Facebook: Social Media Isn’t Always Healthy for Democracy

Facebook Inc. acknowledged today that social media can have a negative impact on democracies, and that the company has more work to do in order to ensure that the good outweighs the bad.

“From the Arab Spring to robust elections around the globe, social media seemed like a positive,” Katie Harbath, who runs the Facebook team that builds relationships with governments around the world, wrote in a blog post. “The last U.S. presidential campaign changed that, with foreign interference that Facebook should have been quicker to identify, to the rise of ‘fake news’ and echo chambers.”