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Gerrit De Vynck ... Facebook Social Good Summit ... an initiative to 'give back' (or not)

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Hi all, Gerrit De Vynck here. Facebook is building new tools to help charities and other groups who promote ``social good.’’ I was at the internet giant’s second annual Social Good Forum in New York last week. The atmosphere was a stark contrast to the congressional committees the company and its social media peers attended in October and November, where politiciansgrilled Facebook’s top lawyer on how it could have let Russian-sponsored accounts run wild on the platform in an attempt to influence American politics. This time around, CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself took the stage to whoops and cheers from the packed room of several hundred attendees – mostly representatives from charities and non-profits.

The whole event was an extension of Facebook’s revamped mission statement, as unveiled by Zuckerberg in June: 'to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.’’ It shows that even as Facebook is coming under fire for allowing so-called filter bubbles and fake news that drive people apart, the company is still working hard to increase the ways people interact with one another on its platform.

Most of the products announced at the forum aim to make it easier for charities to raise money on the site by eliminating transaction fees and letting them connect non-Facebook fundraising tools to a Facebook campaign. But it also trumpeted the fact that 4 million people have used Facebook to sign up to be blood donors in India, taking the company deeper into a realm usually covered by governments. Other new “social good” features could raise privacy concerns: one of the tools highlighted was an algorithm that can automatically detect if a video or post might have content suggesting the poster is at risk for suicide, allowing Facebook to notify police who may intervene directly.

The last year has seen major examples of Facebook being used in ways that actually drove people apart – from the U.S. presidential election to the whipping up of hatred against the Rohingya minority group in Myanmar. Still, there’s no question the platform is a place where people come together for good, too, and Zuckerberg is determined to keep emphasizing that side of the equation. -- Gerrit De Vynck