Get off Facebook, folks... https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/mark-zuckerberg-hypocrite-and-trumpist Mark Zuckerberg is a hypocrite and a Trumpist Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t think social media companies should be arbiters of truth. He’s full of ****. In an interview with Fox News anchor Dana Perino, the Facebook founder and CEO chided Twitter for its decision to add a fact check to one of President Donald Trump’s tweets containing an unhinged conspiracy theory about rampant voter fraud. According to Zuckerberg, that’s not the kind of thing Facebook would do because the social media company is committed to free speech and letting people judge for themselves whether politicians are telling the truth. But as is so often the case when it comes to the Silicon Valley billionaires guiding our digital lives, he’s not being entirely honest about how Facebook has handled the Trump era. Let’s review the simple truth about Zuckerberg: He’s a hypocrite and a Trumpist. It might seem Facebook has followed this “free speech” approach in turning a blind eye to Trump’s many lies, but he's shown he’s more than willing to be an “arbiter of truth” for others. Facebook does fact-check posts, and it does limit their reach and flag violations based on what third-party fact-checkers determine -- but it has also carved out a Trump-sized exemption for politicians. Prior to an October change to Facebook’s advertising rules on false information, Trump had been repeatedly violating its policies without facing consequences. That October policy change exempted politicians on the advertising side of things, as well. Statements from politicians are exempt from fact-checking on Facebook except for two specific areas: misleading posts about the U.S. Census and voting. “Attempts to interfere with or suppress voting undermine our core values as a company, and we work proactively to remove this type of harmful content,” reads an October Facebook blog post on content that may suppress votes. “We remove this type of content regardless of who it’s coming from.” This was later clarified on Facebook’s blog post about census misinformation, specifying that “as with voter interference, content that violates our census interference policy will not be allowed to remain on our platforms as newsworthy even if posted by a politician.” In March, Facebook briefly allowed the Trump campaign to run ads that violated its census interference policy before changing course. According to a Media Matters analysis earlier this month, the Trump campaign published at least 529 Facebook ads with false claims of voter fraud in just two days, which it shouldn’t have received exemptions to do under Facebook’s voter suppression rule. Facebook is extremely comfortable being the “arbiters of truth,” so long as “truth” matches what Trump and pro-Trump groups say In 2019, after an anti-abortion group posted videos on Facebook claiming that “abortion is never medically necessary,” a fact check from medical professionals marked that as false. But after right-wing media outlets and several Republican senators complained that this accurate fact check was a form of censorship, Facebook removed it. Even after another third-party entity reviewed the issue and cleared Facebook of “any systemic bias,” Facebook did not reapply its fact checks. In March, an offshoot of Fox host Tucker Carlson’s conservative outlet The Daily Caller used its fact-checking status on Facebook to get an unflattering post about the president marked as false and downranked. After Trump claimed that Democratic concern about the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak and potential for it to take on pandemic status was a “hoax,” Check Your Fact swooped in to get a Politico post about his comments marked as “false information.” Earlier this month, The Lincoln Project, a group of “Never Trump” Republicans, released an ad critical of Trump. After the president worked himself into a fury over the video on Twitter, Facebook rejected it as an ad and buried the organically uploaded version of the clip under a “partly false” label. It was so labeled because of its claim that “Donald Trump bailed out Wall Street but not Main Street” in the CARES Act. The thinking here apparently goes that because the bill did some good for “Main Street,” it was false enough for Facebook to reject it. When Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) ran an ad calling for the break-up of Facebook, Amazon, and Google, Facebook removed the post. After proving Warren’s point, Facebook reinstated the ads. For years, Zuckerberg and Facebook have been making increasingly obvious overtures to conservatives, even bringing on Republican operatives to help them craft policy. In 2017, in an effort to address the flood of false news being shared before the 2016 election, Facebook announced fact-checking partnerships with The Associated Press, ABC News, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and Snopes. Conservatives immediately complained, falsely claiming that these mainstream news organizations were somehow “left-wing” and “liberal” partisans, with The Daily Caller claiming that Snopes was engaged in “outright lying in service of a liberal narrative.” Facebook responded to this criticism from the right by adding The Weekly Standard, an explicitly partisan conservative publication with a lengthy track record of spreading misinformation, as a fact-checker. Check Your Fact, an extension of The Daily Caller, was later added as another. In 2018, after conservatives baselessly complained about supposed “anti-conservative bias” on Facebook, the site hired former Republican Sen. Jon Kyl to audit the platform. Kyl’s eventual report was a flop, but it showed just how easily Zuckerberg is goaded to adopt conservatives’ framing on any given issue. In October, Popular Information’s Judd Legum reported on Facebook’s embrace of the right. “Everyone in power is a Republican,” a former Facebook employee in the company’s D.C. office told Legum. “Decisions are made to benefit Republicans because they are paranoid about their reputation among conservative Republicans, particularly Trump.” To say “everyone in power is a Republican” didn’t actually turn out to be much of a stretch. Facebook Vice President for Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan, the man who reportedly pushed for Facebook to partner with right-wing groups like The Daily Caller and Breitbart, is a former deputy White House chief of staff for George W. Bush. Vice President for U.S. Public Policy Kevin Martin is another former member of the George W. Bush administration, serving at the Federal Communications Commission. Public Policy Director for Global Elections Katie Harbath is a longtime Republican operative and former chief digital strategist for the Republican National Committee. Zuckerberg is not being duped by the right-wing; he’s part of it. It’s telling that Zuckerberg’s first instinct was to side with Trump in his latest Twitter tirade and run to Fox News to defend the decision. It’s not surprising, but it’s telling all the same. Fox News is where Trump will be sure to see him, and Zuckerberg is pandering to his audience of one. In October, Zuckerberg met secretly with Trump for dinner at the White House. It’s anybody’s guess what the two of them discussed, but there’s only so much time one can devote to telling Trump that he’s “No. 1 on Facebook.” Last year, Politico reported that Zuckerberg had connected quietly with conservative commentators, media executives, and politicians in a series of private meetings. Those of us on the outside should see this for what it is. As persistent as the Silicon Valley liberal stereotype is, this isn’t Zuckerberg meeting with his ideological opposites. This is Zuckerberg in his element, with his friends, getting ready to reelect the president. That’s who Mark Zuckerberg is, and it’s why he’s been giving Trump a pass this whole time.
Lmao. Can't believe someone is trying to spin this as a positive. So, Republicans, who are all about their constitutional rights, and less government, are now complaining about having their constitutional rights being violated, essentially within a private business. The way to solve this is to add more governing, but just to the businesses they're paranoid are out to get them. At the same time, the Republican Supreme Court ruled that a business has the right to refuse service based on someone's sexuality. It seems like they want it both ways when it will benefit them. Twitter is a private entity, and has every right, through the constitution to restrict (which it's not really doing) or apply warnings to it's users. Just like that bakery case they ruled on in Colorado. It has let so many people get away with so many things, including the demented guy that signed the executive order, which will get shot down as illegal. But you and yours go on, and keep that spin cycle going. I'm dizzy, for sure.
trump, great defender of the first amendment and free speech... Trump campaign attempts to remove satirical cartoon from online retailer https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...remove-satirical-cartoon-from-online-retailer
@Os Trigonum Do you feel Clutch needs to explain to the FCC why he bans each member who posts stuff that violates the forums rules?
I guess what I don't get about the Trump Twitter Crusaders is this: Sides have been drawn. Zuckerberg is going to let any and all information fly. He's not going to stop anything Jack and Twitter are going to regulate, and as we've seen from the President's tweet history, very loosely regulate. So, you know what their platforms are. Facebook is slightly pro Republican (probably as a business strategy). Twitter may lean left, but I doubt it. If you don't like Twitter, stay off of it. Make Facebook your thing. It's how capitalism works. I'm not sure when everybody decided that being on every platform of social media was a NECESSITY. I, for one, cannot stand Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. I think Twitter is somewhat useful, though.
These companies don't have political leanings. They have maximize profits leanings. Whatever decision they make is to make sure profits are maximized.
Oh yeah, I hear you on that. I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt by playing devil's advocate as in "if" they did. Clearly Zuckerberg is out to make money. Twitter, not as much because they don't rely as much of ad revenue.
Great twitter thread by Danielle Citron, a law professor specializing in information privacy, free expression and civil rights. Danielle Citron bio:https://www.daniellecitron.com/bio/
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/...h-new-warning-over-tweet-glorifying-violence/ excerpt: Twitter could not be doing more to highlight the threat to free speech in first targeting a political tweet on main-voting and then targeting a second tweet under the ambiguous standard of “glorifying violence.” Let’s unpack its message and its meaning. First, calling for tough law enforcement is a quintessential political statement. My objections was not that it glorified violence but that it was an irresponsible escalation of the rhetoric when Minneapolis police were struggling with a very dangerous and volatile situation. Second, “glorifying violence” could be a standard used to curtail everything from War and Peace to Looney Tune cartoons. It is an arbitrary standard that invites biased enforcement. For example, Kathy Griffin ( the comedian responsible for the infamous severed Trump head picture) called out to her followers that Trump should be stabbed with a “syringe with nothing but air inside it.” Such reckless and inflammatory speech is all-too-common in today’s politics. I have been hit with violent threats on every social media platform, including people calling for me to be physically attacked on Twitter. That was not flagged or deemed “glorifying violence.” The fact is that I would oppose the censoring or labeling of those comments against me because I remain a firm believer that good speech will prevail over bad speech. It is more important to me to preserve Twitter and other platforms as a forum for free speech. Third, where Trump escalated the rhetoric, Twitter has escalated its controls. As discussed in the columns, Democratic leaders have called for years for Twitter and other companies to crackdown on political speech deemed misleading or false. It is now plunging headlong into private censorship and speech regulation. This is wrong and a threat to free speech. As a private entity, Twitter falls below the radar of the First Amendment. However, it can cause irreparable damage to free speech by limiting expression for hundreds of millions of users. Finally, Twitter is making the case against itself. It is given protections under Section 320 because it has claimed to being neutral supplier of virtual space for people to speak with one another. Roughly 80 million people want to hear from Trump, not Twitter. Yet, Twitter has again inserted itself into that conversation to convey its own view of what is being discussed. Imagine if the telephone company took it upon itself to periodically interrupt calls to express its view of what was just said. If Twitter insists on being an active participant in such postings, it is changing its legal status and morphing into a viewpoint publisher. I am still leery of the government intervening on social media. Free speech has few advocates in this fight. It is primary a struggle between Twitter, Trump, and the Democrats over who controls such speech. Indeed, yesterday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for resisting speech monitoring and censorship as a matter of free speech. Pelosi lashed out that those who want to preserve a free speech zone are “all about making money,” ignoring free speech advocates who have no financial interest in these companies. Pelosi said that opposing such monitoring means that social media companies simply want “to make money at the expense of the truth and the facts” and are trying to “hide under the freedom of speech.” Twitter had the chance to admit error and return to neutrality in the interest of free speech. It is clearly more concerned with expressing its views than preserving its forum. Frankly, I would not care about such self-inflicted wounds except that free speech will likely suffer the collateral damage from Twitter’s glorifying speech controls.
Freedom of Speech should be the priority. Selective fact checking and censoring should be scrutinized. It goes against the concept of Free Speech. It'll be interesting to see how Dorsey responds in the long run. It seems like the Trump team has been thinking about this for some time and probably has worked out the contingencies. I wonder if Dorsey has done the same? People are endorsing 'Parlor' as a 'Free Speech' platform. I attempted to set up an account but as soon as I was asked for my phone number I aborted it. But I could easily see another platform moving into the Twitter arena to compete. If I were Dorsey, I would've left the fact checking to the critics not my employees. Is Twitter a publicly traded company? I'd be curious to see how this affects the stock price if it's public. (It's down 2% when I checked....nothing concerning yet if you're Twitter).
The President of the United States is held to a higher standard than the average citizen. I have no issues at all with what Twitter did as far as fact checking him. Turley seems to flip flop depending on who's being impeached and has shown to be very inconsistent in his opinion.
You do know free speech has nothing to do with a private business right? Nobody is being prosecuted. How is adding a fact check not also free speech?
The 1st Amendment protects a citizen's free speech from being infringed upon by the US government, not a government employee from having his lies exposed by a private company. This isn't a free speech issue.
