Maria Ressa, one of the winners of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize has criticised Facebook for threatening democracy, accusing the company of failing to protect its users against negative content and disinformation, saying that the platform is "biased against facts".
Shortly after winning the award, the journalist, who is the owner of Rappler news website in the Philippines, told Reuters that Facebook's algorithms "prioritise the spread of lies laced with anger and hate over facts."
This is not the first time that Facebook is accused of spreading negative content. Recently, a former employee of the company stated that the platform prioritises profit over controlling hate speech and misinformation. The company however denies all accusations.
Following Ressa's remarks, Facebook commented that it continues to heavily invest in the removal of negative content.
The company's spokesperson said:
"We believe in press freedom and support news organisations and journalists around the world as they continue their important work."
Ressa won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday along with journalist Dmitry Muratov for exposing the leaders of Russia and the Philippines for corruption whilst defending freedom of expression worldwide.
Ressa said that although Facebook is the largest distributor of news in the world, " it is biased against facts, it is biased against journalism".
She said:
"If you have no facts, you can't have truths, you can't' have trust. If you don't have any of these, you don't have a democracy. Beyond that, if you don't have facts, you don't' have a shared reality, so you can't solve the existential problems of climate, coronavirus."
Ressa has been targeted by supporters of President Rodrigo Duterte in hatred campaign on social media which, according to Ressa, aimed to destroy her and her work's credibility.
[h/t: Reuters]
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