In Monday’s letter, Zuckerberg also wrote about throttling the Hunter Biden laptop story.
He wrote that the FBI warned his company about “a potential Russian disinformation operation” regarding the Biden family and Burisma, leading up to the 2020 election.
Trump’s WH in fall 2020…
I wish that such government powers were equally opposed by both sides of the political aisle. New powers granted by one side usually end up being abused by the other.
Fox Business? The network that aired unapologetic bigot Lou Dobbs’ show every single night for years?
If it’s a blacklisted source I’ll happily take down the post.
…or you could have the integrity not to use sources that platform bigots.
Fuck this
Yeah, these hypocritical dipshits are the first to cheer on Palestinians getting deplatformed and harassed, and they want me to give a shit that they were occasionally prevented from spreading misinformation about medical realities in the middle of a pandemic? A middle finger the size of the sun isn’t big enough for these assholes.
I mean…nothing in the article is false, right?
There’s nothing in the article but Meta PR! It’s not factual reporting, and Fox has done nothing to corroborate the claims and provide actual analysis.
Zuckerberg is vague about what he was asked to “censor” (humour and satire?) but also makes clear that Facebook rebuffed officials and all that happened was that those officials expressed frustration. What’s the actual allegation here? Zuck got hurt feelings?
Zuck refers to Facebook’s mission as “helping people connect in a safe and secure way” to try and downplay the Cambridge Analytics scandal the fact that they’re are an ad platform first and foremost. This is Meta prop.
If I said foxbusiness was an outpost of global propaganda founded by an alien it wouldn’t be false. Just peculiarly worded to imply something else.
If I posted a link to an article saying the same thing, but from a different news organization, would you believe it?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/27/business/mark-zuckerberg-meta-biden-censor-covid-2021/index.html
Bad news organizations tell the truth sometimes, and good ones lie sometimes.
Can you identify the differences between the two? or just do the URL, then the headline. Why is one better, or more preferable, than the other?
There are some differences here for sure, but I’m not sure if they would warrant claiming that one is dramatically better than the other.
CNN: The article claims that Mark stated that he bowed to government pressure to censor COVID-19 misinformation and comedic content like memes, refers to Biden publicly decrying such content in 2021, and then points out that he walked back those comments later, although the surgeon general continued to condemn COVID-19 misinformation. It also mentions that Zuckerberg was asked by the FBI about the possibility that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. It insinuates that this is why FaceBook censored the story when it was published by the New York Post. It notes that Zuckerberg recognizes now that the story is true, and wishes that he didn’t censor the story at the time. While his goal regarding the COVID-19 misinformation censorship was to help local governments make sure people were getting accurate information, he states that he won’t cooperate with such requests in the future. It wraps up pointing out that Republicans has celebrated this admission, as these actions are something they have criticized Zuckerberg for for years, and he testified on Capitol Hill in part to allay the fears of such lawmakers.
Fox Business: The article claims that Mark stated that he bowed to government pressure to censor COVID-19 misinformation and comedic content like memes, and mentions that he has been cooperative with previous congressional requests for documents and employee interviews related to such requests. It states that at the time, they did not want to censor the content, but ultimately decided to do so after hearing vocal frustration from the Biden administration regarding it. He regrets the decision to censor past content at the behest of the US government, and is pledging not to do so moving forward. It also mentions that a White House spokesperson heavily insinuated to Fox News that they encouraged FaceBook to censor certain types of content, based on how such content would affect the populace. It mentions that FaceBook was subpoenaed regarding such censorship, as well as that Mark also admitted to censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story after being told by the FBI that it could be Russian disinformation, keeping the story censored while it fact-checked the story for themselves. He now admits that the story was true, and regrets censoring the story at the time, pledging to no longer censor stories in this manner moving forward.
The reporting doesn’t seem remarkably different, so let’s look at the part most people see. Only The Headline.
Meta CEO admits Biden-Harris admin pressured company to censor Americans
vs.
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta was ‘pressured’ by Biden administration to censor Covid-related content in 2021
I can see three things immediately that mark one as much-less-preferable than the other. I assume you can too?
Meta CEO ADMITS Biden**-Harris** admin pressured company to CENSOR AMERICANS
It’s written that way for a specific reason, and it’s not a Good Reason.
They’re different, but I don’t see that one is less preferable than the other. The Fox News headline includes Harris’ name, while CNN omits it and is more specific about why the admin was trying to censor Americans. I don’t know that granularity at this scale is anything to split hairs over, honestly.
Facebook is about to go down in a flaming pile of dogshit. Just like twitter.
Isn’t it mostly boomers and bots at this point?
I think its primary value is the fact that you can search for groups. Groups are a bane for people who are online but want to do things with people IRL, but unless you’re willing to go to Discord, there’s no better place for groups than FaceBook. I don’t think there’s a directory for GroupMe groups despite how many people use it to organize get-togethers.
Dunno. I never had Facebook, even when it was cool
I only got it because the college I went to basically made me.
Oldie but a goodie.
They also labeled themselves as “entertainment” and not news to wiggle out of a couple lawsuits, and one of their lawyers argued in front of a judge that no sane person would believe their programs to get out of another lawsuit.
It amuses the hell out of me every time the conservatives whine about their brazen disinformation getting censored, since whenenver and wherever they get an opportunity (including, especially ironically, Facebook), they reveal themselves to be the most cowardly censorious people on the planet.
Everywhere, without exception, where conservatives have control, anything that even hints at undermining their comforting delusions is instantly censored.
But if anybody dares to censor anything they might want to say, including overt and deliberate lies, they wail and cry like the spoiled children they are.
I’m in a right wing Lemmy community run by someone who used to be alt right (and probably is but I muted him when he was spouting racist nonsense at me on another corner of the Fediverse), conservative@lemm.ee, and there is absolutely zero censorship over there. Most of the comments there are by people on the left.
I get what you’re saying here to a point, there are a lot of right wingers who support censorship to varying degrees. Even Trump has spoken in support of some forms of censorship before, even if they didn’t materialize into political policy (“opening up the libel laws” and his recent calls to make burning the American flag a crime come to mind). But it’s not true that every single conservative supports anti-left censorship, without exception.
Dude, conservatives are literally
burningbanning books everywhere in the country where they have power. They’ve even banned books meant to encourage girls to learn how to code. Real bananas stuff, imoI appreciate you’re trying to communicate well and you seem authentic and all, but it’s very difficult to take your position seriously when it feels like you’re not trying to challenge your own beliefs. There’s a ton of evidence of conservative censorship going as far back as McCarthyism and interment camps, to rock and roll and rap music, to even burning comic books in the 50s, and that’s just thinking of the US. There’s a very long history of white conservative Christians censoring almost everything popular going back like hundreds of years
As a personal anecdote, my cousin had to break his pokemon gameboy games and burn his pokemon cards because his
dipshit momabusive mother thought they were satanic, simply because her church said so. I got some cool, holographic cards out of it, but I never forgot how messed up that wasI mostly agree with what you’re saying here, with two caveats. Firstly, I don’t think that books with sexually explicit images should be able to be checked out by children in libraries. (To be fair to you, I think we both know the current book banning thing goes beyond that.) There’s a limited amount of censorship that I do agree with the right on, but it’s for edge cases like that. I’m on the right and I oppose this flag burning policy, like I opposed Trump’s call to “open up the libel laws” and like I opposed the right wing calls to bring back the fairness doctrine during the Obama administration, as well as flag burning bans that were being called for at the time.
Secondly, that Satanic Panic stuff was more religious fanaticism than political propaganda, I don’t think we’ve seen the two syncretized to this level in a long time. Just because the religiously zealot nuts are MAGA people today doesn’t mean that religious fanaticism has always been tied to the hip with mainstream-ish political activism.
there is absolutely zero censorship over there
Challenge accepted
I’ll be back with you tonight or tomorrow
LMK how it goes!
and there is absolutely zero censorship over there.
The modlog says otherwise.
You do know about the modlog, yes?
I mean, it’s called Conservative, with an explicit goal of sharing right wing articles. It’s the equivalent of articles about TV shows getting removed from a videogame community.
Look at the comment sections. People are allowed to say pretty much whatever they want down there.
Your words:
and there is absolutely zero censorship over there.
The modlog I linked to literally proves this wrong. You can see the deleted comments. Maybe click the link and look for yourself.
This is such a thorough and comprehensive takedown, I am impressed.
Yeah Zuck, where were we without the Covid humor with thousands dying?
Uh good? Social media should be censored pretty fucking frequently. I honestly feel like if Facebook just disallowed any discussion or advertising for anything political on their platform the electorate would be more informed.
Not like all the Trump GOP misinformation posts had anything to do with it
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