Ahead of the 2020 election, Facebook strengthened its protections against foreign interference to avoid a repeat of 2016, when Moscow conducted a pro-Trump disinformation campaign on the platform. But Trump’s presidency and the pandemic presented a tougher foe: homegrown threats to truth and democracy. Despite Facebook’s rollout of new labels for election interference and COVID-19 misinformation, unsubstantiated claims continued to spread widely; dissemination of the QAnon conspiracy theory, for example, wasn’t banned until a month before the vote, and antivaccine misinformation reached millions of users before it was banned in February 2021, almost a year into the pandemic. Enforcing the bans remains a challenge. Still, under CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership, Facebook has seen its market cap surge some 50% since the start of 2020, to $890 billion, suggesting that the company isn’t likely to change its business model anytime soon.
- Inside Mississippi's Last Abortion Clinic—and the Biggest Fight for Abortion Rights in a Generation
- Do Current COVID-19 Tests Still Detect Omicron?
- The First U.S. Offshore Wind Farm Could Be a Lifeline for Struggling New England Cities
- Welcome to TV's Era of Peak Redundancy
- The Key Role a Local Newspaper Played in the Trial Over Ahmaud Arbery's Murder
- TIME's Top 100 Photos of 2021
- 2021: The Year the Grift Kept Giving
