I’d say Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is having a bad week but he’s too far up his own privileged ass to know it. I feel the need to acknowledge that I, on CB, have supported Mark in the past, around the birth of his first child. I was woefully misguided and any goodwill he’s earned with me has since been thrown in a dumpster and torched. Mark has been under fire for once again giving our Orange Dictator carte blanche to spew his filth from Mark’s platform, a decision Mark continues to defend. At a time when even Twitter’s Jack Dorsey flagged 45’s incendiary comments, Mark refused to listen to the rest of us. To add insult to injury, Mark insulted a group of prominent Black civil rights leaders when he proved incapable of understanding that Facebook is helping spread violent rhetoric.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Black civil rights leaders who participated in a conference call with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg walked away afterward “disappointed and stunned” at the tech billionaire’s seeming inability to understand issues that impact African-Americans.
The report notes that part of the discussion involved Zuckerberg’s decision to ignore and dismiss comments made by Donald Trump about police brutality protesters — with one Black leader calling the exec’s explanation “incomprehensible.”
According to Bloomberg’s Jeff Green, “Mark Zuckerberg hosted a nearly hour-long video call with U.S. civil rights leaders to discuss ongoing issues around his company’s policies as they relate to race, elections and other topics,” before adding it didn’t go well based on comments from Color of Change President Rashad Robinson.
In an interview, Robinson lamented, “… the problem with my ongoing conversations with Mark, is that I feel like I spent a lot of time, and my colleagues spent a lot of time, explaining to him why these things are a problem, and I think he just very much lacks the ability to understand it.”
Pointing out that Zuckerberg’s hands-off approach when it comes to Trump is baffling in light of the president’s threat that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” with regard to George Floyd protesters, Robinson noted that the Facebook executive is bucking his own employees who are furious with him.
Rashad Robinson’s comment stood out to me, “the problem with my ongoing conversations with Mark, is that I feel like I spent a lot of time, and my colleagues spent a lot of time, explaining to him why these things are a problem, and I think he just very much lacks the ability to understand it.” There is so much said in that sentence, starting with the fact that this isn’t the first time these leaders have tried to get Mark to understand how he is working against them. Of course Mark expects important Black civil rights leaders to educate him, or, as it’s also called, do his homework for him. And, even then, he can’t open his mind enough to understand what’s being explained to him. Time and again Mark has proven the only thing he understands is money.
As the article mentioned, Facebook employees are upset about Mark and his inaction. They staged a virtual walkout on Monday, virtual because most are working from home due to the pandemic. Not only did they sit work out, but they took to Twitter to condemn Mark, Facebook and all its practices. The fact that Facebook employees were using Twitter for their dissension is the one bright spot in this story. Mark has not commented on the walkout or his employees concerns, which is not surprising. A Facebook spokesperson, the aptly named Liz Bourgeois said, “We recognize the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our Black community. We encourage employees to speak openly when they disagree with leadership,” which means nothing considering the absence of any activism on the part of Facebook leadership.
Photo credit: WENN/Avalon and Instagram
His arrogance doesn’t allow for empathy. I don’t know if he is even capable of it. His comparison to AI is apt — devoid of emotion and the ability to see things from another perspective.
He does seem to have an absolute inability to see things – anything – from another perspective. I’m not here to diagnose him, but it could be clinical.
Anyhow – the very fact that he expects Facebook users to be able to “discern for themselves” what’s fact and what isn’t is absolutely asinine. It’s not that easy! Especially given all we know about confirmation bias and the way things are written now to sound like absolute fact when they’re just a bunch of lies. How in the world could any one person, let alone people of the Facebook demographic, be able to sort that all out? It’s absolutely galling that THAT is the hill he’s chosen to die on. Nevermind the fact that Trump’s policies benefit him greatly. The fact that SO MANY people chose money and power over morality also really blows my mind.
@onerous, I agree with your statement about it possibly being clinical. From my observations and professional experiences with people who are non-neurotypical, there are definitely some exceptionalities in his presentation.
@noodle and onerous
Can you not with the armchair diagnosing. You have zero evidence that he’s non-neurotypical or clinical regardless of your “experience” and this need for people to shout “he acts like someone clinical/non-neurotypical” whenever an egotistical asshole acts like an asshole is incredibly harmful to actual non-neurotypical people and people with mental illness.
Signed,
A non-neurotypical woman who’s been actively harmed by those assumptions
@MrsBanjo – I am also not neurotypical, and many people who know Zuckerberg well say he’s not right. He could be non-neurotypical and also an assh*le.
I think that a lot of what people are saying just goes over his head, *coughs Asperger’s coughs*
@MrsBanjo – I’m sorry for the harm you’ve suffered as a non-neurotypical women but both Noodle and onerous stated specifically that he is “possibly” clinical, they didn’t come out with an armchair diagnosis that he’s suffering some specific disorder or on the autism spectrum. People like Zuckerberg, who seem to lack the least bit of understanding or remorse, where the bottom line and their success is the only criteria by which they live their lives, are at the very least self-obsessed asshats but it can also denote a psychological “glitch”.
Autism. Isn’t. Sociopathy.
Aside from the difficult in discerning fact from fiction, the algorithm FB uses favours disinformation and hateful posts. There was a good article I read recently about the algorithm being a psychopath.
He seems to be too arrogant or purposefully obtuse to recognize that AI and algorithms will never be objective, valueless sequences of code, so long as they are invented and written by human beings. He doesn’t just allow incendiary and offensive content to be hosted on Facebook, his programming and policies amplify it and protect it, while progressive content is obscured, or flagged and removed.
He sees dollar signs just fine.
Is anyone surprised?
I wish he would sell it and move on, or at the very least put it in the hands of people who would run it responsibly.
He needs to just say publicly, “I have Aspergers and struggle with empathy, therefore I have little ability in this area. I am going to step back and be the strategic / innovation voice at FB, and appoint an appropriate CEO”.
1. He does not have Aspergers.
2. He is not as smart as everyone thinks he is.
3. You can tell a lot by the company a person keeps. His entourage is made up of white assholes and dude bros.
He is a politically illiterate, privileged white Silicon Valley asshole.
Silicon Valley white privilege has its own special flavor- it essentially claims that technology is not political, therefore those who have made their money in tech do not need to be concerned with politics or, in the alternative, are above the petty drudgery of politics. They do not understand that anything which involves human beings is inherently political. Those in tech also usually consider themselves to be more “intelligent” than the rest of the population and anything they or their immediate social circle don’t know isn’t worth knowing. They justify their ignorance because they are “smart,” as though being able to read source code gives them a pass to be assholes.
I wish the Board would remove him. He’s nearly lost his job several times and every time he shows up to Congress it’s a disaster.
I still use FB bc I have friends worldwide but I don’t click on any ads and don’t buy anything from them. We need to hit FB in the $$ before they will respond.
Timothy Aveni, the engineer for FB quit due to ZuckerBerg’s seemingly ongoing support of Trump. His post was excellent … he held nothing back
Where is his post? I’d like to read it.
It’s public on his fb page, if you google it, then /timothy.j.aveni and it’s awesome.
Googling his name also brought me to his own website, timothyaveni dot com, listing his projects, resume, et. al. And even his page called “fluff” is so great!
Mark doesn’t understand because he doesn’t want to…he’s made all the billions in the world; he has an opportunity to be on the right side of history and take a stand for a just cause, but he doesn’t want to. He’s tacitly supporting Trump and it’s becoming more obvious. Disgraceful!
I do not know if it’s correct, but I understand that his flailing company was bailed out by Russian money. He has a vested interest in being on the wrong side of history.
I just saw a link to that particular claim by another commenter beneath. I didn’t know about that. Apparently, there’s always a Russian angle to these things. But if as another commenter stated, Twitter also received investments from Russian oligarchs, then why can Dorsey stand up to Trump? Zuckerberg just doesn’t want to. Every time you see him on TV, he comes off as being incredibly shy and averse to grand displays of material wealth; but it’s all a facade in my opinion. Zuckerberg knows what he’s doing…he can act differently…he doesn’t want to!
Yes Betsy, I’d have to find the links again (it’s been over two years since I first read them) but I think Facebook was in serious financial trouble after the financial crash. Around 2010-2015 they accepted over $14 million in rubles to allow political “advertisements” created by Russian agents.
Here are two stories could find on it with a quick Google search.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/358102-franken-blasts-facebook-for-accepting-rubles-for-us-election-ads
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-election-facebook.html
Also, watch “The Great Hack” on Netflix.
Russia funded Facebook and Twitter investments through Kushner investor
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/russia-funded-facebook-twitter-investments-kushner-investor
“Two Russian state institutions with close ties to Vladimir Putin funded substantial stakes in Twitter and Facebook through an investor who later acquired an interest in a Jared Kushner venture, leaked documents reveal.
The investments were made through a Russian technology magnate, Yuri Milner, who also holds a stake in a company co-owned by Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser.
The discovery is likely to stir concerns over Russian influence in US politics and the role played by social media in last year’s presidential election. It may also raise new questions for the social media companies and for Kushner.”
“The files show that in 2011, VTB funded a $191m investment in Twitter. About the same time, Gazprom Investholding financed an opaque offshore company, which in turn funded a vehicle that held $1bn-worth of Facebook shares.”
Facebook took almost a billion dollars from Russia via a Kushner associate. That’s it, that’s the reason.
Snapchat put out a statement this morning that Dump will no longer be able to post on its platform
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/technology/snapchat-trump.html
Pretty much all of our corporate and political leaders seem to be bending over for either Russia or China. At this point, I’m starting to think they’re all compromised.
One of my friends works for Facebook and, well, it’s not a good environment right now. Lots of anger and back and forth among their coworkers, including the walkouts. Zuckerberg is garbage and some of this employees are deciding what level of complicit they want to be in this mess.
On a completely different note, another friend of mine is convinced that he’s siding with Trump out of fear of something huge being revealed about him. He does have that look of somebody aged by some kind of evil secret, yeah? Her guess is human trafficking.
I think human trafficking is the go-to assumption among anyone supporting Trump though, so I’m not sure how realistic it is to assume so. How many times has that been thrown around with Graham, McConnell, Jordan, etc. Not to say that it’s not trafficking, but after a while it does start to sound like the default theory.
Honestly. I really tend to think he might be on the autism spectrum. If he’s not it’s absolutely a case of him willfully not listening, not understanding, not empathizing and that’s pretty f-cked. I will say that a lot of people involved in the tech industry have terrible sleep schedules, terrible diets, and work themselves half to death etc. Many live off caffeine and cigarettes or uppers or whatever vice. Which – all of those things are going to age the hell out of you.
I thought that the blackmail material on Graham was sex with minor boys, that McConnell is basically just a flat out traitor and, along with his wife, working for China’s benefit, and Gym Jordan… well dude knew about rampant sexual assault and did nothing.
Zuckerberg seems so vile that I could be told that he is actively poisoning half of the country and i’d believe it.
LOL, if it was as bad as trafficking, I’d expect it more from the right because they love to project – but man, the web connected to Epstein is some hella scary shit. The ultra wealthy are capable of pretty much anything, IMO, simply because their money strips them of moral limits.
My personal guess would be that it’s more likely that Facebook is probably deep in Russian money with Twitter. There’s a lot come out in the last few years about oligarchs investing in American social media, and when you see how much psych profiling goes into their algorithms….ergh, I don’t know friends. It’s shady stuff. I’m not on either platform for a reason.
Zuckerberg involved in human trafficking? I don’t why but he doesn’t strike me as an Epstein type in that I don’t see him being especially interested in sex. I could see him being involved in trafficking slave labor. He hardly needs the income, but he shares that same cartoonishly evil vibe of Bezos and Musk.
This could be the case or it’s as simple as him wanting to continue to suppport this administration because it’s possible that a democratic win leads to regulating his company. He’sa right wing supporter because he benefits from it just as the GOP benefits from the massive propaganda spread Facebook allows.
That’s an interesting theory. And I can see it being true. May it come to pass, fingers crossed!
And taxes. Many ultra-rich are averse to giving up any wealth.
The mega-wealthy/corporations and the working class evangelical base have such different priorities and needs. Yet one political party has masterfully conned the latter into bolstering their voting base, for pure benefit of helping the first group.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m just amused at what a strong reaction he sparks in people, even in those I know who work for them.
Most certainly, I think he’s siding to avoid being targeted the way Twitter is. He knows that if Trump’s order is realized legally, it’ll be the end of net centralization. Facebook and Twitter will lose their media dominance the moment class action suits can be brought against them because the fear of litigation would force them to police content better. In a weird way, it would undermine the very environment that allowed Trump to win.
FB and Mark Z contributed greatly to how misinformation spread and got Trump elected. No amount of his charity or philanthropy can ever offset the harm he has caused to the US and the world. He only cares about his control, power and $. If anyone hasn’t seen it – please watch “The Great Hack” and learn how FB is used for political and lobby agendas. I deleted my FB account despite having family and friends spread out globally and never regretted it.
Brexit on HBO is also amazing. It really explains how England got scammed by Facebook. I didn’t think I would like a movie about Brexit but, oh my gosh, it explained everything. It was done so well. Facebook is used to incite very emotional responses from groups who do the “rights” bidding. It is so, so, so sad.
Yes, exactly. FB is doing this all over the world and the general public isn’t aware of how algorithms and all data on FB are purchased and controlled to mislead etc. It is very scary and that is why many society can’t unify and I fear repeating the same tactics in the upcoming elections.
Facebook profits from hate.
I’m just looking at these words behind him… “the future is private”. are you joking dude???? ok, at least I LOLed for the first time in days.
Not private as in private sphere, but private as in private corporations and their political power. Private infrastructure like Facebook, which media and politics need to use in data capitalism to reach people.
It’s Talk for the stakeholders, not for the users.
Thanks for making it clear – I just couldn’t go through the entire text, given everything that’s happening atm. Shouldn’t have commented really. But still made me LOL.
oh but you should have commented. We need to LOL every chance we get. Thank you!
Not much to laugh about when the evil and the complicit wield so much power.
Reminds me of watching the Canadian series Continuum, which is set in a future where corporations are in charge, not government. Frightening.
Joel Kaplan, a very high-up at Facebook, sat behind Kavanagh during his hearings and had a huge party for him when he was sworn in. Sheryl Sandberg says that what holds women back is that they don’t work hard enough. It’s not just Zuckerberg, it’s the whole bunch of them. Garbage company, garbage people.
This right here Mumbles! They’re all in bed together so they’re all guilty of shilling propaganda. And if I have to hear the phrase “Lean In” one more time…..Arrgh!
I think he’s being threatened or blackmailed. That’s the only way to explain his seeming paralysis in decision making with regard to a trump.
Or he’s just evil.
This
I used to think like this. But then I have come to realize that there are just some people who lack empathy, lack emotion, and are dominated by greed and a lust for power. Most people aren’t wired like that and keep trying to find a person’s sense of humanity and think they must be motivated by shame, fear, or some wound.
He can’t understand it. I think that’s true. The problem with Zuckerberg is that all he is, is an incel who started a website rating the looks of the college girls he couldn’t get. Which was all of them. And somehow, in our incredibly messed up culture, that led to him accidentally becoming a powerful billionaire.
That doesn’t make him smart. that doesn’t make him educated. That doesn’t make him anything other than a young punk misogynist who couldn’t get girls, hated them for it, started a website to publically humiliate them for it, and was lucky enough to be in a culture which would celebrate him for it.
This … unfortunately.
I mean, that’s the plot of “The Social Network,” it’s not actually life. Zuckerberg was pretty popular at Harvard and has been dating the woman who became his wife since 2003. Even the website you’re referring to — the rating site — listed male AND female students, it was superficial and silly but it wasn’t targeted misogyny.
I say this not to defend him — he deserves no defense — but because I think it’s important to get the facts straight. This isn’t nerd culture or social ineptitude or, as someone wondered elsewhere in the comments, the symptoms of autism. He’s a fratboy doucherbo capitalist, the same kind that tanked the economy in 2008. It’s Jordan Belfort in Silicon Valley. Our culture keeps producing these monsters and our capitalist system does nothing but reward them. I feel like it’s important to get that part right. He’s not an anomaly in any sense, he’s just the next wave of racist, rapacious capitalism run amok.
I completely agree with your statement. Just another asshole who doesn’t give a damn about anything or anyone else as long as he gets his way, unchecked…………and enough is never enough.
I despise this dude.
No, sorry.
FaceMash – arguably the only portion of what later become Facebook that Zuckerberg actually came up with himself – targeted female students.
It was, by definition and design, misogynist.
(And Harvard certainly didn’t find Zuckerberg’s illegal hack and theft of private student information silly OR superficial.)
Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing, April, 2018:
Congressman Billy Long, asking Zuckerberg to clarify the purpose of FaceMash: “You put up pictures of two women and decided which one was more attractive of the two, is that right?”
Zuckerberg’s response: “Congressman, that is an accurate description of the prank website I made when I was a sophomore.”
If there were ever a time to “get the facts straight,” I’d imagine it would be in front of a Congressional inquiry with the world watching.
@Ames
“If there were ever a time to “get the facts straight,” I’d imagine it would be in front of a Congressional inquiry with the world watching.”
Ironic, then, that in those same hearings Zuckerberg dismissed any idea that Facemash had anything to do with Facebook. So your assertions are contradictory in that respect.
Also, yes, he did put up to pictures of women in order to have people pick which was “hotter.” That doesn’t mean the site was limited to women. I’ve been told that it wasn’t, and the Crimson didn’t seem to think it was, either: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-board-the/
That’s all the info I have on me. I didn’t mean to imply his methods of creating the site were silly or superficial, just its purpose. (Although I’m probably desensitized since, as the article references, there were a LOT of sites like that on the internet at the time. The crucial difference being you submitted your own photo instead of having it stolen.) Again, as I stated, I have no intention of defending him in any respect. I DO have a bone to pick with the portrayal of him as somehow socially inept or incompetent, or any apocryphal stories which support the idea he is too ill-adjusted to know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
I will never understand how a white Jewish man with an Asian wife and biracial children can be so unconcerned about the rise of modern White Supremacy.
Does he think the Nazis are going to give him a pass for his wealth?!
They probably are.
I agree with those who see him as empathy deficient.
Aside from TalkSpace saying they would not be working with FB, as long as his advertisers haven’t abandoned him, he’s not doing shit. MZ is not going to let a little racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and white supremacy get in the way of his bottom line.
He seems to think that muzzling Trump and his violence-promoting supporters is protecting free speech, but we also have a law that you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded room because that invites harm as people try to escape. That’s freedom of speech 101. There are racists on Twitter and Facebook who are open about the fact that they want to start a race war so that they can freely shoot at Black people in the name of America. They are waiting for Trump’s signal, and I’m not making it up. That’s what they themselves say.
Zuckerberg is a dumbass.
They should try meeting with his wife, Chan, to see if they can get her to understand. She’s a leader in her own right. He needs to understand it morally and in terms of the law. She can help him understand it morally unless she is also a dumbass, but we don’t know because they aren’t trying to convince her. Row v Wade was passed when the daughters of a conservative Supreme Court judge spoke to him about how badly women like them needed it to be legal. These men need to reach out to his wife. I wonder if they ever will.
His wife likely agrees or doesn’t care.
Chan is just as bad as Mark.
We knew this was coming when. MZ said he do his own research on the “looting and shooting” comments and came to the conclusion that Blacks and everyone else misinterpreted it.
Cut off his head. Redistribute his wealth to the poorest 20%.
Bezos too.
We may not be there yet, but i can see it from here.
We are on a dark path to violent dictatorship.
May all GOP public officials, especially the senators from my state Louisiana, who could have stopped trump but didn’t rot in prison and then in hell.
Eat. The. Rich
He is showing who he really is. People need to accept that and stop looking for excuses. The same thing with all these celebs and their endless statements, posts, tweets, etc.They are showing their true colors… and it is amazing… now it’s a fair game. Do you want to support them and their ventures? The choice is yours. So choose.
Zuckerberg is being paid obscene amounts of money to “not understand racism.” He’s a liar and a co-conspirator with Trump. Look at this 2009 article stating Zuckerberg took $200 million in Russian investment money:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2012/10/02/to-russia-with-love-zuckerberg-chats-with-medvedev/
Remember, this was when Facebook had burned through initial cash and was desperate for more to stay in business. Zuckerberg has been using Facebook to destroy democracy for years and years. We are in the end game of operations plotted for over a decade. Facebook cannot be redeemed.
Both Twitter and Facebook had huge investments made into them by Russian oligarchs recently. Anybody even a little bit savvy has left those platforms already, but really, people need to be leaving en masse. It’s so dangerous. Social media has been weaponized by the right and is often just as easily used to rile the left. We all have lizard brains deep down. None of us are immune to it. The only cure is removing the source.
He took a lot more than 200 millions, though.
From this Guardian investigation:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/russia-funded-facebook-twitter-investments-kushner-investor
“The files show that in 2011, VTB funded a $191m investment in Twitter. About the same time, Gazprom Investholding financed an opaque offshore company, which in turn funded a vehicle that held $1bn-worth of Facebook shares.”
I never understood their stock price going up. Guess this explains how they somehow steered away from disappearing like MySpace.
@Chrsitin: Yep,laundering dark money for Russia is a very popular business model in Techlandia…
Perhaps a boycot of FB for a day and the loss of advertising revenue would help MZ understand?
One of my minor dreams is to see the DM shut down for just one week. We can add FB to the wish list.
It’s a conservative platform for old white people.
Sounds like the Royal Family.
Break Facebook!
I admit to being unaware of MZ his behavior and positions. FB has only been useful to me within my community. My Neighborhood Watch page is public and I have asked any communication be through messenger. We live in a community that has a, “Special Interest HOA.” Those who differ with the BOD or management are shunned, silenced, sabotaged. We have financial impropriety, etc. I have the advantage in the only thing the group of cronies can do is gossip. I’m building a following for the good. Any hopes of MZ stepping down?
*Every criticism of Facebook*
Mark Zuckerberg: …but money tho.
I said something similar below.
I think MZ has decided to roll with the political right because the left haven’t been shy about their desire to regulate FB. For him, it’s self preservation.
I bet he thinks no one will give up FB no matter how bad it gets bc it seems so integral to social interactions and news consumption. Nothing will change there until he starts to feel it in his wallet or his user base ages and dies.
Years of informed people asking others to delete Facebook, but their users don’t care much about self-preservation nor democracy.
Years of shareholders trying to push Zuckerberg aside from command by legal manners and failing.
Years of reports on how Facebbok has profited from genocide, pedophilia and human trafficking and hate and violence… people will still use that freaking evil platform!
Until masses of their users delete Facebook and stop provding them a product to sell (their privacy), there’s nothing we can do other than voting for Democrats and pray that Elizabeth Warren is put in charge of destroying this dangerous evil company.
Trust and believe that Mark Zuckerberg completely understands the issues & concerns that Black leaders were discussion during their meeting with him…he just doesn’t give a sh*t about those issues/concerns. He would care, however, if these Black leaders paid him in rubles, oops, I mean dollars and promised him more power.
Tl;dr – Mark Zuckerberg is only concerned with money and power.
It’s not that he doesn’t understand. It’s that he DOESN’T CARE.
I don’t even know why he bothered. He doesn’t want to understand, he wanted to look good, and even that blew up in his face. We know who he is through his alliances, talking to him is a waste of precious time.
He lacks empathy and is racist and sexist AF…always has been and its reflected in his product
It’s not that he doesn’t understand. It’s that he doesn’t care.
To be honest, in some aspect I understand where he is coming from. If you start policing the tweets/post your your users, when will it stop? Facebook, Twitter and even places like Reddit is full of hate. Can they police everyone, fact check everything and control content? One question is should they and the other is could they? Even if they could.. where is the line? Trump’s comment is disgusting and likely the only people that supports it are other racist.. or some ‘very good people’.. but either way.. when you start censoring him do you also censor the vegan who called for violence towards her local butcher (that happened).. or even the many many people who wants very very bad things to happen to trump? when do you start who to censor and what to censor.. who gets to decide? … I think the answer is not as simple as banning trump or putting a warning label to his tweets.. or doing the same to a host of other verbal diarrhea on social media daily.. it doesn’t address the many issues we have at hand – too many idiots have access to a platform to do harm.. either by consuming/believing the content or spreading it.. and many bad bad people are using it to spread lies and some their own agenda.. (have you seen the amount of posters glorifying the thigh gap as a beauty standard.. there are also mundane evils). These people will continue to do so even without FB or Twitter.. spreading fake news and their agenda on watsapp, emails etc or the really bad stuff of the dark net… it’s hard to hold evil and malice down.. is it really up to Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook or twitter to police their user.. I don’t know.. I guess it works as long as they stand on your view of things.. when that changes what happens next? I come from a country where media Very strictly censored. Any anti government article/news etc will get you in jail. They jail bloggers who are just expressing their own opinion on their own site.. you also add your race every form you fill and it’s on your national ID and it determines if you get a job or into university.. there is a quota for each race, a compulsory ownership of big business for certain race… Racism is embedded into the constitution. Sounds like hell? Actually we live in relative harmony and prosperity… everybody keep to their own lane.. and as they say, you can’t read the label when you are in the jar.. but personally I am afraid of calling for censorship because I have been under censorship for so long… but you Americans have trump for president.. maybe I should be grateful for the monkeys we have..
It not about “policing” content. It’s about monetizing the deliberate spread of disinformation. It’s an extremely problematic business model and it’s made Zuckerberg a very wealthy man.
As Zuckerberg himself will tell you, FB is a business, not a democracy. He demands both the protection and benefit of each, whichever best serves him personally, and it shouldn’t be allowed to work that way.
It IS about accountability. After what happened in Charlottesville, Zuckerberg pledged that Facebook would not provide a platform for inciting violence.
It is indisputable fact that “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” is a literal call to arms – and a transparently racist one, at that.
This isn’t the first time Zuckerberg has played the “FREE SPEECH” get-out-of-responsibility card on FB’s lopsided enforcement of vaguely defined “community standards” to enable the spread of weaponized lies, hate, and racism. They openly “hosted” a genocide, knew they were doing it, and did not care. (Seriously, look up FB’s open complicity in the systematic murder of the Rohingya in Myanmar.)
Free speech in the US is not limitless or absolute, and never has been. Calling for specific acts of violence in an atmosphere already rife with violent unrest is actually against the law.
FB polices users, groups and pages plenty. I know for a personal fact if you say anything bad about trump, white people, ect you get a ban ranging from 12 hours to a month and sometimes a perma ban.
But there are groups and pages that have child porn, animal abuse, kkk, and tons of people saying the N word and to lynch people and that stays up
I’m generally not a violent person but every single time I see that man’s face I just want to punch it. So hard.
Sociopath
“We recognize the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our Black community.”
“Our people”… that’s a term that’s also used here in Australia in relation to First Nations peoples, whenever (usually) conservative politicians want to send a message with patronising, dehumanising undertones… the message is clear “We own you. We are your superiors.”
In this case, “we see your pain but we choose to ignore it; FU.”
Why don’t we all just delete our fb and Instagram accounts?