The Good
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was lionized last week for announcing a ban on all political ads.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, said political ads, including manipulated videos and the viral spread of misleading information, presented challenges to civic discourse, ‘all at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.’ He said he worried the ads had ‘significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.’
(The New York Times, October 30, 2019)
Frankly, this is what any CEO in his position should have done right after the report on Russian hacking in the 2016 presidential election, which US intelligence agencies published in January 2017.
The Bad
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was pilloried last week for refusing to follow suit. He insists that Facebook places value on “voice and free expression” above all else.
But it speaks volumes that he blames users for being duped by the disinformation Facebook propagates. This, while overlooking the fact that the users benefiting most from his platform are Putin’s Russian trolls.
Granted, close behind is Putin’s American troll – who just happens to be president of the United States:
If Facebook were to ban — or even limit — ads, it could upend Trump’s fundraising and re-election plan. …
Trump relies heavily — much more so than Democrats — on targeted Facebook ads to shape views and raise money.
(Axios, November 2, 2019)
Arguably, Facebook could provide no greater public service than to upend Trump’s ability to shape views with his political ads. After all, Trump has telegraphed his intent to continue lacing them with the same kind of “big lies” that spew forth every time he opens his big mouth.
Mind you, I appreciate Zuckerberg’s inclination to eschew any role in censoring free expression. But, in doing so, he’s inviting government officials to regulate Facebook the way they regulate TV and radio. I urge them to accept his invitation.
Meanwhile, critics accuse Zuckerberg of simply pursuing profits at the expense of principles. His tone-deaf defense is that political ads account for a negligible amount (0.5%) of Facebook’s revenues.
But he must be lying or is harboring an ulterior motive. Because it makes no sense for him to continue provoking so much public ill-will for so little corporate gain.
Nothing betrays Zuckerberg’s tone-deafness quite like rebranding his network’s name in the midst of this furor. For some mysterious reason he wants its name in all caps: FACEBOOK.
It may be that Zuckerberg just wants to buck the trend of so many companies rebranding their names in all lowercase (e.g., ebay, flicker, intel, citibank, macy’s, bp, vitamin water, and xerox). But one wonders why FACEBOOK would rather follow the fashion of staid companies like IKEA and BEST BUY.
I suspect that, despite congressional concerns about its monopolistic power and influence, Zuckerberg wants to shout that, just like Citigroup is too big to fail, FACEBOOK is too big to break up.
Which brings me to Senator Elizabeth Warren. She, of course, is the Democratic presidential candidate and his “chief” nemesis. More to the point, she’s leading the anti-trust crusade to do to FACEBOOK (Google and Apple) what Ronald Reagan did to AT&T.
But, with this rebranding, it’s “like” Zuckerberg is pulling a Mulvaney by trolling her – as in
Yeah, I own Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus and Workplace. So what? Get over it, bitch!
Perhaps he knows that Warren will never be elected president of the United States. In “Cambridge Analytica Used Facebook Users as Facebook Intended,” March 20, 2018, I shuddered at how this small company used FACEBOOK data to manufacture “contagion cues” (a.k.a. microtargeting) to shape people’s political views. So just imagine what contagions FACEBOOK itself could manufacture.
In any event, world dominion awaits – all that remains is for FACEBOOK engineers to pierce that great firewall of China so users there can access it without having to rely on VPNs, proxies, or the dreaded Tor.
(BTW: Shame on you if you didn’t get the Mulvaney reference!)
The Ugly
Zuckerberg could fairly argue that Fox News makes a mockery of government regulations on mainstream media companies. And he’d be right. After all, if you spend a day watching Fox News, you’d end up thinking you live in a parallel political universe, where Trump can do no wrong and Democrats can do no right.
As it happens, I had a relevant text exchange with an old friend on Friday. He gleefully suggested that Judge Andrew Napolitano might be following Shepard Smith out of the station of untruth that is Fox News — complete with its “Big-Brother-is-you-watching” viewers. I conceded that the judge and Chris Wallace are like John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness. Then I added this:
Rupert Murdoch can fix all that is wrong with Fox News with one phone call. Yet he seems perfectly content to preside over a propaganda machine that would shock even Joseph Goebbels with awe. But it betrays the conspiracy among media honchos that other networks go after everyone at Fox except that old fox himself.
So here’s to mainstream and social media pillorying Murdoch mercilessly for acting as Trump’s willing propagandist. It’s bad enough that his Fox News makes Putin’s RT worthy of comparisons with the BBC.
But, his anchors present propaganda with such religious conviction, their gullible viewers can be forgiven for accepting it as coming from Cronkite’s mouth to their ears. And don’t get me started on all the captains of industry who blithely associate with Murdoch, when they should be treating this Trumpian Goebbels like a pariah.
Then There’s Google
Google is the stealth culprit behind this scourge of false and misleading political ads. Unfortunately, I am not tech savvy enough to comment on how it manipulates its search algorithms in this context.
I just know that Google was in the vanguard of tech companies who jettisoned all democratic values to gain access to Chinese markets. I refer you to “Tiananmen Square 30 Years Later: For the Right Price, Even Do-gooders Like Google Will Be Evil,” June 8, 2019. Western technology was supposed to help democratize totalitarian countries. Instead, those countries are too often using that technology (with the help of Western tech companies) to reinforce their totalitarian control.
Therefore, it follows that it would have no qualms about Russian trolls using its platform if the price is right. Because, for Google, that makes … adsense.
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