Twitter temporarily suspended the Trump campaign&#8217;s account on Wednesday and only reinstated it after they took down a video of President Donald Trump claiming children are &#8220;almost immune&#8221; to COVID-19.
Twitter claimed the campaign&#8217;s tweet violated its policies. Liz Kelley, a spokesperson for Twitter, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/05/trump-post-removed-facebook/">told</a> The Washington Post that the video was &#8220;in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation,&#8221; adding that the &#8220;account owner will be required to remove the Tweet before they can Tweet again.&#8221;
Facebook followed suit, with spokesman Andy Stone saying on Wednesday that the “video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19, which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation.”
In the video, Trump said children are less susceptible to the virus. &#8220;I think the schools should open,&#8221; the president said. &#8220;This thing is going away. It will go away like things go away, and my view is that schools should be open. If you look at children, children are almost – and I would say almost definitely – almost immune from this disease, so few. They&#8217;ve got stronger – hard to believe, and I don&#8217;t know how you feel about – but they have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for the virus. They don&#8217;t have a problem. They just don&#8217;t have a problem.&#8221;
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) late last month <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/reopening-schools.html">posted</a> a piece headlined &#8220;The Importance of Reopening America’s Schools this Fall,&#8221; which said in part:
<blockquote>Parents are understandably concerned about the safety of their children at school in the wake of COVID-19. The best available evidence indicates if children become infected, they are far less likely to suffer severe symptoms. Death rates among school-aged children are much lower than among adults. At the same time, the harms attributed to closed schools on the social, emotional, and behavioral health, economic well-being, and academic achievement of children, in both the short- and long-term, are well-known and significant.
Further, the lack of in-person educational options disproportionately harms low-income and minority children and those living with disabilities. These students are far less likely to have access to private instruction and care and far more likely to rely on key school-supported resources like food programs, special education services, counseling, and after-school programs to meet basic developmental needs.</blockquote>
The CDC went on to say that &#8220;the best available evidence indicates that COVID-19 poses relatively low risks to school-aged children.&#8221;
&#8220;Children appear to be at lower risk for contracting COVID-19 compared to adults. To put this in perspective, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of July 17, 2020, the United States reported that children and adolescents under 18 years old account for under 7 percent of COVID-19 cases and less than 0.1 percent of COVID-19-related deaths.&#8220;
The center also said &#8220;scientific studies suggest that COVID-19 transmission among children in schools may be low.&#8221;
The Washington Post initially said Trump&#8217;s personal account was banned from Twitter before issuing a correction.
&#8220;Breaking: Twitter said it will require President Trump to remove a post containing coronavirus misinformation, banning him from tweeting until he does so,&#8221; the Post began its report in bold text, Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-issues-major-correction-after-botching-trump-twitter-post">reported</a>. &#8220;Twitter hid the post and said he will not be able to tweet from his account until he deletes it, although he can appeal the decision.&#8221;
&#8220;The paper ultimately issued a correction, writing at the bottom of its report, &#8216;Twitter penalized Team Trump, the president’s campaign account. An earlier version of this article said that Twitter penalized President Trump’s account,'&#8221; Fox wrote.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/twitter-censors-trump-tweet-denouncing-riots-took-no-action-on-tweets-supporting-riots?%3Futm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=dwtwitter">Twitter Censors Trump Tweet Denouncing Riots; Took No Action On Tweets Supporting Riots</a>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Twitter Added New Features

Twitter Removes Trump Campaign Tweet, Temporarily Blocks From Posting

Coronavirus

Facebook

Twitter

Two giants of social media, Facebook and Twitter, have yanked a video of a press conference in Washington, D.C., that President Trump had reposted.
The viral video, viewed more than 14 million times on Facebook alone, features doctors and medical personnel from a group America’s Frontline Doctors, who share their opinions on coronavirus and the response to the pandemic.
Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook, said the video was removed “for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Yes, we removed it for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19.
&mdash; Andy Stone (@andymstone) <a href="https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1287927756412653569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 28, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
A spokesperson for Twitter told <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-youtube-twitter-take-down-false-covid-video-shared-trump-2020-7">Business Insider</a>, &#8220;Tweets with the video are in violation of our COVID-19 misinformation policy. We are taking action in line with our policy.”
In the video, about a dozen doctors standing in front of the Supreme Court building praise the use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug supported by Trump.
&#8220;One of the doctors, who was identified in reports as Dr. Stella Immanuel, claimed that she treated more than 350 coronavirus patients — some with diabetes and high blood pressure — and not a single one died after being administered hydroxychloroquine, zinc and Zithromax,&#8221; <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/twitter-post-that-seems-to-show-doctors-praising-hydroxychloroquine-use-for-coronavirus">Fox News</a> reported. &#8220;She claimed that she even administers the drug in prophylactic measures.&#8221;
But the The New York Times, citing recent studies about the drug, called the video &#8220;the most recent example of misinformation that has spread&#8221; concerning COVID-19.
In April, hydroxychloroquine was deemed the most highly rated treatment for the novel coronavirus in an international poll of more than 6,000 doctors. The survey, conducted by <a href="https://www.sermo.com/press-releases/largest-statistically-significant-study-by-6200-multi-country-physicians-on-covid-19-uncovers-treatment-patterns-and-puts-pandemic-in-context/">Sermo</a>, a global health care polling company, asked 6,227 physicians in 30 countries to find out what works against SARS-CoV-2. The poll found that 37% of those treating patients suffering from the coronavirusa that causes COVID-19 patients rated hydroxychloroquine as the “most effective therapy.”
Azithromycin, known by the brand name Zithromax or Z-Pak, came in as the second-most effective therapy in the physicians&#8217; opinions at 32%, followed by “nothing.” “Outside the U.S., hydroxychloroquine was equally used for diagnosed patients with mild to severe symptoms whereas in the U.S. it was most commonly used for high risk diagnosed patients,” the survey found.
But in May, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ended the emergency use of the anti-malarial drug for COVID-19, while the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced in June that they, too, would end their own clinical trial because it was “unlikely to be beneficial to hospitalized patients.” Also in June, The New England Journal of Medicine reported on a study that showed that taking hydroxychloroquine was about equal to placebo pills at preventing illness from COVID-19.
Then in July, the World Health Organization (WHO) also changed its recommendation for the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 after research showed “little or no reduction” in deaths from the virus.
Trump on Monday also retweeted several posts on Twitter that supported the use of hydroxychloroquine. But Dr. Anthony Fauci, an immunologist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who serves on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, addressed the tweets in a Tuesday interview with ABC&#8217;s &#8220;Good Morning America.&#8221;
“The overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in coronavirus disease,” Fauci said.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/medical-journal-issues-expression-of-concern-over-study-on-dangers-of-hydroxychloroquine">Medical Journal Issues &#8216;Expression Of Concern&#8217; Over Study On Alleged Dangers Of Hydroxychloroquine</a>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

hydroxychloroquine drug tablets

Twitter, Facebook Delete Viral Video Promoted By Trump On COVID-19 And Hydroxychloroquine

COVID-19

Donald Trump

The companies that were first to boycott Facebook and denounce the company most vocally for supposedly not doing enough to curb &#8220;hate speech&#8221; had already dramatically dialed back ad buys before doing so.
REI, The North Face, and Patagonia experienced a steep decline in ad buying on Facebook even before they withdrew from the platform in a supposed attempt to combat its alleged allowance of &#8220;hateful lies and dangerous propaganda,&#8221; according to data obtained by The Daily Wire via Pathmatics.
Pathmatics is an advertiser database that is &#8220;driven to bring transparency and accountability to digital marketing,&#8221; according to its <a href="https://www.pathmatics.com/company" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">website</a>. Its information indicated that ad buying from the outdoor retailers had slumped considerably before they took their stance against the social media giant&#8217;s handling of untoward political opinions.
<div id="attachment_128869" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-128869" class="wp-image-128869 size-large" src="https://editorial.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/8306A4AF-F321-4BCB-A72A-4DDFBEE01526-1024x381.jpeg" alt="REI chart." width="1024" height="381" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/8306A4AF-F321-4BCB-A72A-4DDFBEE01526-1024x381.jpeg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/8306A4AF-F321-4BCB-A72A-4DDFBEE01526-300x112.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/8306A4AF-F321-4BCB-A72A-4DDFBEE01526-768x286.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/8306A4AF-F321-4BCB-A72A-4DDFBEE01526-1536x571.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/8306A4AF-F321-4BCB-A72A-4DDFBEE01526-2048x761.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot via Pathmatics</div>
<div id="attachment_128870" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-128870" class="size-large wp-image-128870" src="https://editorial.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2CB0B7BE-1612-4026-9C32-B01416785396-1024x384.jpeg" alt="North Face chart." width="1024" height="384" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/2CB0B7BE-1612-4026-9C32-B01416785396-1024x384.jpeg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/2CB0B7BE-1612-4026-9C32-B01416785396-300x112.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/2CB0B7BE-1612-4026-9C32-B01416785396-768x288.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/2CB0B7BE-1612-4026-9C32-B01416785396-1536x576.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/2CB0B7BE-1612-4026-9C32-B01416785396-2048x768.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot via Pathmatics</div>
<div id="attachment_128871" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-128871" class="size-large wp-image-128871" src="https://editorial.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/E06E077C-EE40-478D-83ED-53ECA435465E-1024x320.jpeg" alt="Patagonia chart" width="1024" height="320" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/E06E077C-EE40-478D-83ED-53ECA435465E-1024x320.jpeg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/E06E077C-EE40-478D-83ED-53ECA435465E-300x94.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/E06E077C-EE40-478D-83ED-53ECA435465E-768x240.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/E06E077C-EE40-478D-83ED-53ECA435465E-1536x480.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/E06E077C-EE40-478D-83ED-53ECA435465E.jpeg 1580w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot via Pathmatics</div>
Patagonia joined with REI and The North Face last month to express indignation at Facebook&#8217;s alleged unwillingness &#8220;to take sufficient steps to stop the spread of hateful lies and dangerous propaganda,&#8221; according to a statement the company released on June 21.
The retailers also accused Facebook of being &#8220;complicit in spreading disinformation and fomenting fear and hatred,&#8221; as reported by <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-boycott-patagonia-rei-north-face-stophateforprofit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CBS News</a>.
Their action was reportedly in response to demands from <a href="https://www.stophateforprofit.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Stop Hate for Profit</a>, which has claimed that Facebook is not doing enough to curb the promulgation of hate speech on its platform, for which reason it has urged companies to boycott them.
&#8220;We deeply respect any brand&#8217;s decision, and remain focused on the important work of removing hate speech and providing critical voting information,&#8221; said Carolyn Everson, Vice President of Global Business Group Facebook, in a statement to CBS News. &#8220;Our conversations with marketers and civil rights organizations are about how, together, we can be a force for good.&#8221;
Neither REI, The North Face, nor Patagonia responded to The Daily Wire in time for publication.
Other companies that have been <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/03/activists-advertising-boycott-facebook-348528" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">lauded for pulling out of Facebook</a>, such as Ford, Ben &amp; Jerry&#8217;s, Hershey, and Unilever, also significantly dialed back ad buys during the months leading up to their boycott. In what CBS News described as &#8220;a powerful statement,&#8221; ice cream company Ben &amp; Jerry&#8217;s promised &#8220;to take stronger action to stop its platforms from being used to divide our nation, suppress voters, foment and fan the flames of racism and violence, and undermine our democracy.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_128875" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-128875" class="size-large wp-image-128875" src="https://editorial.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/98275BB9-EC15-443F-B14A-8FA5F3B5B66F-1024x386.jpeg" alt="Ford chart." width="1024" height="386" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/98275BB9-EC15-443F-B14A-8FA5F3B5B66F-1024x386.jpeg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/98275BB9-EC15-443F-B14A-8FA5F3B5B66F-300x113.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/98275BB9-EC15-443F-B14A-8FA5F3B5B66F-768x289.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/98275BB9-EC15-443F-B14A-8FA5F3B5B66F-1536x579.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/98275BB9-EC15-443F-B14A-8FA5F3B5B66F-2048x772.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot via Pathmatics</div>
<div id="attachment_128876" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-128876" class="size-large wp-image-128876" src="https://editorial.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/6A7EC7DD-5A93-428E-A165-FD9AEF9CAF8C-1024x379.jpeg" alt="Ben &amp; Jerry’s chart." width="1024" height="379" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/6A7EC7DD-5A93-428E-A165-FD9AEF9CAF8C-1024x379.jpeg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/6A7EC7DD-5A93-428E-A165-FD9AEF9CAF8C-300x111.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/6A7EC7DD-5A93-428E-A165-FD9AEF9CAF8C-768x284.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/6A7EC7DD-5A93-428E-A165-FD9AEF9CAF8C-1536x568.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/6A7EC7DD-5A93-428E-A165-FD9AEF9CAF8C-2048x757.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot via Pathmatics</div>
<div id="attachment_128877" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-128877" class="size-large wp-image-128877" src="https://editorial.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2217E557-BDDB-49D5-BD85-F2E189830F39-1024x382.jpeg" alt="Hershey chart." width="1024" height="382" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/2217E557-BDDB-49D5-BD85-F2E189830F39-1024x382.jpeg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/2217E557-BDDB-49D5-BD85-F2E189830F39-300x112.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/2217E557-BDDB-49D5-BD85-F2E189830F39-768x287.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/2217E557-BDDB-49D5-BD85-F2E189830F39-1536x573.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/2217E557-BDDB-49D5-BD85-F2E189830F39-2048x764.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot via Pathmatics</div>
<div id="attachment_128878" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-128878" class="size-large wp-image-128878" src="https://editorial.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/13771D61-8128-4970-A5E9-7440CBDFDB77-1024x389.jpeg" alt="Unilever chart." width="1024" height="389" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/13771D61-8128-4970-A5E9-7440CBDFDB77-1024x389.jpeg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/13771D61-8128-4970-A5E9-7440CBDFDB77-300x114.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/13771D61-8128-4970-A5E9-7440CBDFDB77-768x292.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/13771D61-8128-4970-A5E9-7440CBDFDB77-1536x583.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/13771D61-8128-4970-A5E9-7440CBDFDB77-2048x778.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot via Pathmatics</div>
Facebook took flak earlier this month from advertisers who promised to pull their ads from Facebook and Instagram at least through July in an attempt to join &#8220;the pressure campaign over the social network&#8217;s handling of hate speech and misinformation,&#8221; according to CNN.
&#8220;The protest came after Facebook decided not to take action on a series of controversial posts from President Donald Trump — including one during racial justice protests that said &#8216;looting&#8217; would lead to &#8216;shooting,'&#8221; CNN added.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-new-york-times-dropped-millions-on-facebook-to-advertise-the-1619-projectwhile-trying-to-bully-facebook-into-censoring-others">The New York Times Dropped Millions On Facebook To Advertise The 1619 Project…While Trying To Bully Facebook Into Censoring Others</a>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

North Face logo

REI, North Face, Patagonia Were Barely Spending Anything On Facebook Ads Before Boycotting Platform

Hate Speech

Political Correctness

Nandini Jammi, an instrumental part of the liberal ad-targeting group Sleeping Giants, is splitting from the organization over a what she says is a lack of credit for her contributions.
Jammi, who works in marketing, wrote a roughly 2,400-word <a href="https://medium.com/@nandoodles/im-leaving-sleeping-giants-but-not-because-i-want-to-d9c4f488642">blog post</a> Wednesday on Medium. Explaining why she was quitting the group she had been a part of almost since its inception as an anonymous Twitter account in 2016, she claimed Matt Rivitz, an ad industry veteran and original creator of Sleeping Giants, increasingly sidelined her and downplayed her contributions in numerous media interviews.
“Without my knowledge, my story was being defined by someone else — a white man who could use his platform to exclude me, diminish me, or disappear me entirely. He never once invited me to join him. I never had any idea he was doing any of these interviews until it was too late,” Jammi wrote.
Rivitz created the Sleeping Giants Twitter account on Nov. 16, 2016, to campaign against advertisers touting their products on platforms that share “hateful” content. Before the end of the month, Jammi joined Rivitz and agreed to run the campaign’s Facebook page while he controlled its Twitter.
Since its founding, Sleeping Giants has led or pushed boycott movements against Breitbart News, Bill O’Reilly, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and others. The rupture between two of its leading activists comes as the group is pushing an advertiser boycott against Facebook for not restricting more content, largely from right-wing sources.
The schism between Rivitz and Jammi began after <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2018/07/16/sleeping-giants-founder-rivitz/">The Daily Caller News Foundation</a> outed Rivitz as Sleeping Giants’ founder in July 2018. Two days later, the pair spoke openly about their involvement in the organization with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/business/media/sleeping-giants-breitbart-twitter.html">The New York Times</a>.
For the article, Jammi requested she be named as a “cofounder” of the group, but Rivitz shot down her request and said she would be identified as a “member of Sleeping Giants,” according to <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/nandini-jammi-leaving-sleeping-giants">BuzzFeed News</a>.
“For better or worse, every organization needs a leader and that role in Sleeping Giants has belonged to me, regardless of title,” Rivitz told BuzzFeed.
“Given that we never discussed her title previously, I was definitely surprised to hear that she had named herself cofounder,” Rivitz said. “As I did not believe that was her role, having come on after I had already established the campaign, I corrected the record according to this belief.”
Rivitz went on to conduct numerous media appearances, interviews, and talks as the founder of Sleeping Giants. Jammi complained to Rivitz of being “sidelined” in an Aug. 12, 2018 email.
“In the NYT, you’re founder and I’m an early partner. In AdWeek, you’re founder and I’m a helper. In WaPo, you’re founder and I’m one of 10 helpers,” Jammi wrote, according to a screenshot of the email in her Medium post. “I’m starting to feel wary of being sidelined. I’m wary that this above ambiguity could keep me from realizing my ambitions and the impact I want to have as a pro marketer/WOC in my space.”
Rivitz replied that he felt “horrible about this and had no idea,” according to BuzzFeed. He took the title of “cofounder” off the table since he was already the founder, but gave her wide authority to pick another title. The two agreed she would be a “founding organizer.”
Rivitz and Jammi’s relationship began sliding after Rivitz accepted an award on behalf of Sleeping Giants at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France in June 2019. Jammi felt slighted after previously asking Rivitz that she be informed about and invited to participate in any big awards or media appearances for Sleeping Giants. She learned of the Cannes award from posts on Rivitz’s Instagram.
Jammi then posted a series of sarcastic and critical messages on social media directed at Rivitz. The feud came to a head in a phone call in which Rivitz questioned whether Jammi was a part of Sleeping Giants for the mission or to raise her own profile.
Afterwards, Jammi began marketing herself as a “cofounder” of Sleeping Giants and doing more press appearances herself. The two went about seven months after the call with minimal contact until a January call in which Rivitz attempted to repair the broken relationship.
“The simple act of calling myself co-founder changed so much. People looked up to me as a leader and respected what I had to say. Doors were opening and I had a pathway into the adtech industry that allowed me to start building the next thing,” Jammi wrote.
She decided to break with Rivitz completely after learning from him that he was working on a new campaign with the Anti-Defamation League and had left her out of the talks.
“Once again, he was leaving me out of the room,” Jammi wrote. “I’m sorry I have to leave Sleeping Giants. There was always space for both of us, just not on this campaign.”
Rivitz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Megaphone

Liberal Boycott Group ‘Cofounder’ Splits After White Male Partner Tried To ‘Disappear’ Her

Media Bias

The New York Times’ massive campaign to pressure social media giants into restricting freedom of information — particularly dissemination from sources other than mainstream outlets — has now kicked into high gear. Tech columnist Kevin Roose warned the Times readership earlier this year that they should “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/technology/facebook-election.html">buckle up for another Facebook election</a>,” in which the platform will supposedly be “overrun with hyperpartisan misinformation” like the kind that “proved to be a decisive force in 2016.” Roose isn’t the only voice at the Times promoting the notion that Facebook’s role in allowing free flow of information results in election corruption. Contributing opinion writer Kara Swisher has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/opinion/facebook-zuckerberg-labeling.html">devoted outsized attention</a> to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/facebook-trump-free-speech.html">supposed problem</a> of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/facebook-independent-oversight-board.html">Facebook’s unwillingness to crack down</a> on those she deems insufficiently woke. The goal here is obvious: force Facebook to restrict content, thus re-establishing the monopoly on information the mainstream media lost with the rise of the internet.
But while the Times has been one of the most significant drivers of this pressure campaign to force Facebook to censor more content — particularly paid advertising — the Times has taken advantage of rules crafted to its benefit and has dumped tens of millions of dollars into marketing its most radical content via Facebook. As it turns out, the Times isn’t worried about money and politics on Facebook. They’re simply trying to dominate the system themselves, barring all others.
The Times Establishes A Money Monopoly
The Times’ opinion page has routinely and repeatedly criticized Facebook for the supposed sin of utilizing openness toward speech as a guise for profit-making. This, of course, ignores the fact that Facebook makes a tiny fraction of its income from political ads. But facts have never stopped the Times. In January, propaganda-donor George Soros <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/opinion/soros-facebook-zuckerberg.html">wrote an editorial</a> for the Times in which he accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of colluding with Donald Trump toward Trump’s re-election, because the two “realize that their interests are aligned — the president’s in winning elections, Mr. Zuckerberg’s in making money.”
Yet when it comes to utilizing Facebook as a marketing tool for its own propaganda, the Times is more than willing to pour in money. According to estimates from marketing intelligence platform Pathmatics, the Times spent around $65 million over the course of the last twelve months in Facebook advertising for all of its various promotional campaigns. A review of just three ads promoting the 1619 Project over the course of about two months in Fall 2019 estimates a spend of around $3 million. For three ads. Is it any wonder that the 1619 Project became one of the most talked-about pieces of pseudo-history in American history?
<div class="image"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-126607" src="https://editorial.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NYT-Pathmatics-1.png" alt="" width="712" height="477" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/NYT-Pathmatics-1.png 712w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/NYT-Pathmatics-1-300x201.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 712px) 100vw, 712px" /></div>
<div class="image"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-126608" src="https://editorial.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NYT-Pathmatics-2.png" alt="" width="711" height="473" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/NYT-Pathmatics-2.png 711w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/NYT-Pathmatics-2-300x200.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 711px) 100vw, 711px" /></div>
<div class="image"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-126609" src="https://editorial.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NYT-Pathmatics-3.png" alt="" width="711" height="474" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/NYT-Pathmatics-3.png 711w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/NYT-Pathmatics-3-300x200.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 711px) 100vw, 711px" /></div>
The Times has every right to advertise on Facebook. Indeed, The Daily Wire advertises on the platform, as do most publishers. But the Times&#8217; crusade to shut down dissenting opinions on Facebook, to avoid scrutiny for its own ad spending, and to overwhelm the system with its own marketing money demonstrates nothing so much as perverse self-interest.
How The Times Rigged The Rules
But the Times&#8216; manipulation of the system doesn’t stop with mere spending. The Times takes full advantage of rules written specifically to its advantage, while other outlets are left out in the cold.
In response to blowback from progressive politicians and establishment media outlets following Trump’s stunning upset victory in 2016, Facebook launched a new effort to promote transparency on its site regarding “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/restricted_content/political">ads about social issues, elections or politics</a>.” The program requires any ads addressing political or social issues to be included in the platform’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ads/archive/report/">political ads archive</a>, which allows users to see important information about them, including demographical information about the ad’s audience, geographical regions to which it was promoted, and ranges of spend. Ads labeled non-political avoid such accountability and transparency.
Non-profits and universities are often required to list even seemingly non-political ads, like ads promoting free history courses by Hillsdale College, as promoting political and social messages, and thus include them in Facebook’s archive. But the Times is able to have its cake and eat it too, hiding behind a policy meant to protect their journalistic efforts while engaging in activism more akin to a partisan think tank.
As <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-exempts-news-from-political-ad-archive-1543500310">The Wall Street Journal</a> reported in November 2018, many in the news media were unhappy with Facebook’s new transparency effort because they were “seeing their journalism classified as if it were paid partisan advocacy.” Facebook agreed, with the director of product management, Rob Leathern, acknowledging that classifying ads promoting news pieces as “political ads” was “problematic for a number of news organizations.”
In response, Facebook announced that ads promoting news articles would be <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/29/facebook-news-ads-transparency/">exempt</a> from being listed in its political ads archive, thus also <a href="https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/indexing-facebook-news-pages-ad-archive">exempting</a> news publishers from the transparency required of other advertisers addressing “social issues, elections, or politics.”
The Times promptly used its exemption to press forward the most openly propagandistic project in its history, all without facing any scrutiny or accountability in its marketing practices. In August 2019, the Times launched its most ambitious, transformative project to date: the 1619 Project. Its goal: to “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html">reframe the country’s history</a>” in a way that indelibly ties its founding and its enduring identity to the darkest, most shameful aspect of its past — slavery. Among its “reframing” assertions was the foundational (and ultimately “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the-1619-project.html">clarified</a>”) claim by its lead author that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”
Since its launch, the Times has directed massive resources to the project, given the project <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/19/magazine/history-slavery-smithsonian.html">its own section</a> in the paper, created <a href="https://pulitzercenter.org/projects/1619-project-pulitzer-center-education-programming">curriculum materials</a> so teachers can promote its “reframing” of American history in the classroom, and produced a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/podcasts/1619-podcast.html">podcast</a>, a <a href="https://www.nytco.com/press/random-house-to-publish-multi-book-series-based-on-the-new-york-timess-the-1619-project/">book series</a> and <a href="https://timesevents.nytimes.com/1619NYC">live events</a> based around the project.
The 1619 Project was never news. It was always advocacy — an attempt to undermine Trump’s winning message — Make America Great Again — by rewriting our history in a way that suggests America was founded on the evil of slavery and not the aspiration of the Declaration of Independence, and was therefore never great. Yet, because of the Times’ exemption for its status as a news entity, not a single ad for the 1619 Project — into which it appears to have poured millions in advertising dollars in an election year — is included in Facebook’s political ads archive. As a result, the public does not know precisely how much the Times spent, to whom the project was marketed, or in what states it was promoted — for example, electoral swing states.
That the ads clearly promote “social issues, elections, or politics” is undeniable. Here’s the text of an initial <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/10151989174079999">ad</a> promoting the project posted Aug. 15 that ran for weeks which seeks to undermine the very claim that the country was founded on the transcendent 1776 assertion that “all men are created equal”:
<blockquote>The New York Times is launching the #1619Project, a collection of essays, criticism and art about how the America we know today didn’t start in 1776 — it started in August 1619, when a ship carrying enslaved Africans landed in Virginia.</blockquote>
<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script async="1" defer="1" crossorigin="anonymous" src="https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&amp;version=v7.0" nonce="kgwdOnUc"></script>
<div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/10151989174079999" data-width="500">
<blockquote cite="https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/10151989174079999" class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore">
The New York Times is launching the #1619Project, a collection of essays, criticism and art about how the America we&#8230;
Posted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/">The New York Times</a> on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/10151989174079999">Thursday, August 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Another <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/10151990234839999">ad</a> promoted in fall 2019 targets one of the essential aspects of America that has made it “great,” capitalism:
<blockquote>In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation, writes Matthew Desmond for the #1619Project. “Given the choice between modernity and barbarism, prosperity and poverty, lawfulness and cruelty, democracy and totalitarianism, America chose all of the above.”</blockquote>
<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script async="1" defer="1" crossorigin="anonymous" src="https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&amp;version=v7.0" nonce="XT6pZI5N"></script>
<div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/10151990234839999" data-width="500">
<blockquote cite="https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/10151990234839999" class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore">
In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation, writes Matthew Desmond&#8230;
Posted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/">The New York Times</a> on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/10151990234839999">Friday, August 16, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
Despite the overtly political nature of the ads, the Times has not been required to list them like so many other outlets under Facebook’s “social issues, elections or politics” designation. The result is the Times gets to enjoy exemption from public accountability in the disclosure of significant details about the ad campaign — all while promoting a “hyperpartisan” activist message that could very well prove to be “a decisive force” in 2020.
In the end, the Times is a business. As a business, they’re perfectly willing to press forward an anti-speech agenda that harms their competitors while taking advantage of their monetary power to own the narrative. The notion that the Times stands either for free speech or for removing money from politics is the most obvious brand of fake news.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

New York Times Headquarters in New York City

The New York Times Dropped Millions On Facebook To Advertise The 1619 Project…While Trying To Bully Facebook Into Censoring Others

New York Times

Companies that have publicly announced they would stop advertising on Facebook unless the social media platform restricts President Donald Trump continue to advertise on a Russian platform favored by white supremacists.
The Washington Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman <a href="https://freebeacon.com/culture/companies-that-boycott-facebook-continue-to-advertise-on-russian-social-media-platform/">reported</a> that some of the very companies publicly boycotting Facebook in “a public pressure campaign led by Joe Biden and other top Democrats” to restrict their opponent Trump’s postings are still advertising on VK, a Russian media website that has become a haven for “white supremacists and neo-Nazis who have been banned from Facebook.” Further, VK bans gay-rights groups from posting on its platform.
“Over 100 companies announced a boycott of Facebook last week in protest of divisive political speech on the website. The boycott coincides with a public pressure campaign led by Joe Biden and other top Democrats to press Facebook to enforce stricter control over President Trump’s postings,” Goodman reported. “But many of these companies—including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Adidas, and Reebok—have been regular advertisers on VK, a popular Russian media website used by many white supremacists and neo-Nazis who have been banned from Facebook. Several of these companies continue to have a marketing presence on the Russian website, raising questions about their recent concern about ‘hate speech’ on social media sites.”
For example, Reebok and Adidas released a joint statement last week criticizing Facebook for allowing alleged “hate speech” on its website.
&#8220;Racist, discriminatory, and hateful online content have no place in our brand or in society,&#8221; the companies said in the statement. &#8220;As we focus on better practices within our company and communities to ensure lasting change in the fight against racism, Adidas and Reebok will also pause advertising on Facebook and Instagram globally throughout July.&#8221;
More from Goodman:
<blockquote>Many of the companies that joined the Facebook boycott continue to market their products and brands in posts on their VK pages, including Starbucks, Ford, Unilever, Colgate, Vans, The North Face, and Patagonia. On July 2, two days after joining the Facebook ad boycott, Colgate ran a promotion on VK offering prizes to members who purchased its products and used the VK app to scan the product code.
Coca-Cola has run advertising campaigns on VK, including a controversial 2016 ad in which the company included the disputed territories of Crimea and the Kuril Islands on a map of Russia. Pepsi has also been an advertiser on the site and <a href="https://marketing.by/keysy/vkontakte-zapuskaet-keshbek-v-oflayne-i-ishchet-partnerov/?mobile=N">reportedly</a> collaborated with VK on a payment app in 2018. Both still have an active presence on the platform.</blockquote>
Goodman reached out to the above companies regarding their continued advertising on VK, but none responded. Starbucks provided a statement saying it was halting advertising on “all social media platforms.”
The National Socialist Movement and the Ku Klux Klan each have a presence on VK.
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 with 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>.

Companies Boycotting Facebook Over Alleged ‘Hate Speech’ Still Advertise On Russian Social Media That Bans Gay-Rights Groups

San Francisco’s District 6 supervisor is pushing to remove Mark Zuckerberg’s name from a public hospital.
The Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center received its name in 2015 after the Facebook founder and his wife donated $75 million to the hospital’s foundation. San Francisco District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney says the tech CEO’s name is “unseemly” on the public hospital.
In a tweet <a href="https://twitter.com/MattHaneySF/status/1277309042390523904">thread</a> posted on Sunday, Haney said that Zuckerberg’s name should be taken off the hospital because of his refusal to &#8220;regulate hate speech&#8221; and &#8220;disinformation&#8221; on his social media platform, and because large donations should not “purchase permanent advertising on public buildings.”
“Massive advertising boycott of Facebook for failing to regulate hate speech &amp; disinformation Huge staff walk outs &amp; protests. Cozy relationship w Trump, $ to Republicans. Much of it seems directly tied to Mark Zuckerberg. Why is his name still on our SF public general hospital?” Haney began.
Zuckerberg has repeatedly defended his platform&#8217;s commitment to empowering free expression. In a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-defends-free-speech-amid-political-blowback-i-believe-in-people">speech</a> at Georgetown University last year, Zuckerberg spoke out strongly in defense of freedom of expression. &#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,” he said. “I’m here today because I believe we must continue to stand for free expression.”
More recently, amid pressure to follow the lead of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in censoring more posts, particularly President Trump&#8217;s, Zuckerberg renewed his defense of free speech, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-employees-stage-virtual-walkout-to-protest-ceo-zuckerbergs-stance-on-trump-posts">writing</a> in a May 29 post, &#8220;I know many people are upset that we’ve left the President’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;
Removing the CEO&#8217;s name may have consequences for the San Francisco hospital. Zuckerberg and Chan reached an agreement with the city’s Board of Supervisors to donate the money to the hospital in exchange for their names to remain on the care center for 50 years.
Haney contends that if enough people call for the name to be changed, Zuckerberg may not sue to enforce the agreement.
“There are options to still remove it, and nurses who have been working on a strategy that wouldn’t lose us millions,” Haney said. The hospital nurses’ union has been pushing for the hospital to be renamed for several years.
“The option the nurses prefer — a ballot measure calling for it to be changed, put up for a public vote. Their view is that if it passed, Zuckerberg wouldn’t sue to stop the name from being removed,” Haney continued. “The name on the PUBLIC hospital is unseemly, even regardless of his recent inactions.”
“$75 million is a big donation, and it’s welcomed and appreciated. It shouldn’t require permanent naming rights, advertising, on our public hospital. SF taxpayers have given billions to the hospital, it’s their building,” Haney said.
In 2018, San Francisco District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin campaigned to have Zuckerberg’s name removed from the hospital over the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-heres-what-really-happened-james-barrett">Cambridge Analytica</a> scandal in which a British consulting firm was reportedly given access to data on millions of Facebook users without their consent, according to the <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-politician-wants-to-remove-Mark-Zuckerberg-s-13429100.php">San Francisco Chronicle</a>.
At the time, hospital CEO Susan Ehrlich asserted that Zuckerberg and Chan’s gift had purchased the hospital life-saving equipment and supplies, while noting that memorializing people who give large donations encourages more giving.
“In acknowledgment and appreciation of that gift, our hospital now carries their names,” Ehrlich said. “Naming is an important convention in philanthropy that encourages additional donors. &#8230; We are honored that Dr. Chan and Mr. Zuckerberg thought highly enough of our hospital and staff, and the health of San Franciscans, to donate their resources to our mission.”
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>.

Mark Zuckerberg

San Francisco Supervisor Wants Zuckerberg’s Name Scrubbed From Hospital After $75M Donation

Free Speech

The NAACP and Anti-Defamation League are leading a pressure campaign against Facebook to more strictly censor content on the platform.
The civil rights groups are partnering with a handful of other progressive activist organizations to pressure Facebook to censor user content deemed to be “promoting hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence.” The progressive ad-targeting group <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2018/07/16/sleeping-giants-founder-rivitz/">Sleeping Giants</a>, media-advocacy groups Free Press and Common Sense Media, and the civil-rights group Color of Change are all contributing to the effort.
The progressive coalition published a full-page ad in The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday calling on businesses to “stand in solidarity” and boycott Facebook through the month of July. The ad calls on companies to pull advertising off the platform unless Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg agrees to ramp up his censorship of “hateful” content.
“Facebook remains unwilling to take significant steps to remove political propaganda from its platform,” NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a <a href="https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-naacp-sleeping-giants-common-sense-free-press-and-color-of-change-call-for">statement</a> announcing the pressure campaign. “It is clear that Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, are no longer simply negligent, but in fact, complacent in the spread of misinformation, despite the irreversible damage to our democracy. Such actions will upend the integrity of our elections as we head into 2020.”
“We will not stand for this. While we recognize the value that Facebook provides in connecting people of color with one another, we call into question a platform that profits from the suppression of Black votes or Black voices,” Johnson continued.
The campaign follows Zuckerberg&#8217;s declaration of his commitment to maintaining a platform that promotes “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-employees-stage-virtual-walkout-to-protest-ceo-zuckerbergs-stance-on-trump-posts">free expression</a>.”
“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,” Zuckerberg said in a Friday Facebook post on President Trump&#8217;s “divisive and inflammatory rhetoric.”
“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 [about state use of force to curb violent riots] out in the open, especially when the stakes are so high,” Zuckerberg said. “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.”
The Facebook founder and CEO is now facing strong pressure from inside and outside his company to take a more active role in policing the president&#8217;s content, as well as others. Hundreds of employees reportedly revolted in the company over Zuckerberg&#8217;s Friday post, refusing to work in order to show solidarity with protests in the wake of George Floyd&#8217;s death in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer used his knee to pin Floyd’s neck to the ground for nearly nine minutes.
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>.

NAACP, ADL, Sleeping Giants Launch Campaign To Pressure Facebook To Censor Posts

2020 Election

Censorship

<div class="css-53u6y8">
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>:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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>
</div>
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 Employees Stage Virtual Revolt Against CEO Zuckerberg’s Defense Of Free Expression

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

Google

Jack Dorsey

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>.  
&nbsp;

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

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;
<div class="text_exposed_show">
&#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.
</div>
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.”

Logo Ilustrations

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

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>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Far-left MSNBC host and documented bigot Joy Ann Reid also promoted the lie on air during a segment on Saturday.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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

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.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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;
<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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
For some reason, Hamill included a Malaysian flag. He later corrected that with this post:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🇺🇸&gt;💰
&mdash; Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) <a href="https://twitter.com/HamillHimself/status/1216552601841364992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
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>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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.

Menu

Facebook

Twitter Removes Trump Campaign Tweet, Temporarily Blocks From Posting

Twitter, Facebook Delete Viral Video Promoted By Trump On COVID-19 And Hydroxychloroquine

REI, North Face, Patagonia Were Barely Spending Anything On Facebook Ads Before Boycotting Platform

Liberal Boycott Group ‘Cofounder’ Splits After White Male Partner Tried To ‘Disappear’ Her

The New York Times Dropped Millions On Facebook To Advertise The 1619 Project…While Trying To Bully Facebook Into Censoring Others

Companies Boycotting Facebook Over Alleged ‘Hate Speech’ Still Advertise On Russian Social Media That Bans Gay-Rights Groups

San Francisco Supervisor Wants Zuckerberg’s Name Scrubbed From Hospital After $75M Donation

NAACP, ADL, Sleeping Giants Launch Campaign To Pressure Facebook To Censor Posts

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

Menu

Facebook

Twitter Removes Trump Campaign Tweet, Temporarily Blocks From Posting

Twitter, Facebook Delete Viral Video Promoted By Trump On COVID-19 And Hydroxychloroquine

REI, North Face, Patagonia Were Barely Spending Anything On Facebook Ads Before Boycotting Platform

Liberal Boycott Group ‘Cofounder’ Splits After White Male Partner Tried To ‘Disappear’ Her

The New York Times Dropped Millions On Facebook To Advertise The 1619 Project…While Trying To Bully Facebook Into Censoring Others

Companies Boycotting Facebook Over Alleged ‘Hate Speech’ Still Advertise On Russian Social Media That Bans Gay-Rights Groups

San Francisco Supervisor Wants Zuckerberg’s Name Scrubbed From Hospital After $75M Donation

NAACP, ADL, Sleeping Giants Launch Campaign To Pressure Facebook To Censor Posts

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

Don't miss a beat of our coverage.