Meta
的高级执行官安德鲁·博斯沃思 (Andrew Bosworth) 表示，个人用户，而不是技术平台，应对在线传播错误信息负责。
上周末在 HBO 上接受 Axios 采访时，博斯沃思表示，Meta 不能扼杀希望通过分享信仰来表达自己的观点。
“个人是选择相信或不相信一件事的人；他们是选择分享或不分享一件事的人，”博斯沃思在采访的片段中告诉 Axios 的 Ina Fried。
尽管 Meta 努力提供权威信息，但对于疫苗犹豫不决以及 Meta 是否可能对此有所贡献，博斯沃思认为，在人们可以自由表达自己的想法的民主国家中，人们可以选择寻找他们喜欢的任何信息。
据 Axios 称，“你对这些人有意见，”博斯沃思说。 “你对 Facebook 没有问题。你不能把它放在我身上。”
该公司被批评者指责助长虚假健康声明、气候变化否认主义以及 2020 年选举被盗或非法的谎言的传播。研究还表明，右翼错误信息比其他来源的错误信息更具吸引力。
在某些情况下，Meta 已经开始在用户的提要中推广可靠的信息。例如，该公司表示已通过其关于该主题的门户网站将超过 20 亿人与值得信赖的 Covid-19 信息联系起来，并在 2020 年使用标签向人们通报新闻机构的预计选举结果。
但是，随着冠状病毒的 Delta 变体今年开始在全球范围内加速传播，包括总统乔·拜登在内的批评者指出，由于社交媒体上的错误信息导致对疫苗的持续犹豫，导致了该病毒的死亡人数。
在 Axios 采访中，博斯沃思表示，尽管科学家们积累了大量知识，但 Meta 不可能对事实真相有足够的把握来限制用户言论。 “我们知道什么是错误信息的能力本身就存在问题，我认为这是合理的，”他说。
Bosworth 明年将接任 Meta 的 CTO。作为 Facebook 的长期高管和 CEO 马克·扎克伯格的密友，博斯沃思直言不讳地捍卫该公司对增长的激光般的关注是“合理的”，因为它的产品将人们联系在一起。他还辩称，该公司的算法只是“暴露了人类本身的欲望，无论好坏”。
Top Meta exec blames users for spreading misinformation
Individual users, not tech platforms, shoulder the responsibility for the spread of misinformation online, according to Andrew Bosworth, a top exec at Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook.
In an interview over the weekend with Axios on HBO, Bosworth said it is not up to Meta to stifle the views of individuals who wish to express themselves by sharing their beliefs.
"The individual humans are the ones who choose to believe or not believe a thing; they're the ones that choose to share or not to share a thing," Bosworth told Axios's Ina Fried in a snippet of the interview.
Pressed further on vaccine hesitancy and whether Meta may be contributing to it despite its efforts to provide authoritative information, Bosworth argued that in a democracy where people are free to speak their minds, people can choose to seek out whatever information they prefer.
"You have an issue with those people," said Bosworth, according to Axios. "You don't have an issue with Facebook. You can't put that on me."
The company has been accused by its critics of facilitating the spread of bogus health claims, climate change denialism and the lie that the 2020 election was stolen or illegitimate. Research has also shown that right-wing misinformation is far more engaging than misinformation from other sources.
In some contexts, Meta has moved to promote reliable information in users' feeds. For example, the company has said it's connected more than 2 billion people to trustworthy Covid-19 information through its portal on the topic, and in 2020 it used labels to inform people about news organizations' projected election outcome.
But as the Delta variant of the coronavirus began accelerating worldwide this year, critics including President Joe Biden pointed out that continued vaccine hesitancy, driven by misinformation on social media, was contributing to the virus's death toll.
In the Axios interview, Bosworth suggested that despite the accumulated knowledge of scientists, it is not possible for Meta to have enough of a grasp on what is factually true to be able to restrict user speech. "Our ability to know what is misinformation is itself in question, and I think reasonably so," he said.
Bosworth takes over as Meta's CTO next year. A longtime Facebook executive and a close confidant of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Bosworth has vocally defended the company's laser-like focus on growth as "justified" because its products connect people. He has also argued that the company's algorithms are merely "exposing the desires of humanity itself, for better or for worse."
