Remembering Facebook’s Origins
Zuckerberg is full of it!
Recently Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, have been making the rounds around DC touting the same and tried talking points of defending free speech. At his congressional hearing last week, Zuckerberg maintained that policing political ads would be tantamount to censoring free speech. The problem that this is all, as Biden would say, “malarkey.” Zuckerberg could care less about free speech and his platform has been weaponized by extremist groups across the spectrum. Its ad platform and policies have created a space in which politicians and their associates can spread outright lies, that at times can endanger the lives of their opponents.
Facebook’s political ads policy contradicts its universal ad policy.
Zuckerberg maintains that he has confidence in its users to be able to differentiate between lies and truths. Furthermore, he assumes that by allowing these politicians to spread lies through Facebook’s ad platform, it will allow users to see who the politicians really are. This is asinine. One only need to look to the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit campaign to understand the influence of content on Facebook — advertisements and organic posts — on average users across the platform. What Zuckerberg fails to understand or is unwilling to accept is that most people believe what they see on the platform. Social scientists have tested this hypothesis and time after time, they conclude that people are inclined to believe what they read and a very small percentage of people on the platform and across social media cross-check and confirm what they read and see.
His second assertion — it does the world good, when politicians are exposed as liars through facebook ads — is too asinine. These ads will be tailored in a way in which it blurs the line between what is true and what is an outright lie and will be targeted towards the most gullible and easily influenced users. Those people will not be able to differentiate between lies and truths. Fake political ads are not necessarily utilized to trick someone into believing a lie, but instead are used to muddy the truth and facts.
Moreover, Facebook does censor free speech in its ad platforms. If Zuckerberg is really all that concerned about protecting free speech, then there should be the same standard for all ads, political or not. It would be easier for Facebook to not allow political ads on its platform, but that would mean disappointing his far-right friends that he frequently dines with at his invitation.
Facebook should follow Twitter’s example and demands from its own employers.
Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, announced today that Twitter will not allow politicians and their associates to run paid advertisement. His reasoning made perfect sense: influence should be earned and not paid for. Anyone who uses Twitter regularly understands that Twitter is far from being a hub for unbiased intelligent conversations, but this policy decision, at minimum, prevents the spread of fake content. He explained that paid advertisements have more impressions and therefore have a much greater chance of influence.
Last week about 250 Facebook employees signed a letter sent to the executive board of Facebook demanding that Facebook change its policies around political ads and fact-checking those ads. They, rightfully, claimed that allowing politicians to lie is not giving voice but instead are weaponizing their platform to sow discord.
We should all remember what motivated Zuckerberg to launch Facebook in the first place.
Zuckerberg takes a lot of undeserved credit for the growth of Facebook. For those of us who grew up with MySpace, Facebook was essentially a watered-downed version of MySpace. MySpace lost its allure because the platform became a place for sex-bots and spam, something that Facebook has successfully prevented. Zuckerberg acts as if he created this revolutionary tool that will change the world. He was right on the latter part, he did change the world, albeit for the worst. What started out as a perverted little boy’s project to rate the attractiveness of girls has turned into a platform that is responsible for live suicides, human rights violations in Rohingya, India and across the developing world. Not to mention, Facebook complicity in election meddling around the world. When Zuckerberg launched Facebook back in 2004, it was a place in which college undergrads could talk about and post pictures of whatever debauchery we might have engaged in the night prior. For like 2 years, Facebook was fun.
So, what?
I daydream from time to time about a massive global human experiment, in which for a day or two or a week, all of social media would be turned off. Would it lead to the destruction of society, I think not. Social media, Facebook particularly, has done more damage than good to civilization. Anxiety among adolescents, teenagers, and young adults have risen at nearly the same rate as the growth and social media, and it can be attributed to an alarming increase in rates of depression among youths.
What is the solution to Facebook. Well, there might not be one. Lawmakers cannot agree on what Facebook is: is it a media conglomerate? Is it a curator of content? Some want to break it down into smaller parts and others want to regulate it like a traditional media outlet through the Federal Communications Commision (FCC). Some or all of these suggestions might be solutions, but practically are impossible to enforce or implement. I believe the best solution is for the under-staffed Federal Elections Commision (FEC) to adopt regulations that have strict standards on political advertising on social media.
Facebook and Zuckerberg will not act on this. Political ads may not be a huge revenue generator for Facebook, but censoring advertisements that purposely spread lies will damage Zuckerberg’s relationship with fart right figures. Hopefully Zuckerberg’s attempt to play God and the greediness of its shareholders will help Facebook see the same fate of MySpace.
