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Hundreds of Facebook employees are in &#8220;virtual&#8221; revolt over CEO Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s refusal to follow the lead of Twitter&#8217;s Jack Dorsey in censoring President Trump&#8217;s social media posts. After Twitter began for the first time to &#8220;fact-check&#8221; Trump&#8217;s tweets last week, Zuckerberg said in a lengthy statement posted on his platform Friday that while he is personally &#8220;struggling&#8221; with the question of how to address the issue, he is ultimately &#8220;the leader of an institution committed to free expression.&#8221;
&#8220;I know many people are upset that we&#8217;ve left the President&#8217;s posts up, but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies,&#8221; Zuckerberg wrote in the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10111961824369871">Facebook post</a> Friday (full text below). While the CEO stressed that he &#8220;disagree[s] strongly&#8221; with some of what Trump says, he still believes people should be allowed to judge the president&#8217;s statements &#8220;for themselves,&#8221; because &#8220;ultimately accountability for those in positions of power can only happen when their speech is scrutinized out in the open.&#8221;
As reported by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/technology/facebook-employee-protest-trump.html">The New York Times</a> on Monday and revealed in various <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-01/facebook-employees-criticize-zuckerberg-s-inaction-over-trump">social media posts</a> from Facebook and Instagram employees, Zuckerberg&#8217;s position on the president&#8217;s posts has sparked an internal revolt, with &#8220;hundreds&#8221; of employees protesting Zuckerberg&#8217;s decision not to take any action on Trump&#8217;s &#8220;inflammatory&#8221; posts.
&#8220;Many of the employees, who said they refused to work in order to show their support for demonstrators across the country, added an automated message to their digital profiles and email responses saying that they were out of the office in a show of protest,&#8221; the Times reported. &#8220;The protest group — conducting a virtual &#8216;walkout&#8217; of sorts since most Facebook employees are working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic — was one of a number of clusters of employees pressing Facebook executives to take a tougher stand on Mr. Trump’s posts.&#8221;
Along with the &#8220;out of the office&#8221; virtual walkout, some disgruntled Facebook employees have &#8220;circulated petitions and threatened to resign,&#8221; the Times reports.
Others have posted critical statements online. A few examples of employees expressing their dissatisfaction with current Facebook policy, including Facebook’s News Feed Director of Product Design <a href="https://about.me/ryanchris">Ryan Freitas</a> Facebook’s Portal R&amp;D head Andrew Crow, and Instagram employee <a href="https://twitter.com/ktzhu?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1267353822831112192&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Feditorial.dailywire.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D117289%26action%3Dedit">Katie Zhu</a>:
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I apologize if you were waiting for me to have some sort of external opinion. I focused on organizing 50+ likeminded folks into something that looks like internal change.
&mdash; Ryan Freitas (@ryanchris) <a href="https://twitter.com/ryanchris/status/1267270793550917632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
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I don&#39;t know what to do, but I know doing nothing is not acceptable. I&#39;m a FB employee that completely disagrees with Mark&#39;s decision to do nothing about Trump&#39;s recent posts, which clearly incite violence. I&#39;m not alone inside of FB. There isn&#39;t a neutral position on racism.
&mdash; Stirman (@stirman) <a href="https://twitter.com/stirman/status/1266876587472896000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 30, 2020</a></blockquote>
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i&#39;m taking PTO from <a href="https://twitter.com/instagram?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@instagram</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/Facebook?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@facebook</a> today for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackLivesMatter?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackLivesMatter</a>. i&#39;m deeply disappointed &amp; ashamed in how the company is showing up the world rn. fb fam &#8211; if u feel similarly, join me &amp; let&#39;s organize. put your ~$~zuck bucks~$ where ur tweets are. support Black-led orgs!! <a href="https://t.co/TXnD5qPNer">pic.twitter.com/TXnD5qPNer</a>
&mdash; #BLACKLIVESMATTER 🖤 (@ktzhu) <a href="https://twitter.com/ktzhu/status/1267353822831112192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
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While Facebook has come under increased fire from the left since Trump was elected, the social media giant has also been frequently criticized over the years from the right for apparent left-leaning bias. As <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/01/tech/facebook-employees-twitter/index.html">CNN Business</a> points out in its report on the internal revolt, &#8220;workers walking out over how the company handles Trump&#8217;s posts certainly won&#8217;t help Facebook defend itself against the perception its staff leans liberal.&#8221;
The day after Twitter first fact-checked Trump&#8217;s tweets, the president issued an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/">executive order</a> on &#8220;preventing online censorship.&#8221;
&#8220;In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the internet,&#8221; reads the order, issued by Trump Thursday.
&#8220;Online platforms are engaging in selective censorship that is harming our national discourse,&#8221; Trump&#8217;s order asserts. &#8220;Tens of thousands of Americans have reported, among other troubling behaviors, online platforms &#8216;flagging&#8217; content as inappropriate, even though it does not violate any stated terms of service; making unannounced and unexplained changes to company policies that have the effect of disfavoring certain viewpoints; and deleting content and entire accounts with no warning, no rationale, and no recourse. Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets in a manner that clearly reflects political bias.&#8221;
Trump&#8217;s order encourages federal regulators to reexamine <a href="https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230">Section 230</a>, a more than two decades-old law providing broad liability protection to online platforms for what is posted on their sites while also allowing the platforms the ability to decide what is allowed to be posted.
Below is the full text of Zuckerberg&#8217;s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10111961824369871">statement</a> on the debate over how to handle the president&#8217;s posts:
<blockquote>This has been an incredibly tough week after a string of tough weeks. The killing of George Floyd showed yet again that for Black people in America, just existing means risking your life. This comes weeks after the killing of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, and in the midst of Covid having a disproportionate impact on the Black community in the US. It continues a long and devastating history of human loss going back centuries. I know the conversations happening amongst our Black friends, colleagues and neighbors are incredibly painful. As Americans, this affects all of us and we all have an obligation to help address the inequality in how justice is served. This is something I care deeply about.
I&#8217;ve been struggling with how to respond to the President&#8217;s tweets and posts all day. Personally, I have a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric. This moment calls for unity and calmness, and we need empathy for the people and communities who are hurting. We need to come together as a country to pursue justice and break this cycle.
But I&#8217;m responsible for reacting not just in my personal capacity but as the leader of an institution committed to free expression. I know many people are upset that we&#8217;ve left the President&#8217;s posts up, but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies. We looked very closely at the post that discussed the protests in Minnesota to evaluate whether it violated our policies. Although the post had a troubling historical reference, we decided to leave it up because the National Guard references meant we read it as a warning about state action, and we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force. Our policy around incitement of violence allows discussion around state use of force, although I think today&#8217;s situation raises important questions about what potential limits of that discussion should be. The President later posted again, saying that the original post was warning about the possibility that looting could lead to violence. We decided that this post, which explicitly discouraged violence, also does not violate our policies and is important for people to see. Unlike Twitter, we do not have a policy of putting a warning in front of posts that may incite violence because we believe that if a post incites violence, it should be removed regardless of whether it is newsworthy, even if it comes from a politician. We have been in touch with the White House today to explain these policies as well.
There are heated debates about how we apply our policies during moments like this. I know people are frustrated when we take a long time to make these decisions. These are difficult decisions and, just like today, the content we leave up I often find deeply offensive. We try to think through all the consequences, and we keep our policies under constant review because the context is always evolving. People can agree or disagree on where we should draw the line, but I hope they understand our overall philosophy is that it is better to have this discussion out in the open, especially when the stakes are so high. I disagree strongly with how the President spoke about this, but I believe people should be able to see this for themselves, because ultimately accountability for those in positions of power can only happen when their speech is scrutinized out in the open.</blockquote>
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The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Facebook

Facebook Employees Stage Virtual Revolt Against CEO Zuckerberg’s Defense Of Free Expression

Donald Trump

Mark Zuckerberg

Even the storm cloud of social media censorship has a silver lining: Mark Zuckerberg is defending free expression.
As Twitter twit Jack Dorsey presumes to censor both the President of the United States and the official White House account, the Facebook CEO decided to take a different tack. Zuckerberg explained that, while he does not agree with much of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, he does not believe that tech billionaire oligarchs ought to be the arbiters of truth in the public square. In <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/this-has-been-an-incredibly-tough-week-after-a-string-of-tough-weeks-the-killing/10111961824369871/">Zuckerberg’s own words</a>:
<blockquote>I&#8217;m responsible for reacting not just in my personal capacity but as the leader of an institution committed to free expression. I know many people are upset that we&#8217;ve left the President&#8217;s posts up, but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies. We looked very closely at the post that discussed the protests in Minnesota to evaluate whether it violated our policies. Although the post had a troubling historical reference, we decided to leave it up because the National Guard references meant we read it as a warning about state action, and we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force. Our policy around incitement of violence allows discussion around state use of force, although I think today&#8217;s situation raises important questions about what potential limits of that discussion should be. The President later posted again, saying that the original post was warning about the possibility that looting could lead to violence. We decided that this post, which explicitly discouraged violence, also does not violate our policies and is important for people to see.</blockquote>
Conservatives have rightly questioned Facebook‘s commitment to permitting the free exchange of ideas on its platform. I myself did so <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/knowles-facebook-risks-constricting-at-home-what-it-seeks-to-expand-abroad-free-expression">just a few weeks ago</a> after Facebook announced the first members of its disconcerting Independent Oversight Board. But we must give credit where credit is due, and Zuckerberg‘s defense of free expression comes as a breath of fresh air when so many of his Silicon Valley peers and rivals have chosen to clamp down on speech that contradict the Left’s orthodoxy and threaten its agenda.
Zuckerberg’s decision may also save social media after President Trump’s recent executive order directing the federal agencies to revoke privileges and liability protections granted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from technology companies that behave like politically biased publishers rather than neutral platforms.
Twitter’s selective censorship of conservatives fits that description, as do the actions of Google and YouTube, who may be the worst offenders of all. Revocation of those protections would instantly open the tech giants up to lawsuits that would bankrupt them.
Facebook has also demonstrated bias at times, but conservatives ought to be careful not to paint with too broad a brush in our condemnation of Big Tech. Section 230 allowed the Internet to expand and develop as it did. We the people have enjoyed that growth. We enjoy social media. But we cannot allow a handful of politically biased billionaires to unfairly manipulate the flow of speech and information in our public square.
In a republic such as ours, speech is politics; politics is speech. A tech CEO with an agenda cannot be allowed to decide what the duly elected President of the United States may or may not say. The great achievement of social media has been the expansion of free expression and the breadth of our public square. When they selectively suppress political speech, they undermine the argument for extending to them the special legal protections they need to survive.
Twitter and Google would be wise to follow Facebook’s lead while they still can.
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

KNOWLES: Cheers For Zuckerberg: Facebook Defends Free Speech

2020 Election

Google

Jack Dorsey

Twitter

On Wednesday, speaking to Dana Perino on Fox News’ “Daily Briefing,” Facebook founder and CEO <a href="https://thehill.com/people/mark-zuckerberg">Mark Zuckerberg</a> made it abundantly clear his company stood apart from Twitter when it came to judging posts on a social media site.
Discussing Twitter’s decision to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/twitter-fact-checking-trumps-tweets-using-wapo-and-cnn">fact-check two of President Trump’s tweets</a> and label them with warnings, Perino asked Zuckerberg if Twitter “made the wrong decision.”
Zuckerberg stated Facebook had “a different policy than Twitter on this,” adding, “I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online. I think in general, private companies probably shouldn&#8217;t be — especially these platform companies — shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”
<a href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/499852-zuckerberg-facebook-shouldnt-be-the-arbiter-of-truth-of-everything-that">The Hill</a> noted, “Zuckerberg has previously defended Facebook’s decision to allow politicians to post political ads with misleading or false claims on its platform.”
Last October 30, Zuckerberg asserted, “In a democracy, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s right for private companies to censor politicians or the news.” He <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10110264733792991">issued a statement</a> on Facebook that read, in part:
<blockquote>I believe strongly &#8212; and I believe that history supports &#8212; that free expression has been important for driving progress and building more inclusive societies around the world, that at times of social tension there has often been urge to pull back on free expression, and that we will be best served over the long term by resisting this urge and defending free expression.
Today is certainly a historical moment of social tension, and I view an important role of our company as defending free expression.
Now this has never been absolute and of course we take our responsibility to prevent harm very seriously too. I think we invest more in getting harmful content off our services than any other company in the world. Those who follow us closely know that we have more than 35,000 people working on safety and security, and that our budget for this work is billions of dollars a year &#8212; more than the whole revenue of our company at the time of our IPO earlier this decade. And we&#8217;re going to keep on investing more here. But while we work hard to remove content that can cause real danger, I think we also need to be careful about adopting more and more rules that restrict the way that people can speak and what they can say.
Right now, the content debate is about political ads. Should we block political ads with false statements? Should we block all political ads? Google, YouTube and most internet platforms run these same ads, most cable networks run these same ads, and of course national broadcasters are required by law to run them by FCC regulations. I think there are good reasons for this. In a democracy, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s right for private companies to censor politicians or the news. And although I&#8217;ve considered whether we should not carry these ads in the past, and I’ll continue to do so, on balance so far I&#8217;ve thought we should continue.
Ads can be an important part of voice &#8212; especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates. And it&#8217;s hard to define where to draw the line. Would we really block ads for important political issues like climate change or women&#8217;s empowerment? Instead, I believe the better approach is to work to increase transparency. Ads on Facebook are already more transparent than anywhere else. We have a political ads archive so anyone can scrutinize every ad that&#8217;s run &#8212; you can see every message, who saw it, how much was spent &#8212; something that no TV or print media does.</blockquote>
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.  
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Munich Security Conference (MSC) 2020

Zuckerberg: Unlike Twitter Fact-Checking Trump’s Tweets, Facebook ‘Shouldn’t Be The Arbiter Of Truth’

fact-checking

Last week, Facebook announced plans for a new “independent” Oversight Board. It seems Mark Zuckerberg has formed the board in the sincere hope that Facebook protect free expression, preserve user experience, and avoid accusations of tilting the scales of public discourse in one partisan direction. Unfortunately, the Board as it currently stands will only exacerbate the problems Zuckerberg hopes to solve.
While the censors may be independent of corporate control, they appear nearly uniform in their hostility to conservative views. Conservatives would more likely get a fair shake if Zuckerberg sat at a desk and censored our content himself, which while time-consuming might be a wiser course for the Facebook boss than outsourcing the curation of his platform to a group of unaccountable, likeminded, conspicuously non-American ideologues. Beyond the board’s composition, the sheer timing of this announcement just six months from a presidential election will confirm for many conservatives that Facebook intends to shut us up in 2020.
The board’s most glaring problem is ideological imbalance. The very first board member listed on the website works for George Soros, the most influential and radical leftist funder in the world. Next comes Evelyn Aswad, who ran a State Department office for Hillary Clinton. Third on the list is Endy Bayuni, the Indonesian senior editor of the Jakarta Post who in 2016 lamented, “Authoritarian regimes and dictators around the world must feel vindicated by the just-concluded presidential race in the United States, the one-time champion of liberal democracy.” Bayuni insists on calling himself “nonpartisan,” but that claim flops when one recalls his enthusiasm for the election of Barack Obama and the nomination for president of Hillary Clinton.
Not all of the picks lean left. One notable exception is Michael McConnell, a jurist who can boast both conservative bona fides on issues such as abortion and religious liberty and liberal goodwill stemming from his criticism of the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore as well as his role in launching Barack Obama’s career. McConnell’s legal colleagues on the board seem less fair-minded. Jamal Greene, a liberal law professor who advised Kamala Harris during the vicious Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, once described Trump’s election as “a failure of American politics” and his lack of a primary challenger in 2020 as a “straightforward failure of democratic political technology.” Greene will serve as co-chairman of the board, where he will be joined by fellow law professor Pamela Karlan, who testified before the House Judiciary Committee in favor of impeaching President Trump.
The board’s overwhelmingly foreign composition has expressed similar antipathy to the President, which one might well accept in the spirit of free expression. Unfortunately many of those members have followed their criticism with calls for outright censorship. Pakistani non-profit leader Nighat Dad called Trump “evil” and suggested we “build a wall around him” to “#BanTrump.” Australian professor Nicolas Suzor once “loved” a comparison of Trump to Hitler and suggested Twitter ban the President. Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief of the UK’s most prominent left-wing newspaper encouraged news networks to black out Trump’s press briefings on coronavirus.
Even somewhat right-leaning board members seem shaky. John Samples, a vice president at the libertarian Cato Institute, has publicly bemoaned President Trump’s “assault on American institutions” and accused him of opposing “basic ideals underpinning liberal democracy.” Opposition to “basic ideals underpinning liberal democracy” sounds like prime grounds for censorship, wouldn’t you say? And board member Damian Green, though technically a conservative member of the British parliament, would fall squarely on the Left by American standards.
Speaking of American standards, one can’t help but notice how few Americans will oversee one of the most successful American companies in history. Just five of the twenty people who “will make final and binding decisions on whether specific content should be allowed or removed from Facebook and Instagram&#8221; hail from the United States, where freedom of speech means something rather different than it does in Denmark or Pakistan. Even relatively tolerant countries fine and jail people for expressing heterodox views. America uniquely protects speech. Perhaps Facebook has selected so disproportionately international a group because the majority of Facebook users live outside the United States. But Facebook would not exist—it would be unthinkable—outside the particularly robust American conception and defense of free expression. Americans should constitute a far greater percentage of the next twenty Oversight Board members.
The board chairmen promise, “We are all committed to freedom of expression within the framework of international norms of human rights.” But “international norms” regarding free expression pale in comparison to our own. What a sad irony for a great American company. Facebook began as a platform that promised the expansion of free expression—that is, a uniquely American tradition of free expression—around the world. Now that platform promises to constrict at home the good it seeks to expand abroad. In attempting to please everyone, the Oversight Board as currently constituted will appease no one and heap ever more blame on its founder, to whom it can never again be held accountable. Call it mission drift, call it madness. In any case, Mark Zuckerberg should call for a new plan before it’s too late.
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

KNOWLES: Facebook Risks Constricting At Home What It Seeks To Expand Abroad: Free Expression

Constitution

First Amendment

Free Speech

As the COVID-19 pandemic puts millions of Americans out of work, the social media giant Facebook has pledged a $100 million in cash grants and ad credits to small businesses crippled by the economic downturn.
On Tuesday, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg shared a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants">blog post </a>outlining the grant while encouraging people to step up and help each other.
&#8220;In recent weeks, we have seen inspiring examples of individuals and groups helping each other,&#8221; wrote Sandberg. &#8220;People across the globe are stepping up, rising to the enormous challenge in front of us. We want to do our part too. Small businesses are the heartbeat of our communities, and many of the people who run these businesses are heavily affected by the crisis – especially as more and more people sensibly stay home. The longer the crisis goes on, the greater the risk to small businesses and to the livelihoods of their owners and employees.&#8221;
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&#8220;We’ve listened to small businesses to understand how we can best help them,&#8221; she continued. &#8221; We’ve heard loud and clear that financial support could enable them to keep the lights on and pay people who can’t come to work.&#8221;
The $100 million grant will go out to 30,000 businesses in over 30 countries that have been decimated by the crisis.
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As noted by <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/tech/facebook-provide-100m-grants-small-businesses-coronavirus-pandemic">Fox News</a>, Facebook began taking steps in late February to combat misinformation being spread about the coronavirus when the company <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/tech/facebook-cracks-down-on-ads-promising-to-cure-coronavirus">announced </a>that any and all advertisements promising a cure to the coronavirus would be canceled.
&#8220;Ads with claims like face masks are 100 percent guaranteed to prevent the spread of the virus will not be allowed,” a Facebook spokesperson said at the time.
On Wednesday, the White House prepared an $850 billion stimulus package to pump into the economy.
“Roughly $500 billion of this would be tied to a payroll tax cut, while $250 billion would come in the form of Small Business Administration loans and another $58 billion would be directed to the airline industry, among other measures,” Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/as-senate-moves-on-second-coronavirus-bill-lawmakers-eye-big-money-for-third-pandemic-fighting-package">reported</a>. &#8220;The Washington Post first reported Tuesday morning that Mnuchin&#8217;s proposal would come with the $850 billion price tag. The Post, citing anonymous sources, reported that Mnuchin&#8217;s proposal would focus mainly on putting cash in the hands of individuals and businesses.&#8221;
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will also be holding a conference call with Senate Democrats to discuss a $750 billion proposal &#8220;to wage war against coronavirus and the economic crisis facing Americans.&#8221;
&#8220;As early as tomorrow, I will present a series of proposals to Congressional appropriators that Senate Democrats believe should be part of the next bill to address the coronavirus,&#8221; Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday. &#8220;In consultation with the ranking members of the committees of jurisdiction, we are proposing an immediate and initial infusion of at least $750 billion to wage war against COVID-19 and the economic crisis it is now causing.&#8221;
Over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that the economy will only experience a slowdown, not a recession.
“The real issue is not the economic situation today. The real issue is what economic tools are we going to use to make sure we get through this because this is a unique situation,” <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/treasury-secretary-mnuchin-coronavirus-will-create-economic-slowdown-not-a-recession">Mnuchin told</a> ABC’s “This Week.” “Later in the year, obviously, the economic activity will pick up as we confront this virus.”

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Facebook Will Provide $100 Million Grant To Small Businesses During COVID-19 Pandemic

Coronavirus

A Facebook fact checker intervened this weekend to stop the latest smear against President Donald Trump from the media and members of the Democratic Party after they falsely claimed that the president called the coronavirus a &#8220;hoax.&#8221;
Facebook took action against a report from left-wing Politico after Check Your Fact, which is a subsidiary of Daily Caller Inc., flagged the false claim to the social media company.
In its headline, Politico falsely stated, &#8220;Trump rallies his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax.’”
Politico&#8217;s opening line also falsely claimed, &#8220;President Donald Trump on Friday night tried to cast the global outbreak of the coronavirus as a liberal conspiracy intended to undermine his first term.&#8221;
A preview tile on Facebook of the fact check report stated that the claims were &#8220;false,&#8221; adding, &#8220;the primary claims in the information are factually inaccurate.&#8221;
Check Your Fact <a href="https://checkyourfact.com/2020/02/29/fact-check-donald-trump-coronavirus-hoax-south-carolina-rally/">reported</a>:
<blockquote>Trump referred to the alleged “politicizing” of the coronavirus by Democrats as “their new hoax.” He did not refer to the coronavirus itself as a hoax. Throughout the speech, Trump reiterates his administration is taking the threat of the coronavirus seriously.</blockquote>
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FB notice says “the primary claims” in the post “are factually inaccurate” <a href="https://t.co/KlJhqclNJw">pic.twitter.com/KlJhqclNJw</a>
&mdash; Brent Scher (@BrentScher) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrentScher/status/1233920134307295232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Donald Trump Jr. responded to the fact check on Facebook by noting that it moves in the right direction.
&#8220;It’s a start. I’m not getting my hopes up but maybe they listened to @GOPLeader, @HawleyMO, and my talk @cpac yesterday,&#8221; Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter. &#8220;Of course the rest of the media is still running with a lie but no one expects that to ever change.&#8221;
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It’s a start. I’m not getting my hopes up but maybe they listened to <a href="https://twitter.com/GOPLeader?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GOPLeader</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/HawleyMO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HawleyMO</a>, and my talk <a href="https://twitter.com/CPAC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@cpac</a> yesterday. 
Of course the rest of the media is still running with a lie but no one expects that to ever change. <a href="https://t.co/vZrfKkWqfT">https://t.co/vZrfKkWqfT</a>
&mdash; Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) <a href="https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1233912991130800128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Trump addressed the issue during a press briefing on Saturday where he and administration officials gave an update on what steps they are taking to make sure the American public is safe from the coronavirus.
When asked if he regretted using the term, Trump responded: &#8220;No. No. No. Hoax referring to the action that they take to try and pin this on somebody because we’ve done such a good job. The hoax is on them not… I’m not talking about what’s happening here.&#8221;
&#8220;I’m talking what they’re doing,&#8221; Trump continued. &#8220;That’s the hoax. That’s just a continuation of the hoax, whether it’s the impeachment hoax or the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. This is what I’m talking about, certainly not referring to this.&#8221;
&#8220;How could anybody refer to this?&#8221; Trump concluded. &#8220;This is very serious stuff, but the way they refer to it because these people have done such an incredible job, and I don’t like it when they are criticizing these people and that’s the hoax. That’s what I’m talking about.&#8221;
Numerous Democrats promoted the false claim on social media in an apparent effort to damage the president.
Leftist Bill Kristol wrote: &#8220;Trump last night: coronavirus is a hoax; and his supporters should dishonestly vote in the Democratic primary for his weakest opponent, Sanders. Trump is dangerous to our public health and our civic health. South Carolinians: Please select a Democratic nominee who can defeat him.&#8221;
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Trump last night: coronavirus is a hoax; and his supporters should dishonestly vote in the Democratic primary for his weakest opponent, Sanders. Trump is dangerous to our public health and our civic health. South Carolinians: Please select a Democratic nominee who can defeat him.
&mdash; Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) <a href="https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1233730114984214528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 29, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Anti-Trump Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote: &#8220;Remember this moment: Trump, in South Carolina, just called the coronavirus a &#8216;hoax.'&#8221;
Democrat Rep. Ted Lieu (CA) wrote: &#8220;Dear @realDonaldTrump: I hope you apologize for using the term &#8216;new hoax&#8217; in connection with the #coronavirus outbreak. Stop lying to the American people. This is not about you. This is a global public health crisis.&#8221;
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Dear <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a>: I hope you apologize for using the term “new hoax” in connection with the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/coronavirus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#coronavirus</a> outbreak. Stop lying to the American people. This is not about you. This is a global public health crisis. <a href="https://t.co/9vfvKJ4n5f">https://t.co/9vfvKJ4n5f</a>
&mdash; Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) <a href="https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1233823076946604032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 29, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Democrat presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg falsely claimed in multiple tweets that Trump called the coronavirus a &#8220;hoax.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Trump was briefed on coronavirus two months ago.
Now, he calls it a hoax.
It’s not just that he’s bad at leading &#8211; he is incapable of leading. <a href="https://t.co/shxGN5ue3d">pic.twitter.com/shxGN5ue3d</a>
&mdash; Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1233895282099851270?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 29, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Far-left MSNBC host and documented bigot Joy Ann Reid also promoted the lie on air during a segment on Saturday.
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Video: Here&#39;s the video of Joy Reid pushing on MSNBC the total, absolute lie that President Trump referred to the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/coronavirus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#coronavirus</a> as a &quot;hoax&quot; and not a real thing &quot;made up by the news media and Democrats&quot; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SCPrimary?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SCPrimary</a> <a href="https://t.co/u78JtDQDqV">pic.twitter.com/u78JtDQDqV</a>
&mdash; Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) <a href="https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1233925493264723969?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The Daily Wire reported Thursday on just some of the actions that the Trump administration has taken to combat the coronavirus:
<blockquote>The Trump administration has aggressively moved to combat the coronavirus as it <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-regarding-presidents-coronavirus-task-force/">established</a> a task force to fight it over a month ago; has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/health/cdc-coronavirus-china.html">attempted</a> for the last 2 months to have the CDC enter China to assist in containing the outbreak and researching the virus; has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-usa/u-s-announces-aid-for-china-other-countries-impacted-by-coronavirus-idUSKBN2012FH">pledged</a> $100 million to other countries to combat it; immediately banned flights from China; has soughs $2.5 billion to combat the virus in the U.S. and agreed to give Congress even more when it was asked; has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-trump-considers-invoking-special-powers-to-rapidly-combat-coronavirus">considered</a> using special powers that it has that would boost domestic manufacturing to combat the virus; and has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-navy-orders-all-ships-that-have-visited-nations-in-pacific-region-to-self-quarantine-for-coronavirus">ordered</a> the Navy to have all ships that have visited countries in the Pacific region to self-quarantine for 14 days.</blockquote>
The administration announced on Saturday that it was imposing additional travel restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus, and announced that it had contracted with 3M to produce tens of millions of masks per month to provide to medical officials in case of an outbreak.

US-politics-CPAC-TRUMP

Facebook Fact Checker Debunks New Smear Against Trump From Media, Democrats: ‘Factually Inaccurate’

Politico

On Monday, billionaire leftist George Soros, seemingly panicked that President Trump might be reelected, attacked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, demanding that they be removed from their posts because Zuckerberg will not capitulate to leftists&#8217; calls for censoring or banning political ads.
<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/88f6875a-519d-11ea-90ad-25e377c0ee1f">Writing in Financial Times</a>, Soros accused Zuckerberg of having a “mutual assistance arrangement” with Trump that will “help him get re-elected.” His open letter, in which he referred to an article in Financial Times on Sunday penned by Zuckerberg, stated:
<blockquote>Mark Zuckerberg should stop obfuscating the facts by piously arguing for government regulation (“We need more regulation of Big Tech”, February 17). Mr. Zuckerberg appears to be engaged in some kind of mutual assistance arrangement with Donald Trump that will help him to get re-elected.
Facebook does not need to wait for government regulations to stop accepting any political advertising in 2020 until after the elections on November 4. If there is any doubt whether an ad is political, it should err on the side of caution and refuse to publish. It is unlikely that Facebook will follow this course. Therefore, I repeat my proposal, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg should be removed from control of Facebook. (It goes without saying that I support government regulation of social media platforms.)</blockquote>
Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/602ec7ec-4f18-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5">had written</a> that he wanted to wait for regulation because he wanted a fair set of rules for everyone across the board, opining:
<blockquote>We believe advertising is more transparent on Facebook than television, print or other online services. We publish details about political and issue ads — including who paid for them, how much was spent, and how many people were reached — in our ads library. But who decides what counts as political advertising in a democracy? If a non-profit runs an ad about immigration during an election, is it political? Who should decide — private companies, or governments?
Another theme is openness. I’m glad the EU is looking at making data sharing easier, because it enables people to build things that are valuable for society. International agencies use Facebook’s Data for Good program to figure out which communities need help after natural disasters, and governments use our publicly available population density maps for vaccination campaigns. Of course, you should always be able to transfer your data between services.
But how do we define what counts as your data? If I share something with you, like my birthday, should you be able to take that data to other services, like your calendar app? Is that my data or yours? We have to balance promoting innovation and research against protecting people’s privacy and security. Without clear rules on portability, strict privacy laws encourage companies to lock down data, refusing to share with others, to minimize regulatory risks …
I believe good regulation may hurt Facebook’s business in the near term but it will be better for everyone, including us, over the long term. These are problems that need to be fixed and that affect our industry as a whole. If we don’t create standards that people feel are legitimate, they won’t trust institutions or technology. Of course, we won’t agree with every proposal. Regulation can have unintended consequences, especially for small businesses that can’t do sophisticated data analysis and marketing on their own. Millions of small businesses rely on companies like ours to do this for them. If regulation makes it harder for them to share data and use these tools, that could disproportionately hurt them and inadvertently advantage larger companies that can.
Still, rather than relying on individual companies to set their own standards, we’d benefit from a more democratic process. This is why we’re pushing for new legislation, and it’s why we support existing US proposals to prevent election interference like the Honest Ads Act and the Deter Act.</blockquote>
He concluded, “I believe clearer rules would be better for everyone. The internet is a powerful force for social and economic empowerment. Regulation that protects people and supports innovation can ensure it stays that way.”

Day Three Of World Economic Forum 2019

Leftist Billionaire Soros Wants Facebook CEO Zuckerberg Removed. Accuses Him Of ‘Mutual Assistance Arrangement With Donald Trump’

George Soros

A video intercutting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s (D-CA) infamous shredding of the State of the Union Address with the Americans President Trump honored in the speech has gone viral, racking up tens of millions of views. In response, Pelosi&#8217;s camp is attempting to pressure social media platforms to remove it. The group that posted the video, Turning Point USA, is refusing to budge, and, so far, so are the platforms.
The video was produced and posted by Freedom Fights, a Facebook and Instagram channel run by Turning Point USA. It was soon picked up by President Trump&#8217;s son, Donald Trump Jr., who posted it on his popular Twitter account, and then President Trump himself, who tweeted it out on Thursday:
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<a href="https://t.co/QhTWvcY4Ke">pic.twitter.com/QhTWvcY4Ke</a>
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1225553117929988097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The video has amassed over 11 million views on Twitter alone, with another 10+ million on other platforms.
After Trump tweeted out the video, Speaker Pelosi&#8217;s office began pressuring platforms to remove the damaging video.
&#8220;The latest fake video of Speaker Pelosi is deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people, and every day that these platforms refuse to take it down is another reminder that they care more about their shareholders&#8217; interests than the public&#8217;s interests,&#8221; tweeted Speaker Pelosi’s Deputy Chief of Staff Drew Hammill.
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The latest fake video of Speaker Pelosi is deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people, and every day that these platforms refuse to take it down is another reminder that they care more about their shareholders’ interests than the public’s interests.
&mdash; Drew Hammill (@Drew_Hammill) <a href="https://twitter.com/Drew_Hammill/status/1225830201948590081?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Several Democrats, including Rhode Island&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-congressman-asks-twitter-to-remove-trump-video-of-pelosi-ripping-up-sotu-speech">David Cicilline</a>, have since joined Pelosi in trying to force social media platforms to cave to their censorship demands (see below).
&#8220;This is cancel culture coming to Congress,&#8221; said Turning Point Founder and President Charlie Kirk in response to Pelosi&#8217;s pressure campaign. &#8220;Our Turning Point USA production team had the brilliant idea to make a visually moving clip of what Speaker Pelosi was ripping up when she tore up the president’s speech. There was absolutely nothing deceptive about the video. We’ve been surprised, and frankly horrified, by the many Democrats calling for censorship including from the speaker’s own office. Thankfully, many patriots have come out and reposted the video including the president. Needless to say, we will not be pulling the video and the Speaker’s misguided attempts at silencing us have had the exact opposite effect.&#8221;
Several media outlets have aided Pelosi&#8217;s cause, describing the video as &#8220;doctored&#8221; and suggesting that it has been &#8220;edited&#8221; in a deceptive way. The Associated Press reported on Pelosi&#8217;s attempts to pressure Twitter and Facebook over the viral &#8220;speech ripping&#8221; video on Monday, which AP framed as an issue of spreading &#8220;<a href="https://apnews.com/12443c46b8cfee5e9659abb31eee5142">misleading political messages</a>.&#8221;
&#8220;Pelosi’s office asked Twitter and Facebook to take down the video. Both services refused, saying it does not violate their policies intended to prohibit intentionally deceptive videos,&#8221; AP reported. &#8220;Researchers worry the video’s &#8216;selective editing&#8217; could mislead people if social media companies don’t step in and properly label or regulate similar videos.&#8221;
In a press release Monday, TPUSA laid out the following timeline of the thus far unsuccessful pressure campaign to pull the video:
<blockquote>The video was originally posted on the Freedom Fights Facebook and Instagram pages on Wednesday, Feb. 5.
It was then reposted by Donald Trump Jr.
Then the president reposted it on Instagram. The next day, he tweeted it.
Soon after the president posted the video to Twitter, Speaker Pelosi’s team began demanding the video be removed from social media.
Speaker Pelosi’s Deputy Chief of Staff Drew Hammill, stated on Twitter: &#8220;The latest fake video of Speaker Pelosi is deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people, and every day that these platforms refuse to take it down is another reminder that they care more about their shareholders&#8217; interests than the public&#8217;s interests.&#8221;
Andy Stone with Facebook’s communication’s team replied: &#8220;Sorry, are you suggesting the President didn&#8217;t make those remarks and the Speaker didn&#8217;t rip the speech?&#8221;
Pelosi Deputy Chief of Staff replied back: &#8220;What planet are you living on? this is deceptively altered. take it down.&#8221;
Other Democrats joined in: Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas): &#8220;This video is clearly another deceptive effort by @realDonaldTrump to mislead and manipulate the American people, Hey @jack , show your commitment to cut down on the misinformation corroding our nation and take down this fake video.&#8221;
Rep. Ro Khanna, (D- California) &#8220;@Twitter must take this misleading video about @SpeakerPelosi down now. Social media platforms are a place where people come for news &amp; information. They need to have certain standards. Falsity has never been part of our 1st Amendment tradition.&#8221;
Rep. Don Beyer (D- Virginia) &#8220;This video is doctored. It has been up, and pinned to the President&#8217;s page, for nearly a day. Trump posted it to deceive Americans about @SpeakerPelosi&#8217;s actions and record. If I posted a doctored video it would be a clear violation House Rules. @Twitter should take this down.&#8221;
Rep. David Cicilline (D- Rhode Island) &#8220;Hey @Twitter, this video is clearly edited in a way that’s intended to mislead viewers. You should take it down. &#8221;
TPUSA Chief Creative Officer Benny Johnson responded in a thread and in an op-ed saying in part: “Pelosi and her foot soldiers in Congress feign outrage and call President Trump an authoritarian, when in reality it is they who cannot resist the tyrannical impulse to control, censor and silence. But this is the digital age. Instead of burning books, they&#8217;re banning videos. 
Thankfully, we live in America where we have a right and a duty to hold the powerful accountable. We must protect that.” 
Since the controversy, the views of the “speech-ripping” video have accelerated. The video has 10 million views on Twitter alone with notable conservative leaders coming out publicly in support including Rep. Mark Meadows, White House Director of Social Media Dan Scavino, and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr.
&nbsp;</blockquote>

Nancy Pelosi Shreds SOTU

Pelosi Demands Twitter, Facebook Pull Viral ‘Speech Ripping’ Video; Group Behind It Responds

Censorship

Nancy Pelosi

Turning Point USA

Author Stephen King has decided to quit Facebook, objecting to the social media giant&#8217;s refusal to fact-check political advertisements.
King, 72, was a big user of Facebook, but deactivated his account on Friday.
In a weird, 21st century twist, King took to another social media platform, Twitter, to announce his departure.
&#8220;I&#8217;m quitting Facebook. Not comfortable with the flood of false information that&#8217;s allowed in its political advertising, nor am I confident in its ability to protect its users&#8217; privacy. Follow me (and Molly, aka The Thing of Evil) on Twitter, if you like,&#8221; King wrote to his 5.6 million followers.
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I&#39;m quitting Facebook. Not comfortable with the flood of false information that&#39;s allowed in its political advertising, nor am I confident in its ability to protect its users&#39; privacy. Follow me (and Molly, aka The Thing of Evil) on Twitter, if you like.
&mdash; Stephen King (@StephenKing) <a href="https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/1223425267831574534?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
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King, the author of &#8220;The Shining&#8221; and numerous other horror novels, was reacting to Facebook&#8217;s refusal to ban paid political ads. Facebook has also refused to fact-check political ads, which has also prompted others to leave the site.
Explaining its decision, Facebook wrote that &#8220;in the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to design their own policies. We have based ours on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.&#8221;
On the same day that King announced he was quitting Facebook, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke at at the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit in Utah, vowing to support free speech. &#8220;Increasingly we&#8217;re getting called to censor a lot of different kinds of content that makes me really uncomfortable,&#8221; Zuckerberg said.
King follows another Hollywood icon, actor Mark Hamill, in leaving the social media giant. In January, he announced that he was quitting Facebook, also criticizing the company’s policy on political ads.
“So disappointed that #MarkZuckerberg values profit more than truthfulness that I’ve decided to delete my @Facebook account. I know this is a big ‘Who Cares?’ for the world at large, but I’ll sleep better at night,” he wrote — on Twitter. He hashtagged the post “#PatriotismOverProfits.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
So disappointed that <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MarkZuckerberg?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MarkZuckerberg</a> values profit more than truthfulness that I&#39;ve decided to delete my <a href="https://twitter.com/Facebook?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Facebook</a> account. I know this is a big &quot;Who Cares?&quot; for the world at large, but I&#39;ll sleep better at night. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PatriotismOverProfits?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PatriotismOverProfits</a> 🇲🇾&gt;💰 <a href="https://t.co/seb2eJMTo6">https://t.co/seb2eJMTo6</a>
&mdash; Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) <a href="https://twitter.com/HamillHimself/status/1216482695061966848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 12, 2020</a></blockquote>
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In his tweet, Hamill linked a New York Times story about Facebook’s decision. Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, defended Facebook&#8217;s decision to accept all political ads, telling The Times, “Ultimately, we don’t think decisions about political ads should be made by private companies.”
“In the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to design their own policies. We have based ours on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public,” Leathern said.
Other high-profile figures who have deleted their accounts include the singer Cher, comedian Will Ferrell, actor Jim Carrey and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
“Borat” actor Sacha Baron Cohen criticized Facebook in a November speech as he accepted an award from the Anti-Defamation League, saying that if Facebook had existed during Adolf Hitler’s reign atop the Third Reich, he could have posted “30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem.’”
Facebook fired back, saying Cohen “misrepresented Facebook’s policies” because Facebook bans hate speech.
While Hamill may have quit Facebook, he remains active on Twitter and Instagram (which, by the way, is owned by Facebook). Twitter, though, has banned all political advertisements from its platform, with the company’s chief executive Jack Dorsey tweeting that he believed “political message reach should be earned, not bought.”

Obama Presents National Medal Of Arts And National Humanities Medal At White House

Stephen King Quits Facebook In A Huff For ‘Flood Of False Information’

Stephen King

With Mark Zuckerberg deciding to allow more leeway for free speech on his social media platform, some leftists are now trashing Facebook as a would-be enforcement arm of all things evil.
Writing for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/opinion/soros-facebook-zuckerberg.html">The New York Times</a>, billionaire and far-left activist George Soros attacked Zuckerberg for allowing President Donald Trump to be elected in 2016 and enabling his coming re-election in 2020.
Recalling a dinner he attended in Davos, Switzerland, Soros remembered being asked if Facebook was behaving more responsibly four years after Trump&#8217;s re-election.
“Facebook helped Trump to get elected and I am afraid that it will do the same in 2020,&#8221; Soros claimed to have said during the dinner.
Soros cited Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes most large social media platforms from liability for defamation.
&#8220;Facebook can post deliberately misleading or false statements by candidates for public office and others, and take no responsibility for them,&#8221; wrote Soros.
Soros even accused Facebook of developing “an informal mutual assistance operation or agreement&#8221; with President Trump in exchange for protection against attacks from regulators and the media. A <a class="css-1g7m0tk" title="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/george-soros-facebook-trump-election-conspiracy-2020-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook spokesman told Business Insider </a>that this charge is &#8220;just plain wrong.&#8221;
&#8220;I believe that Mr. Trump and Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, realize that their interests are aligned — the president’s in winning elections, Mr. Zuckerberg’s in making money,&#8221; asserted Soros. &#8220;Let’s look at the evidence: In 2016, Facebook provided the Trump campaign with embedded staff who helped to optimize its advertising program. (Hillary Clinton’s campaign was also approached, but it declined to embed a Facebook team in her campaign’s operations.) Brad Parscale, the digital director of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and now his campaign manager for 2020, said that Facebook helped Mr. Trump and gave him the edge. This seems to have marked the beginning of a special relationship.&#8221;
Soros then cited Zuckerberg&#8217;s meeting with the president in the Oval Office in the fall of 2019 and Trump later saying in regards to the meeting, &#8220;I’d rather have him just do whatever he is going to do. He’s done a hell of a job, when you think of it.”
Following the 2016 election, Facebook and other social media platforms pledged to combat fake news by employing a team of &#8220;fact-checkers&#8221; that would flag content they deemed misleading. Here&#8217;s the company&#8217;s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/help/1952307158131536">current policy</a> described in its own words:
<blockquote>We&#8217;re committed to <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnewsroom.fb.com%2Fnews%2F2018%2F05%2Fhard-questions-false-news%2F&amp;h=AT3pnRaPocRuztR-Pwbmg5Hw3AMWx6obYQ89XfoMcmQFuAbuf2-92feW3XhYlDzST6GidB71MFhKG-gmAJBrVqGWs5CW_iUcGhgfejtfF1UMysDOgXJhqlA1S2FQqdgn24_JBsU" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow noreferrer" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy">fighting the spread of false news</a> on Facebook. We use both technology and human review to remove fake accounts, promote news literacy and disrupt the financial incentives of spammers. In <a href="https://www.facebook.com/help/publisher/182222309230722">certain countries</a>, we also work with <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnewsroom.fb.com%2Fnews%2F2018%2F06%2Fhard-questions-fact-checking%2F&amp;h=AT24zy8e3JgnAoLbNO0ITR7i0IEusA6Me9pMHTk3w8YIhlj0cDFY693tk_fKVs53-DqXLk96tmZe9rdZc1h3D15vKQZMkRjdRUk4ViKHy2b1oisGN8QxPtZcvpJ3FYRYBwaRmXQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow noreferrer" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy">third-party fact-checkers</a> who are <a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org%2F&amp;h=AT3QlqMp4kdBKV83V_wtClVPIRcQbjD4D8MpbbD-_je_070k8EKOROu7a6nFfyk-qJLflCFdRM_1lf1Ve6iKSs8sn3bMR0BY4J_olN4zV0KDFZudDXs_blgZ7HXybsUan9tJfps" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow noreferrer" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy">certified</a> through the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network to help identify and review false news.</blockquote>
According to Soros, however, Facebook has &#8220;flung open the door for false, manipulated, extreme and incendiary statements&#8221; while rewarding such content with &#8220;prime placement and promotion if it meets Facebook-designed algorithmic standards for popularity and engagement.&#8221;
&#8220;I repeat and reaffirm my accusation against Facebook under the leadership of Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg,&#8221; he concluded. &#8220;They follow only one guiding principle: Maximize profits irrespective of the consequences. One way or another, they should not be left in control of Facebook.&#8221;
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has simultaneously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-co-founder-its-dangerous-break-it-paul-bois">argued</a> that Facebook has given far too much leeway to political speech, fearing that Mark Zuckerberg has grown hungry with power.
“We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well-intentioned the leaders of these companies may be,” Hughes wrote in 2019. “Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American. It is time to break up Facebook.”

George Soros Attacks Facebook: ‘Mark Zuckerberg Should Not Be In Control’

The Force may be with him, but not the Face.
Star Wars star Mark Hamill has announced that he is quitting Facebook. He criticized the company&#8217;s policy on political ads and said he was &#8220;disappointed&#8221; with Facebook&#8217;s founder Mark Zuckerberg.
&#8220;So disappointed that #MarkZuckerberg values profit more than truthfulness that I&#8217;ve decided to delete my @Facebook account. I know this is a big &#8216;Who Cares?&#8217; for the world at large, but I&#8217;ll sleep better at night,&#8221; he wrote — on Twitter. He hashtagged the post &#8220;#PatriotismOverProfits.&#8221;
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So disappointed that <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MarkZuckerberg?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MarkZuckerberg</a> values profit more than truthfulness that I&#39;ve decided to delete my <a href="https://twitter.com/Facebook?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Facebook</a> account. I know this is a big &quot;Who Cares?&quot; for the world at large, but I&#39;ll sleep better at night. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PatriotismOverProfits?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PatriotismOverProfits</a> 🇲🇾&gt;💰 <a href="https://t.co/seb2eJMTo6">https://t.co/seb2eJMTo6</a>
&mdash; Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) <a href="https://twitter.com/HamillHimself/status/1216482695061966848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 12, 2020</a></blockquote>
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For some reason, Hamill included a Malaysian flag. He later corrected that with this post:
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🇺🇸&gt;💰
&mdash; Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) <a href="https://twitter.com/HamillHimself/status/1216552601841364992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Hamill&#8217;s original tweet has drawn more than 6,000 replies and has been retweeted 21,000 times. More than 175,000 have liked the post.
Hamill&#8217;s move follows an announcement from Facebook last week that it would allow politicians to run advertisements on the social media platform without policing the veracity of their content. In his tweet, Hamill linked a New York Times story about Facebook&#8217;s decision.
Rob Leathern, Facebook&#8217;s director of product management, defended the move, saying, &#8220;Ultimately, we don’t think decisions about political ads should be made by private companies.&#8221;
&#8220;In the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to design their own policies. We have based ours on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public,&#8221; Leathern said.
Other high-profile figures who have deleted their accounts include the singer Cher, comedian Will Ferrell, actor Jim Carrey and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
“Borat” actor Sacha Baron Cohen criticized Facebook in a November speech as he accepted an award from the Anti-Defamation League, saying that if Facebook had existed during Adolf Hitler’s reign atop the Third Reich, he could have posted “30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem.’”
Facebook fired back, saying Cohen “misrepresented Facebook’s policies” because Facebook bans hate speech.
Hamill deeply loathes President Trump. He even takes his animosity toward Trump out on his grandchildren.
In September, first daughter Ivanka Trump posted a photo of her family wherein her youngest son, three-year-old Theodore, was dressed as a Stormtrooper. She captioned the post, “The Force is strong in my family.”
Hamill responded: “You misspelled ‘Fraud,’” adding the hashtag #GoForceYourself.”
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You misspelled &quot;Fraud.&quot;<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GoForceYourself?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GoForceYourself</a> <a href="https://t.co/ORY6eeyGgj">https://t.co/ORY6eeyGgj</a>
&mdash; Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) <a href="https://twitter.com/HamillHimself/status/1178394628464070656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Weeks after Trump was elected, Hamill lashed out.
“I’m in total denial,” Hamill told The Daily Beast. The actor who played Luke Skywalker, who now hosts a show called &#8220;Pop Culture Quest,&#8221; said: “I’m glad I have [the show] to take my mind off what’s going on. Because if you look at what’s being assembled for our government it’s like, yikes. It’s a who’s-who of really despicable people.”
While he may have quit Facebook, Hamill remains active on Twitter and Instagram (which, by the way, is owned by Facebook). Twitter, though, has banned all political advertisements from its platform, with the company&#8217;s chief executive Jack Dorsey tweeting that he believed &#8220;political message reach should be earned, not bought.&#8221;

Mark Hamill is Honored with Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

‘Star Wars’ Icon, Trump Critic Mark Hamill Quits Facebook Over Political Ads

Mark Hamill

Star Wars

As artificial intelligence advances, the capacity for malicious actors to covertly spread misinformation has also increased. To mitigate this, Facebook has announced that the company will no longer allow “deepfake videos” or “misleading manipulated media” on its platform.
But in order for content to be banned, it must meet a strict criteria. First, it must have “been edited or synthesized — beyond adjustments for clarity or quality — in ways that aren’t apparent to an average person and would likely mislead someone into thinking that a subject of the video said words they did not actually say,” writes Monica Bickert, the vice president for global policy engagement at Facebook, in a <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2020/01/enforcing-against-manipulated-media/">blog post</a> published on Monday. 
In addition, the content must be “the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning that merges, replaces or superimposes content onto a video, making it appear to be authentic.” The blog post also notes that the policy “does not extend to content that is parody or satire, or video that has been edited solely to omit or change the order of words.”
According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/technology/facebook-says-it-will-ban-deepfakes.html">The New York Times</a>, &#8220;deepfakes&#8221; that meet both of the above criteria will also be banned from political ads. 
After Facebook announced the new policy, left-wing outlets were quick to imply that the policy was not comprehensive enough. While <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/7/21055024/facebook-ban-deepfake-video">Vox</a> lamented that “controversial fake videos like the one of Nancy Pelosi that made her appear to be drunk” would not be banned, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/06/facebook-ban-deepfakes-sources-say-new-policy-may-not-cover-controversial-pelosi-video/">The Washington Post</a>, which has called the Pelosi video “doctored,” noted in a headline about the policy change that the “new policy may not cover the controversial Pelosi video.” 
Earlier this week, the U.S. House Committee on Energy &amp; Commerce issued a <a href="https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF17/20200108/110351/HHRG-116-IF17-20200108-SD002.pdf">memo</a> that described “deepfakes” as “videos that have been manipulated using machine learning technology such as a Generative Adversarial Network, or GAN, to look and sound real. These videos can show people doing and saying things they never did or said. The GAN process detects flaws in the fake video, which is then used to improve the fake video.”
The Nancy Pelosi video does not seem to meet this threshold. 
Facebook has also been subject to criticism for refusing to remove factually incorrect (in the eyes of at least some &#8220;fact-checkers&#8221;) content from its platform, but the tech giant has repeatedly defended its decision that the company should not attempt to serve the role of arbiter of truth. 
“If we simply removed all manipulated videos flagged by fact-checkers as false, the videos would still be available elsewhere on the internet or social media ecosystem,” writes Bickert in the blog post. “By leaving them up and labelling them as false, we’re providing people with important information and context.”
“Our enforcement strategy against misleading manipulated media also benefits from our efforts to root out the people behind these efforts,” continues Bickert. “Just last month, we identified and removed a network using AI-generated photos to conceal their fake accounts. Our teams continue to proactively hunt for fake accounts and other coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
The Facebook announcement comes on the heels of a House subcommittee meeting being held today about deception in the digital age and the risks associated with &#8220;deepfake&#8221; technologies. Bickert is expected to testify.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Testifies Before The House Financial Services Committee

Facebook Bans ‘Deepfakes’ From Platform, Left-Wing Outlets Concerned Nancy Pelosi Video Doesn’t Count

On Wednesday, right-leaning political personality and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html">&#8220;Intellectual Dark Web&#8221;</a> icon Dave Rubin announced the launch of a previously teased venture whose goal is to combat the status quo of rampant Big Tech censorship, de-platforming, and de-monetization practices: <a href="https://locals.com">Locals.com</a>.
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If you’re a creator and you want to own your own community, set your own rules, post video and audio to a curated feed, chat with supporters, sell tickets to events, build your own network with other creators and much more, join us on <a href="https://t.co/WLIO0Cxwe0">https://t.co/WLIO0Cxwe0</a>
The future is now. <a href="https://t.co/JfSRcGbMDq">pic.twitter.com/JfSRcGbMDq</a>
&mdash; Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) <a href="https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/1202288504006307841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 4, 2019</a></blockquote>
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With the tag line of &#8220;Own your community, Own your future,&#8221; Locals pitches itself to content creators as a one-stop &#8220;home for all your content&#8221; through which creators can &#8220;[p]ost videos, photos, podcasts, messages, and polls,&#8221; as well as &#8220;[s]ell tickets to events, and offer exclusive content to your supporters.&#8221; The site advertises that it can strengthen content creators&#8217; relationship with their fans by removing the Big Tech middlemen and serve as a networking/community hub by allowing content creators to easily and freely associate with others. Perhaps most importantly, Locals tells creators to &#8220;[s]et your own rules&#8221; for interaction, in marked distinction with the &#8220;inconsistent and unfair moderation&#8221; of Big Tech.
Rubin, who is currently the only person publicly identified with launching the Locals project, spoke exclusively with The Daily Wire for a wide-ranging interview about the origins and importance of Locals.
&#8220;Everyone knows there is a massive problem with Big Tech,&#8221; Rubin began. &#8220;We have all outsourced all of our ability to communicate with each other to these Big Tech behemoths — no one really owns their content or knows what their terms of service are.&#8221;
Creators have very little access to their own audiences, Rubin continued, because Big Tech companies are clearly manipulating their algorithms and engaging in clandestine shadow-banning-type behavior. With the status quo, content creators have no way of ensuring that they can actually reach all of their followers and subscribers.
&#8220;For someone like me, from a libertarian/classical liberal way of thinking,&#8221; Rubin went on, &#8220;it’s time to reverse this. It’s time for creators, who are the real drivers of social media — the people who are generating clicks and creating podcasts — to be in control. It&#8217;s time for a new model.&#8221;
Locals, Rubin explained, &#8220;is a community-based app and desktop website where you can post audio, post video, communicate with your fans, and so forth. It’s subscription-only, so that takes care of all the bots and trolls and anonymous haters. One of the reasons that everyone hates everything online is that you have smart people arguing with these pink fox anime avatars on Twitter.&#8221;
Rubin&#8217;s signature &#8220;Rubin Report&#8221; program is the very first Local, he said, and he promised that more big-name creators will be rolled out soon. It will be up to each content creator to decide how much to charge for access to his/her Local, beginning with as little as three dollars per month. Each Local not only sets his/her own rules, but also owns his/her users&#8217; data — &#8220;so that, even if you leave Locals,&#8221; Rubin noted, &#8220;you can still communicate directly&#8221; with your fans.
Suffice it to say this is a very different model than the one currently deployed by Big Tech giants like YouTube.
&#8220;There are so many people out there around the world who have all this great stuff to say, but these platforms are controlled by external platforms who manipulate,&#8221; Rubin said, coming to a crescendo. &#8220;I want to give every creator the chance to be truly independent. I created a tech company, not a platform.&#8221;
Combatting Big Tech censorship is an increasingly popular political agenda for the American Right. Freshman Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has made taking on Big Tech a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-josh-hawleys-bill-taking-big-tech-josh-hammer">focal point of his first year</a> in office. Earlier this week, furthermore, numerous leading conservative thinkers co-signed an <a href="https://americanmind.org/essays/for-real-american-greatness-a-tech-new-deal/">essay</a> for the Claremont Institute&#8217;s American Mind online journal that called for a &#8220;Tech New Deal&#8221; intended to ultimately &#8220;ensure[] America can extend its greatness well into the digital age.&#8221;

Dave Rubin

Dave Rubin Launches ‘Locals,’ A New Venture To Combat Big Tech Censorship

Intellectual Dark Web

Josh Hawley

Technology

YouTube

Alumni of the Clinton campaign and left-leaning critics of Facebook claim that revelations from a recent Wall Street Journal story about how both the Trump and Clinton operations handled social media demonstrate how Facebook “favored” Trump in the 2016 elections.
But, it seems, the lack of attention Clinton got on social media was Clinton’s fault, not Facebook’s.
The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that a key figure in President Donald Trump’s 2016 social media strategy has now “jumped ship” and is helping organizations looking to remove the President from power.
Buried deep in the story, critics claim, is evidence that Facebook provided Trump’s operations with consultants, helped them understand the platform’s ads system, and use the system to maximize their ads’ visibility. As a result, “every dollar that the Trump campaign spent on [Facebook] ads yielded $2 to $3 in fundraising dollars.”
The Daily Beast’s editor, Noah Shachtman even claimed that the “stunning story” “shows how Facebook worked overtime for Trump – crafting digital strategy, creating custom code, and experimenting with different ways to maximize pro-Donald content.”
Ultimately, Trump ended up spending around $44 million targeting users on Facebook with fundraising ads.
Even Hillary Clinton herself has used that number as evidence that social media is a menace to the political process, alleging that platforms like Facebook can be bought.
“We should all care about how social-media platforms play a part in our democratic process. Because unless it’s addressed it will happen again,” Clinton tweeted in 2018. “The midterms are in 8 months. We owe it to our democracy to get this right, and fast.”
But what the critics &#8212; and Clinton &#8212; fail to grasp, it seems, is that Facebook’s utilities and consultations are neutral and available to anyone who needs them. Only Trump’s team took advantage of them, giving them better insight into how Facebook works, and helping them maximize their return on investment.
The evidence was there back in 2018, when Clinton began to fret about the situation publicly.
“[B]ecause Trump used provocative content to stoke social-media buzz, and he was better able to drive likes, comments, and shares than Clinton, his bids received a boost from Facebook’s click model, effectively winning him more media for less money,” one expert told Vanity Fair at the time. “Clinton was paying Manhattan prices for the square footage on your smartphone’s screen, while Trump was paying Detroit prices. Facebook users in swing states who felt Trump had taken over their news feeds may not have been hallucinating.”
That was because Trump was taking advantage of Facebook’s services. Clinton’s team, it seems, thought they could get the same results alone.
“The companies offered such services, without charge, to all the 2016 candidates,” the WSJ reported. &#8220;But Hillary Clinton’s campaign declined to embed the companies employees in her operations, instead opting to develop its own digital apparatus.”
The story says that Clinton called in tech experts to help, but too little too late, and the experts she called in didn’t have the same level of knowledge Facebook’s own insiders did.
Ultimately, its not clear that either operation was able to use Facebook to get results at the ballot box. While the Trump campaign did raise money, digital targeting may not have been effective at turning out votes.
But that doesn’t mean Clinton, still looking for an excuse to explain her 2016 loss – that has nothing to do with her own miserable operation – is more than happy to consider the possibility.

Michelle Obama Campaigns With Hillary Clinton In North Carolina

The Clinton Campaign Is Accusing Facebook Of Favoring Trump. That’s Not What Happened.

Hillary Clinton

Rocker Neil Young has had it with Facebook.
The singer and guitarist has deleted his artist page off the social media site, saying he&#8217;s had enough of the “false information regularly supplied to the public” on the platform.
Young, who has repeatedly ripped President Trump, cited Facebook&#8217;s decision to sponsor the Federalist Society’s annual gala, which he describes as the “powerful right-wing organization behind the nomination of the conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.”
“This turn of events, in addition to the false information regularly supplied to the public on Facebook, with its knowledge, has caused us to re-evaluate and change our policy,” Young wrote on his website, <a href="https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/article?id=Facebook-Is-Toast-At-NYA">Neil Young Archives</a> (NYA). “I don’t feel that a social site should be making obvious commitments to one side of politics or the other. It further confuses readers regarding truthfulness in coverage and message. NYA, no longer interested in further links with FACEBOOK, will be discontinuing use. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.”
Young, a Canadian, is seeking to gain U.S. citizenship so he can vote in the upcoming presidential election. He claims his application for citizenship is being delayed due to his use of marijuana.
This is just the latest time that a celebrity has publicly quit Facebook. In 2018, the #DeleteFacebook hashtag trended, and users ripped the platform for repeated controversies and scandals.
The singer Cher said she would not use Google and would delete her Facebook account, saying those companies &#8220;might as well be conspiring with Russia to destroy our Democracy.&#8221;
Comedian Will Ferrell also deleted his Facebook page, delivering a lengthy message on his decision:
<blockquote>Hi Friends,
I&#8217;m reaching out to let you know that in 72 hours I will be deleting my Facebook account. I am not deleting it immediately, in order to give this message enough time to get across to my fans and followers.
I have always had an aversion to social media and have primarily used it as a tool to help support our work at Funny Or Die, some of my personal projects, as well as charity causes that I am passionate about. Facebook allowed me to promote and share the work of many dedicated and talented individuals who deserved recognition.
I know I am not alone when I say that I was very disturbed to hear about Cambridge Analytica&#8217;s misuse of millions of Facebook users&#8217; information in order to undermine our democracy and infringe on our citizens&#8217; privacy. I was further appalled to learn that Facebook&#8217;s reaction to such a violation was to suspend the account of the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower.
In this day and age, with misinformation running rampant, it&#8217;s important that we protect the truth, as well as those who work to bring it to light. I can no longer, in good conscience, use the services of a company that allowed the spread of propaganda and directly aimed it at those most vulnerable.
I love my fans and hope to further interact with them through my comedy via the mediums of film and television.
-Will Ferrell</blockquote>

Neil Young

Neil Young Quits Facebook For Promoting ‘False Information To The Public’

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been on a crusade to force social media platforms like Facebook to crack down on political ads, claiming that lenient ad policies, like the one Facebook employs, allow political campaigns to lie about key issues, creating confusion.
But her concerns seem to end at social media political ads she disagrees with. When Twitter announced a crackdown on political ads &#8212; like the one Warren is pushing for Facebook &#8212; Warren lashed out at the social media platform for censoring important content because Twitter&#8217;s definition of &#8220;politics&#8221; includes contentious issues like &#8220;climate change.&#8221;
&#8220;Twitter&#8217;s new ad policy will allow fossil fuel companies to buy ads defending themselves and spreading misleading info—but won&#8217;t allow organizations fighting the climate crisis to buy ads holding those companies accountable. We need accountability,&#8221; the Democratic presidential contender wailed in a tweet.
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Twitter&#39;s new ad policy will allow fossil fuel companies to buy ads defending themselves and spreading misleading info—but won&#39;t allow organizations fighting the climate crisis to buy ads holding those companies accountable. We need accountability. <a href="https://t.co/B9RtX7hC5g">https://t.co/B9RtX7hC5g</a>
&mdash; Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) <a href="https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1191814840731480064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 5, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Just last month, Warren, of course, made the opposite argument against Facebook, buying an intentionally misleading political ad on the social network to demonstrate that Facebook does not adquately police purchased content.
The ad started with a claim that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had endorsed Donald Trump and ended with the Massachusetts Democrat revealing that her ad had been deliberately fabricated to demonstrate what could get by Facebook&#8217;s ad censors.
&#8220;You&#8217;re probably shocked,&#8221; the ad read. &#8220;And you might be thinking, &#8216;how could this possibly be true?&#8217; Well, it&#8217;s not.&#8221;
We intentionally made a Facebook ad with false claims and submitted it to Facebook&#8217;s ad platform to see if it&#8217;d be approved,&#8221; Warren later tweeted. &#8220;It got approved quickly.&#8221;
She then accused Facebook of prioritizing profits over quality and honesty, eventually even moaning that the social network was &#8220;taking money to promote lies.&#8221;
Facebook responded that, &#8220;FCC doesn&#8217;t want broadcast companies censoring candidates&#8217; speech&#8221; and &#8220;[w]e agree it&#8217;s better to let voters &#8212; not companies &#8212; decide.&#8221;
Twitter seems to be taking the opposite view, announcing last week that it would be policing all political content &#8212; including issue-based content &#8212; on its platform in an effort to curb the spread of misinformation.
&#8220;We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,&#8221; Twitter&#8217;s CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted last Wednesday. &#8220;A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.&#8221;
&#8220;Political advertising,&#8221; Jack went on, includes &#8220;issue ads.&#8221;
&#8220;We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent. Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we&#8217;re stopping these too.&#8221;
That includes, per Twitter&#8217;s policies:
<blockquote>1/ Ads that refer to an election or a candidate, or
2/ Ads that advocate for or against legislative issues of national importance (such as: climate change, healthcare, immigration, national security, taxes)</blockquote>
Essentially, Dorsey&#8217;s rationale is the same as Warren&#8217;s: social networks should take responsibility for misinformation being spread on their network by actively policing content. The only way to do that is either to allow all political and issue content or to ban all political or issue content. Facebook chose the former and earned Warren&#8217;s ire. Twitter chose the latter and, well, also earned Warren&#8217;s ire.
The only difference with Twitter&#8217;s policy is, of course, that it actively prevents Warren&#8217;s allies from purchasing ads promoting their particular political ideas &#8212; and she certainly doesn&#8217;t like that.
Unfortunately for speech purists, it seems Warren&#8217;s concerns struck a chord with the leftist mob on Twitter and Dorsey was backed into a corner. Responding to Warren, he said that the rules were not yet official and that he and his team were taking their concerns under advisement: “We haven’t announced our new rules yet. They come out 11/15. Taking all this into consideration.&#8221;

Elizabeth Warren

Irony: Elizabeth Warren Slams Twitter’s Political Ad Ban Because It Covers Climate Change

Last week, Katherine Miller at BuzzFeed published an essay on how the 2010s &#8220;broke our sense of time.&#8221; On the same day, Georgetown University released a survey showing the average voter thinks we are &#8220;two-thirds of the way to the edge of a civil war.&#8221;
I have no idea what the &#8220;edge&#8221; of a civil war is, but I do think we are at a moment of serious discontent in the country, and I think it is directly related to the point of Miller&#8217;s essay about algorithms reordering our lives. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest of the internet now show us content in a timeline designed to increase our interaction and our clicks. Their algorithms have taken us out of chronology.
With the algorithm, what is old can be new again. Things that happened a week ago appear repeatedly in our timelines as if they are fresh and new. People now visit places that they see repeatedly on Instagram because others are going there. People get mad at news because news is designed to get them mad. Hate clicks generate revenue for news sites. Outrage holds your attention.
The algorithm feeds the fire. Teen suicide rates have climbed since the introduction of the iPhone — the moment our national addiction to screens began. People used the blame the 24-hour news cycle. Now we have the algorithmic news cycle, where news from two years ago can show up like it is new to drive anxiety and outrage. Kids on Instagram and Snapchat can now, over and over again, relive the images of their friends at the parties they didn&#8217;t even know were happening, driving their depression. Their parents can see the selectively edited footage of a news event designed to drive their outrage and then continue seeing it over and over as others share it. None of it slips by unseen.
Social media companies share some of the blame for taking us out of chronology and putting us into algorithms designed not to show us new, interesting stuff but to keep us using sites and services — to keep us clicking.
Add to all of this the decreasing tolerance for Grace, and the situation is spiraling chaotically toward violence. Each of us is now defined by the worst thing we have done, which is helpfully recirculated by others on social media. There is no need to improve or grow up because we will never be credited with doing so when one person with a social media audience can tie us back to the worst thing we have done. College athletes are now routinely destroyed for things they did as teenagers. Guys raising money for charity are blackballed by decade-old tweets from when they were going through puberty. The algorithm amplifies the damage.
There is, of course, a cure for this, but it is one no one has incentive to provide when everyone and everything is now anchored in the digital. Get offline and into your community. Scripture says to seek the welfare of the city in which you are in exile, and there you will find your welfare. But too few are doing that because the city has no algorithm. It has something worse — physical human beings. We would all rather stay online in digital communities we have created, filled with usernames and faces that look and think like us and share our interests and feelings.
Unplugging, however, may be our only hope. Our Facebook friend is not going to bring us dinner when we are sick or water our flowers when we are gone. The actual human being next door just might. That requires we get to know them, appreciate them despite their differences and dare to live a chronological existence with them, where yesterday stays yesterday and tomorrow is something we can look forward to together. Tomorrow has an actual sunrise that we can appreciate with a physical smile on a physical face in a physical place unique to us — not shared by thousands in an Instagram algorithm and hashtag.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Social media.

ERICKSON: The Coming Algorithm Civil War

Social Media

In an op-ed for <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/468404-mark-zuckerberg-is-right-jack-dorsey-is-wrong">The Hill</a> published Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) praised Facebook&#8217;s Mark Zuckerberg and slammed Twitter&#8217;s Jack Dorsey for their diverging approaches to political speech following the social media giants&#8217; recent policy announcements.
&#8220;For those who care about free speech, the last couple weeks saw two major developments from two people who have enormous influence over our public discourse,&#8221; Cruz writes. &#8220;First, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whom I have previously criticized, gave an important address in defense of free speech. In it, he explained Facebook&#8217;s new policy that they would not censor political speech, but would instead allow the marketplace of ideas, the back-and-forth of political debate, to resolve public policy disputes.&#8221;
Cruz is referencing in part Zuckerberg&#8217;s widely covered <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-defends-free-speech-amid-political-blowback-i-believe-in-people">speech</a> at Georgetown University two weeks ago in which he came out strongly in defense of free speech. &#8220;We can continue to stand for free expression, understanding its messiness, but believing that the long journey towards greater progress requires confronting ideas that challenge us or we can decide the cost is simply too great,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I’m here today because I believe we must continue to stand for free expression.&#8221;
Zuckerberg also made clear in front of Congress the next week that his platform will not be policing political ads.
Dorsey, however, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-twitter-makes-major-move-regarding-speech-from-politicians">announced</a> on Twitter this week that his platform will take a far different approach: it will &#8220;stop all political advertising on Twitter.&#8221;
&#8220;We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally,&#8221; Dorsey announced Wednesday. &#8220;We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons a political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.&#8221;
The developments, Cruz writes, &#8220;come at a time when Big Tech companies, from Facebook and Twitter to YouTube and Google, have established a pattern of arbitrarily silencing voices – overwhelming conservative voices – with whom they disagree.&#8221;
Cruz notes that leftwing politicians and media influencers have condemned Zuckerberg&#8217;s defense of free speech and praised Dorsey&#8217;s new political ad ban, &#8220;urging Facebook and Google to follow suit and jump on board the censorship train by banning political ads as well.&#8221;
Cruz goes on to lay out why banning ads would be &#8220;profoundly harmful,&#8221; including that doing so &#8220;only stands to benefit two groups: incumbent politicians and the mainstream media,&#8221; both of whom have &#8220;huge megaphone[s]&#8221; for spreading their messages.
Not only does a Twitter-like ban give incumbents and the media massive advantage, it effectively suppresses the voice of the average citizen by preventing groups like &#8220;the Sierra Club, the NRA, Planned Parenthood, AIPAC, or a totally new not-for-profit group trying to advocate for a particular idea&#8221; from reaching people.
Cruz additionally argues that Dorsey&#8217;s ban &#8220;only further empowers Silicon Valley billionaires, who already have a stronghold on defining what is truthful or acceptable speech, to now define what is and what is not &#8216;political.'&#8221;
&#8220;It’s up to them to determine where to draw the line – and they won’t stop here,&#8221; the Texas senator warns. &#8220;Banning ads is just the beginning.&#8221; (<a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/468404-mark-zuckerberg-is-right-jack-dorsey-is-wrong">Read Cruz&#8217;s op-ed here</a>.)
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/klavan-the-big-silence-the-left-wages-war-on-free-speech">KLAVAN: The Big Silence: The Left Wages War On Free Speech</a>

Zuckerberg Dorsey

Cruz: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Is Right, Twitter’s Dorsey Is Wrong

Ted Cruz

The very first political video I ever made was entitled “Shut Up.” That’s ten years ago, though it seems like more. The vid is still up on YouTube.
“The left here has been making the ‘shut up’ argument at least since the seventies, when it became clear that all their other arguments had failed,” says my younger and incredibly handsome self. “Since it was the only argument remaining to them, they had to invent different ways to say it. If you pointed out that their weakness allowed the murderous tyranny of Communism to expand, for instance, well, you were a McCarthyite. Shut up. If you proved their leniency toward criminals turned our cities into cesspools, you were a fascist. Shut up. When you pointed out that their welfare policies destroyed black families and created a social disaster of vast proportions, you were a racist, a sexist, uncivil, worse than Hitler, all just different ways of saying: shut up.”
It is sad to see how relentlessly the left has adhered to this approach. With the collapse of their utopia, the Soviet Union, with socialism a drag on life everywhere (yes, including Scandinavia), with leftist Europe sinking under the weight of unrestrained immigration and lack of assimilation and with the presidency of light worker savior Barack Obama an economic and foreign policy failure, leftists, rather than change their minds and their policies, have instead committed to creating a Big Silence meant to hide the truth from all of us, perhaps even from themselves.
This may have once seemed possible given the left’s near monopoly over the means of communication in this country. Hollywood, the news media, the academy — all are nearly wholly populated by leftists. But as the internet and social media began to eat holes in this firewall of disinformation, the left began to fear the truth might reach the people. It was then that their commitment to free speech waned to nothing.
“Free Speech is Killing Us,” headlines a recent story in the leftist New York Times by leftist New Yorker writer Andrew Marantz.
“In the early years of this decade, back when people associated social media with Barack Obama or the Arab Spring, Twitter executives referred to their company as ‘the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.’ Sticks and stones and assault rifles could hurt us, but the internet was surely only a force for progress. No one believes that anymore,” Marantz writes.
Translating that from Leftist into Truth, it means: “Free speech was okay when people said things we like, but not now that people are saying other things.” No one seems to have explained to Marantz that that’s the way freedom feels to everyone: great for you, horrific for anyone you disagree with.
Fearful of Donald Trump’s talent for communicating with Americans without the hate-filled filter of the press, the Left and their media have now launched wars on Facebook and Twitter, trying to cut off the flow of information they dislike. Democratic congressmen grilled Mark Zuckerberg on his failure to censor politicians while, suspiciously in concert, 22 separate news outlets launched attacks on Zuck and his site. Twitter, which was exposed by Project Veritas for shadow banning conservative speech, has announced it will no longer allow political or issue ads. Whose voice do you think they’re trying to silence?
Appallingly, journalists themselves have signed on to this assault on the most basic of American values. In an article in the latest City Journal entitled “Journalists Against Free Speech,” John Tierney describes how journalists from the Atlantic, the Times, Huffpo and other venues have endorsed the version of leftist shut-uppery known as Cancel Culture — though they are shocked when anyone tries to use it on them.
And, according to a recent survey by Campaign for Free Speech, these tactics may be working. Fifty-one percent of Americans want to rewrite the First Amendment to exclude “hate speech.”
Of course, you only have to think logically for half a minute to start asking yourself questions. 1) Who decides the definition of hate speech? 2) Why do they want to? 3) What are they trying to hide?
If you answered: 1) Leftists, 2) Because they want power and 3) The fact that leftism leads to slavery&#8230;
&#8230;shut up.

Protesters

KLAVAN: The Big Silence: The Left Wages War On Free Speech

New York Times

On Thursday, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, a devout liberal who wrote the script for the film “The Social Network,” which portrayed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a hard-hearted villain only interested in himself, attacked Zuckerberg in an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/opinion/aaron-sorkin-mark-zuckerberg-facebook.html?smtyp=cur&amp;smid=tw-nytopinion">op-ed for The New York Times</a>, titled: “Aaron Sorkin: An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook isn’t defending free speech, it’s assaulting truth.”
Sorkin wrote, “It was hard not to feel the irony while I was reading excerpts from your recent speech at Georgetown University, in which you defended — on free speech grounds — Facebook’s practice of posting demonstrably false ads from political candidates.”
Sorkin huffed, “I admire your deep belief in free speech. I get a lot of use out of the First Amendment. Most important, it’s a bedrock of our democracy and it needs to be kept strong … Last year, over 40 percent of Americans said they got news from Facebook. Of course the problem could be solved by those people going to a different news source, or you could decide to make Facebook a reliable source of public information.”
Zuckerberg responded to Sorkin by using Sorkin’s own words from the screenplay for “The American President”:
<blockquote>America isn&#8217;t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, &#8217;cause it&#8217;s gonna put up a fight. It&#8217;s gonna say: You want free speech? Let&#8217;s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who&#8217;s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can&#8217;t just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.</blockquote>
In 2014, <a href="https://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/the-social-network/241132/mark-zuckerberg-the-social-network-was-kind-of-hurtful">speaking at a Q&amp;A</a> at Facebook&#8217;s headquarters, Zuckerberg said of &#8220;The Social Network,&#8221; for which Sorkin won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, &#8220;I haven&#8217;t spent a lot of time thinking about that movie in a while. I kind of blocked that one out &#8230; I think the reality is that writing code and then building a product and building a company is not a glamorous enough thing to make a movie about, so you can imagine that a lot of this stuff they had to embellish or make up. They went out of their way in the movie to try to get some interesting details correct like the design of the office, but on the overarching plot &#8211; they just kind of made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful &#8230; there were pretty glaring things that were just made up about the movie that made it pretty hard to take seriously.&#8221;
When he won the Oscar for &#8220;The Social Network,&#8221; Sorkin <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VP5mFHl_lY">stated</a>, &#8220;This movie is going to be a source of pride for me every day for the rest of my life.&#8217;
Social media noted Zuckerberg’s takedown of Sorkin:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Oh dear. Flattened. <a href="https://t.co/0EXr1b1C78">https://t.co/0EXr1b1C78</a>
&mdash; Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) <a href="https://twitter.com/HolmesJosh/status/1189985929987014657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Never mess with a human algorithm.
Zuckerberg just slaughtered him in broad daylight. <a href="https://t.co/khQ9tpTMWs">https://t.co/khQ9tpTMWs</a>
&mdash; Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) <a href="https://twitter.com/NumbersMuncher/status/1189978113746321408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
There was more:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Icing on the cake is 3 pieces of misinformation in Sorkin&#39;s piece in the New York Times they had to issue corrections for <a href="https://t.co/Sipk9WB5Ec">pic.twitter.com/Sipk9WB5Ec</a>
&mdash; Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) <a href="https://twitter.com/ComfortablySmug/status/1189979403192811521?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The big First Amendment case involving Larry Flynt, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, was about political satire, not pornography. <a href="https://t.co/6x8QvawYPa">https://t.co/6x8QvawYPa</a> <a href="https://t.co/JbCSxNZLAt">pic.twitter.com/JbCSxNZLAt</a>
&mdash; Bill Hammond (@NYHammond) <a href="https://twitter.com/NYHammond/status/1189981368295579649?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
H/T <a href="https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2019/10/31/9-1-1-id-like-to-report-a-murder-mark-zuckerberg-absolutely-shreds-aaron-sorkin-for-claiming-hes-assaulting-truth-by-defending-free-speech/">Twitchy</a>

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Facebook Employees Stage Virtual Revolt Against CEO Zuckerberg’s Defense Of Free Expression

KNOWLES: Cheers For Zuckerberg: Facebook Defends Free Speech

Zuckerberg: Unlike Twitter Fact-Checking Trump’s Tweets, Facebook ‘Shouldn’t Be The Arbiter Of Truth’

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Stephen King Quits Facebook In A Huff For ‘Flood Of False Information’

George Soros Attacks Facebook: ‘Mark Zuckerberg Should Not Be In Control’

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Cruz: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Is Right, Twitter’s Dorsey Is Wrong

KLAVAN: The Big Silence: The Left Wages War On Free Speech

Aaron Sorkin, Who Ripped Mark Zuckerberg In ‘The Social Network,’ Tries Again. Zuckerberg Uses Sorkin’s Own Words Against Him.

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Facebook

Facebook Employees Stage Virtual Revolt Against CEO Zuckerberg’s Defense Of Free Expression

KNOWLES: Cheers For Zuckerberg: Facebook Defends Free Speech

Zuckerberg: Unlike Twitter Fact-Checking Trump’s Tweets, Facebook ‘Shouldn’t Be The Arbiter Of Truth’

KNOWLES: Facebook Risks Constricting At Home What It Seeks To Expand Abroad: Free Expression

Facebook Will Provide $100 Million Grant To Small Businesses During COVID-19 Pandemic

Facebook Fact Checker Debunks New Smear Against Trump From Media, Democrats: ‘Factually Inaccurate’

Leftist Billionaire Soros Wants Facebook CEO Zuckerberg Removed. Accuses Him Of ‘Mutual Assistance Arrangement With Donald Trump’

Pelosi Demands Twitter, Facebook Pull Viral ‘Speech Ripping’ Video; Group Behind It Responds

Stephen King Quits Facebook In A Huff For ‘Flood Of False Information’

George Soros Attacks Facebook: ‘Mark Zuckerberg Should Not Be In Control’

‘Star Wars’ Icon, Trump Critic Mark Hamill Quits Facebook Over Political Ads

Facebook Bans ‘Deepfakes’ From Platform, Left-Wing Outlets Concerned Nancy Pelosi Video Doesn’t Count

Dave Rubin Launches ‘Locals,’ A New Venture To Combat Big Tech Censorship

The Clinton Campaign Is Accusing Facebook Of Favoring Trump. That’s Not What Happened.

Neil Young Quits Facebook For Promoting ‘False Information To The Public’

Irony: Elizabeth Warren Slams Twitter’s Political Ad Ban Because It Covers Climate Change

ERICKSON: The Coming Algorithm Civil War

Cruz: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Is Right, Twitter’s Dorsey Is Wrong

KLAVAN: The Big Silence: The Left Wages War On Free Speech

Aaron Sorkin, Who Ripped Mark Zuckerberg In ‘The Social Network,’ Tries Again. Zuckerberg Uses Sorkin’s Own Words Against Him.

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