1. Mother Jones Is Disturbed
Is Mother Jones recommending that Trump administration should take over Facebook, shut down Facebook, replace Zuckerberg, install CIA agents inside Facebook, regulate the hell out of it, or do what exactly?
Is Mother Jones recommending that Trump administration should take over Facebook, shut down Facebook, replace Zuckerberg, install CIA agents inside Facebook, regulate the hell out of it, or do what exactly?
2. And what exactly is the threat? That some ninnies will see an ad on Facebook and change their vote, because they are brainless zombies? As for sowing discord, are ads on Facebook more potent than AntiFa, or everyday blather from our politicians, or anchors and pundits on TV?
3. If it was that easy to change American voters' minds simply through advertising, wouldn't Hillary have won the last election in a landslide? No one in history spent as much on "manipulating" an election as Hillary did, and she still lost. That's the real takeaway from 2016.
4. Give Americans some credit, will you? They are not manipulated so easily. Only the self-serving media "professionals" (after all, they want politicians to buy a lot of air time for expensive ads) and losers like Hillary believe that elections are swayed a lot by ads.
5. Facebook announced it has removed 8 Pages & 17 accounts, along with 7 Instagram accounts, that violated its ban on "coordinated inauthentic behavior."
What exact behaviors? See below.
What exact behaviors? See below.
6. Facebook may be right in exercising some basic hygiene, but this isn't exactly thermonuclear stuff.
7. The central appeal of social media was that you didn’t have to rely on the judgment of professional editors. Wall St Journal has it exactly right.
8. Bipartisan concern about the Russian govt’s effort to interfere in our domestic affairs is welcome and appropriate, but Facebook’s 10,000 new editors will not just be policing the Kremlin. Their mandate is to enforce a broad set of politically defined “community standards."
9. Facebook is not alone. Twitter has its own efforts underway to ensure "conversational health." Twitter's CEO tells us reassuringly that while we shouldn't trust him to make appropriate hygiene calls, we should absolutely trust his handpicked Trump haters to do the job right.
10. I kid you not. See this:
11. Time for Facebook and Twitter to back away from this demented journey down a rabbit hole would be now. Let the politicians bray all they want. Facebook and Twitter should fairly and squarely cast their lot with their users, i.e. we the people.
12. Let the people lead the conversations wherever they want to take them. By all means put basic measures in place for safety and security. By all means authenticate the user accounts. Maintain enough key information securely and privately to help authorities catch criminals.
13. Other than that, Facebook and Twitter have no business intruding on people's conversations. In that regard, social media platform companies should have roles and responsibilities similar to telecom companies. Don't snoop in on people's conversations as a matter of course.
14. Congress cannot force Facebook and Twitter to snoop. Let the politicians pontificate all they want. If you can demonstrate you are truly content agnostic (so long as the content is legal), people will support you. Politicians will have no choice but to back off.
The END
The END
