The statements were made in an interview published on December 12.

US media Axios interviewed Andrew Bosworth, vice president of augmented and virtual reality at Meta.

Next year, he will become the technical director of the company.

The interview focused on fake news and the platform's role in their spread.

Facebook has allegedly contributed to the dissemination of false information about the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to internal documents retrieved by the CNN channel, the platform did not have sufficient moderation tools in place to effectively fight against violent messages.

More specifically, we can read that "Facebook's ability to detect questionable comments on vaccines is poor in English language publications and totally non-existent in other languages".

Since the launch of the vaccination campaigns, many critics claim that Facebook has played a significant role in the reluctance to be vaccinated and the spread of false political information.

All the more so since the revelations of the Facebook Papers shared by the whistleblower France Haugen.

User responsibility

Faced with these accusations, Andrew Bosworth chose to blame the users during an interview for Axios.

The vice-president insisted on one point: fake news are social problems rather than problems amplified through social networks.

“People choose to believe or not to believe something.

They are also responsible for choosing what to share or not, ”he said.

Throughout the interview, Andrew Bosworth's words clear the platform of any responsibility.

His argument considers that individuals choose whether or not to trust this information disseminated by their friends and family.

“It's their choice.

They have the right to do so.

You have a problem with these people.

You don't have a problem with Facebook.

You can't blame this on me, ”he continued.

Facebook and the fight against the virus

Andrew Bosworth has championed Facebook's role in fighting the spread of the virus. He justifies his position by asserting that the company has carried out "one of the largest information campaigns in the world to disseminate authoritative information". During the interview, the vice president cited Facebook's efforts to disseminate accurate information about vaccines. “Even if we spent all our money on prevention, it wouldn't prevent people from seeing things they don't like. This will not eliminate all the possibilities that people will have to use the platform in a malicious way, ”he says.

However, a study conducted by researchers from New York University and Grenoble-Alpes University calls into question these efforts announced by the vice-president.

The researchers looked at posts made by more than 2,500 Facebook pages between August 2020 and January 2021. The results reveal that posts from sources known in the dissemination of fake news got six times more likes, shares and interactions on the platform than posts from more reliable sources.

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