If you’ve been following the news, you’re aware that the Delta variant of the Coronavirus is all around us. While it only poses a very minor risk to the vaccinated, it is wreakinghavoc on the unvaccinated.

At the time of writing, we’re back up to around50,000 new cases a dayin the United States, the vast majority of which are unvaccinated (around99%of those hospitalized for Delta are unvaccinated). So with the easy availability of vaccines (at least in the US), why doesn’t the remainder of the population just get the jab?

There are many andvarious这个问题的答案。但(显然)一个主要的原因是错误信息，其中许多错误地将疫苗置于负面的地位。And it is fair to say—despite Facebook’spositive effortsto spread accurate information—that it is still one of the major conduits of misinformation as well. Perhapsthe主要管道。It turns out that justtwelve people, including anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are responsible for generating 65% of the vaccine misinformation that gets shared on Facebook. Facebook, effectively, is their megaphone.

This brings us to our main question:

Is Facebookmorallyresponsible for the dissemination of misinformation on its platform?

Opinion on this isdivided. The Biden administration has been laying blame at the feet of social media and on Facebook in particular. Facebook has argued that its positive efforts at spreading correct information let them off the hook.

What might a philosophical view of moral responsibility say on the matter? Here’s why this is a hard question. Facebook, in strange ways, combines personal communication among friends with widespread broadcasting of (mis)information: some posts end up reaching millions. That makes it very unlike media that have come before, for which we have adequate moral frameworks. To see the difficulty, consider two very different cases.

Case 1: The Paper Company

Suppose you and I own a paper company. We produce and sell paper, on which people can write whatever they like: letters, drawings, poems, histories, or . . . misinformation about vaccines, which may then be widely disseminated through mail or whatever. Let’s say lots of misinformation is being printed and shared on paper we produced.

If we pose our question in relation to The Paper Company, it is intuitive that the answer isno, The Paper Company is not morally responsible. The Paper Company’s job is to provide a medium for communication—paper—not to police that communication. The responsibility for spreading misinformation in this case falls solely on the individuals who are producing and disseminating it.

Case 2: The Traditional Media Broadcaster

Now suppose you and I own a company that broadcasts traditional media: we do radio and television news and talk shows. Let’s say also that lots of our guests and on air personalities are propagating misinformation about vaccines. Consequently, millions of people are seeing, hearing, and in many cases believing it.

传统媒体广播公司对虚假信息的传播负有道德责任吗?In this caseyes, absolutely. Traditional broadcasters are in the business of curating content that gets shared on their platforms. Nor would it be hard to weed out misinformation if we tried, since we are choosing and paying the people who go on our stations.

So what about Facebook?

These two cases help us see why the issue of Facebook’s responsibility is a puzzle. It’s not intuitively clear whether Facebook is more like The Paper Company or The Traditional Media Company. It is, in different ways, like both.

脸谱网is like The Paper Company in two significant ways: (1) Basically anyone can put content on it, and (2) it is to a large extent used for individual personal communication. But it is like The Traditional Media Company in two other significant ways: (a) Any information put on it easily spreads to millions of people, and (b) there is some chance of curating the information that goes up (e.g., through algorithms that promote or demote content).

这种混合的情况似乎使我们的问题无法解决。然而，幸运的是，有一个哲学框架可以增加清晰度。

John Fisher and Mark Ravizza’s now-classicResponsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibilityproposes that what they call “guidance control” is what’s required for a person to havemoral responsibilityfor happenings of various sorts (actions, omissions, consequences, etc.). Guidance control comes down to two conditions (here I paraphrase):

• 首先，产生行为或结果的机制必须是行为主体自己的。

• Second, that mechanism must respond to reasons.

所以，举个例子，如果我偷了东西，我就负有道德责任，因为选择那条路的心理机制是我的，并且是对原因做出反应的(如果我有足够强大的理由，我就会选择别的东西)。

How can we extend this analysis to the dissemination of vaccine misinformation on Facebook’s platform?

A lot of work would be needed to do the theoretical extension from individuals to corporate bodies, like Facebook. But I think Fisher and Ravizza’s two conditions do illuminate why Facebook is to some degree morally responsible for the dissemination of misinformation—much more so than The Paper Company would be.

First, the mechanisms of dissemination (the whole platform, basically) do indeedbelong to Facebook, so Facebook satisfies the first condition in a way that a paper company does not and cannot (once sold, the paper is out of their hands). But note that, since it is designed as aplatform, there are many other mechanisms (housed in the minds of users) that are also contributing to dissemination, which Facebook does not own. So this makes Facebook a joint owner in the collective mechanisms of dissemination, rather than sole proprietor.

其次，Facebook的平台设计确实是有理有据的。如果符合他们的目的，他们可以改变他们的算法，而且他们经常这么做。设计这些算法的初衷是为了最大化用户在平台上花费的时间。

So Facebook indeed has some guidance control over the spread of misinformation on its platform, unlike The Paper Company, and to that extent it has moral responsibility as well.

The only rejoinder I see here for Facebook is that the steps it would have to take to prevent the spread of misinformation would be too Draconian and contrary to the spirit of the platform, which is about people connecting with each other and allowing them to talk. But I’m not convinced. If Facebook's mission is indeed to connect people, there are two things it could do better that wouldn’t compromise that mission.

首先，他们可以完全停止充当虚假信息超级传播者的扩音器。这一步骤可以采取各种形式，但一个明显的做法是对任何页面设置更高的标准，比如超过2000个关注者;这样做不会影响个人对其他人说的话，只会迫使拥有大量粉丝的骗子去其他地方。Second, they could use their algorithms to comprehensively demote misinformation: basically, such improved algorithms would imply that if I posted, say, theGates microchip conspiracy theoryon my wall, then that would be seen in no one’s feed—only people who deliberately came to my wall would see it.

我认为，这两项措施都是可行的，而且会产生影响，尤其是在达美航空正在全球范围内肆虐之际。如果我的分析是正确的，Facebook至少在道德上要为传播错误信息而阻止人们接种疫苗承担部分责任，它也要为随后发生的可预防死亡承担部分责任。

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