who continuing to lie in those because facebook has said it wont do that we just heard the late date in october which is the key one here and hand also critically what is the facebook genius of targeting particularly particular groups say im going to particular place in kentucky for the next couple of days you could get a certain number of emails when youre targeting air or maybe youre getting aljazeera viewers in Northern Illinois and that is sort of the brilliant and insidious tactic of facebook not going to go on highly there is the issue of whether or not this i think very meritorious Cottage Industry of folks trying to get the truth and do a lot of lies whether it actually has any impact on the american electorate and how significant the measures announced by facebook and will be with will they be enough to misinformation. Schweiger a couple of things to consider 1st of all the the prohibition on new advertising in the final week it sounds good but it seems maybe a little much you know not enough into lecture for instance todays or term or a 3rd of the voting actually begins in North Carolina so 2 months before the official election day people are already starting to book so banning ads during the last week because they cant you fact check doesnt really address the big problem here on a more Positive Side there was Something Else in that more zuckerberg announcement yesterday that caught my eye that i think could be of consequence and that is what theyre what theyre calling i dont know if theyre calling it a ban exactly but the idea of monitoring victory claims someone other words if the election is not decided on a member of 3rd because of mail in ballots in because of the closeness of the election and so on and so forth facebook has said now that they will not allow candidates to come forth and claim victory so well see how that one plays out jim one of the criticism about those measures analysis is to take a about the time frame like the changes are going to be introduced one week before the vote people are starting to vote and the process. Until that week is web net in many people could be still affected by political ads why has that issue in particular not been addressed. Well it is again its all a matter of the perspective that youre coming from you know i think a lot of people have been criticizing facebook for a lot of time for not doing anything and and i understand even to a large degree agree with that play facebook play such an outsized role i dont think its very viable for them to just say sorry were not going to be the arbiter of truth were not going to play any role and yes while the election is happening you know the balloting in the early balloting is already beginning the president ial debates havent occurred what if there is a giant moment in the 1st or the 2nd or the 3rd president ial debate that a candidate wants to capitalize on and really you know drive home the point that my opponent said this and i want to make sure you understand that because my position is different if you put the ban in place right now then everything that happens in the 3 president ial debates would be completely off limits and so i think that it was trace the tricky nature of this i mean we all want free and Fair Elections and concept but then we all tend to gravitate towards our partisan positions you know i really want my candidate to have it a little more fair you know and sort of that natural human nature its i forget who set it up believe james said the devils in the details i couldnt agree more these things are very very difficult they always have been and and facebook is definitely in the crosshairs over it james says were talking about those details in particular now what it seems that the us 2 ways to bypass those rules like you can advance the. Fund them later and therefore you wont be held accountable in front of the justice right i can i can crank out a 1000 ads today and i can target them to liberals in michigan or conservatives in the state of idaho and they can be absolutely full of lies and im home 3 and then there is you know the in the underlying daily crux of the facebook machine which is you send me an interesting story whether its factually correct or not and i just pass it along and send it off 2. 100 friends or when donald trump says essentially he did. The other day that you know you can vote twice you can vote by mail and then go to your polling booth and you know they dont have a record of the old again and then people send them out and i think its legitimate and in that context what is most interesting to me as executive editor a group which assesses the credibility of web sites we just do one off on individual statements we do entire websites and bought about 5800. 00 in the u. S. And europe is the extent to which also send the outing of calls may increasing actually cause people to even hold on tighter to their beliefs and it could be an unintended consequence of the meritorious work that a lot of us are the one alan now if you say youre going to introduce lol the question is who is going to police those laws and particularly political. Well yeah and i think thats the big sort of fly in this facebook announcement is its its one thing to have policies but then you have to enforce them and to enforce you know truth against this onslaught of discipline ronsard daily you know sort of lies and exaggerations and misstatements its really tough in so for any individual company to do that you know its a big ask even a big company like facebook and thats why we have to learn scroope and the other Fact Checking groups that are that are doing you know great work around this this campaign but in the final analysis will anybody believe anything that they dont believe already and i think thats thats sort of the world that we live in now thanks largely to 2 done in terms of the beast one of the truth of the past 4 years that is you know you just got people willing to believe what they already believe and not open to to alternative information and the sun were talking about flaws. With missile water i feel like i want to jump in here as well its a small sample weve done tremendous work and new guard on of all Things Health science we went into this endeavor 2 years ago thinking that most of the awful sights we if i would be political in fact we found several 100 and this was a pandemic a site with a roni as factual information you talk to doctors anywhere in new york seattle well tell you all the patients who come in every day saying well i just read this miracle cure for my Pancreatic Cancer Alliance you suggesting that in the case of facebook we have gotten them to take down many erroneous health sites particularly in europe when we out of them was full of it ranias coronavirus information so thats going to be an interesting test case will that actually impact people when they know or when an organization like process saying that low. Each war will help you get rid of your coronavirus and no bill gates wasnt a catalyst for discovering the virus and instigating it so if this goes beyond just the politics which is sort of sexy subject for us in the campaign it goes into some very very primal matters like health and people going to their doctors all over the world and how they of been beholden to crazy information will or the work that we do impacts some of that i have my fingers office with understand i still remember when i was a student of journalism we were told basically a long long time ago they have to look at the messages because its the message that shapes your perception to reality were talking about flaws in the system but we tend to forget sometimes that these platforms were talking about Twitter Facebook and or other social media platforms have become so deeply embedded in the way we talk communicate look at the reality that introducing those measures might be a way to too little little too late. Well i dont know if its too little too late i think im an optimist by nature and its frustrating and as challenging as our Current Situation is you know democracy and elections are messy i mean they always have been and so im always a little wary about saying oh its too late or its you know the world has changed to fundamentally its too far gone facebook is too big you know those are all legitimate arguments particularly facebook is too big is a fair argument that many jurisdictions and regulatory agencies are having and so there are natural consequences and cons of those types of conversations but i think you know its really all about consumer attention right and this mobile device which ive got right here even while doing this interview my mobile device it cant be more than 2 feet away id be willing to bet everybody else has got their mobile device that close to them and really if you want to get down to the heart of it that its 80 percent of social Network Consumption is done on a mobile device thats where the consumer attention is focused thats why facebook and to a degree twitter google and others end up being so so popular and so dominant dominant compared to say traditional linear t. V. And previous election in 2016 about 60 percent of americans were getting their news from social media platforms the concerns that people are voicing about the need to clamp down on this information. And distortion in social media is its because this time on november the people feel like theyre moving too wasnt an chawed to to territory in american politics. Well yes i think thats a thats an accurate description of it but i dont think thats has only to do with social media i think its 4 years of a very very sort of a nerve inducing administration and i think that you know at all bets are off we dont know what will happen we thought we knew what was going to happen the last time and it didnt happen and so i think thats the thats the climate in which we exist and in throwing the pandemic when you cant go to vote in person as you normally would is easily and and it just sort of all you know all sort of adds up here i think the danger for Facebook Though if if these book which was seen to have helped trouble in the election in 2016 if that happens again i think facebook itself stands the risk of becoming at least in the United States a platform for older voters in red states but i think you know youre theres already the delete facebook and i think that would be accelerated you know you know with facebook is seen to have have contributed to a similar outcome in 2002 or james in years gods which is a fact check in platform you do understand the fact that we need more time to gather enough data about how ads and to set them ation shape photos decisions in the meantime what do you think should be the ultimate goal here how should we move forward to protect people rights and preserve democracy. Well why i think one critical matter and its something that confronts on a Younger Generation or around the world its not just an american problem has to do with not knowing which media sources to the leave in a world in which like my 6 year old is getting 25 different bulletins every moment that hes looking at facebook please look even stick around he may not know the difference between the credibility of the New York Times and the credibility of some crazy blogger in his big john as sitting in a basement somewhere in Rural America and i think that growing ignorance compounds the propensity of politicians perhaps lying remember this goes at all levels. Of democracy all levels of government around the world and im something im very sensitive to because in a couple of days my my 6th grader and my love of the great are starting Remote Learning back in chicago i look at all the classes theyve got and i can assure you both that in the elite private school and only Public School there is nothing that verges even vaguely close to Media Literacy and helping these kids understand what are trustworthy sources of information what are not which is why we new scar hope that we can play a role there by Police Telling people whether you can trust a particular site who owns it who edits it do they run corrections what is their track record and hopefully having some sort of aerial down effect on Education Systems around the country around the world jim never before has the United States of america is so polarized to the point where now in a way or another social media platforms have the powers of the opinionated and these are the people who are now shaping the way. We decide and we make decisions how can you how can you distinguish between this fact and the other fact that Facebook Twitter and other social media platforms are trying to introduce what people say are very symbolic gestures to bring about a genuine sane content that could be conducive to a vibrant democracy. Well so a couple of things number one ill challenge your assertion that never before has the country been so polarized we had a civil war back in the year we need 65 right of the predates obviously all of us but that was a pretty polarized time the phrase as we were talking about Fact Checking earlier theres a phrase i dont know how well it translates outside the us but its called snake Snake Oil Salesmen right somebody whos peddling of a miracle cure that came from the late 18th hundreds in the wild wild west of the u. S. This is not a new issue and when you say you know the challenge is that you know we cant we dont have experts anymore we dont know who to trust and some ways that i think thats very very true and i appreciate what news guard and other you outlets like it are trying to do to provide some context and credibility but the other the flipside of that is citizens are having a voice we just dont happen to like and i personally dont happen to like some of what my fellow citizens have to say i think that they may or may not be truthful they may not be accurate they may not be acting in good faith all 3 of those things can be true that doesnt mean they have or they dont have a right to express their opinion wrong as i may think it may be and so i think were really wrestling with that whole free speech consequence right out you know i support the right for your free speech but the minute you Say Something i disagree with do i still support your i see your point and i think we need to be yeah i mean we do be really careful about prescribing well only the the experts are the ones who about this so lets define who the expert is right now and i agree with with with with jim when he talks though is that a misuse that we seem to be no wrestling with and one of. These issues is. The feeling that social media should have expended a well do you in fact know shrinking because of the opinionators now if we are to address these issues way on to we talking about the need to address the computer algorithms that seem to be missing up with our brains in a way or another to the point where they are dictating what we should like what we should dislike. Well its a its big business theres a you know so far in this president ial election 1500000000. 00 has been spent on our own president ial adverts president ial Campaign Advertising thats just the president ial race not the senators and governors and house of representative members etc etc its so there is so much money to be made here and Companies Like facebook are reaping the vast majority of that so you know theyre they have to balance their business desires against you know these larger societal desires i would just like to echo what jim warren said about young people i think this is so important that we teach Media Literacy that we teach civics in that young people dont get so cynical about the process that they just stop voting altogether i mean already they vote in a much lower proportion than older voters is so i think theres you know were looking at this problem not just for 2020 better is an ongoing thing about our future our society and our ability to function as a democracy gentlemen i have i have one last question for you and appreciate if you could just give a very very brief and says and ill go to the 3 of you if they American Public opinion feels like betrayed by the social media platforms after november the 3rd what would be there with a cautious i was thought with james well i hope the repercussions would be churning increasingly to informed credible sources of information i think would be a little bit naive in short term not to believe d thank you and some of this is reinforcing ideologically ground it beliefs but i do hope they wont turn to operations like new scar to find out whether or not they can trust the source of information jim a little less than 20 seconds. Antitrust i think is the most logical consequence of these tech platforms have gotten big if you believe that theyre there corrosive to our democracy one obvious solution is to break them up. Right even so that would be a political solution i think you also piece of backlash from regular users that are people feel facebook is not no longer you know to their benefit or its just become a propaganda tool thank you just drop it will be good thank you really appreciate your time unfortunately were going to also say about a promise you will definitely revisit this particular interesting subject in the coming weeks. Jim and james want to thank you very much indeed i would appreciate your insights and thank you for watching you can see the program again at this time by visiting our website www dot com for further discussion go to our Facebook Page thats facebook dot call for was last a. J. Inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter. A. J. Inside slow to follow me. On the whole team here in doha by phone now. After 2 years in office has the pakistani Prime Minister delivered on his promises of freedom of speech its now being curtailed under your watch mr Prime Minister. Watch as the evidence can you just talked earlier pakistans Prime Minister imran khan talks to our jazeera. And the global fight against Financial Crime banks rely on databases for customer checks and it requires you to sure that you know who that person is and you understand the risk to the person brings to the bank in terms of Financial Crime aljazeera world investigates big Financial Data and what can happen if you find yourself on a list where. Terrorists the database on al jazeera. Understand the differences and similarities of cultures across the wound sentimental when you go. To news and Current Affairs that matter to you the whole d. N. A. About there are still even use of people who are subject to the fisheries played by the pound blue fin played no way to put all these people theyre willing to be true to children that would like to get back story this place has become the big brother you have to hear all of them and to treat them with something within respect. 1200 hours g. M. T. On aljazeera im come all santa maria and these are the Headlines Health officials in iraq warning hospitals may soon lose control within days when you spike in corona virus infections more than 5000 new cases were confirmed on saturday the highest daily number yet the Health Ministry has largely blamed it on people whove been taking part in large gatherings without masks or social distancing here is also jabari with more from baghdad and what is behind this record surge