This would be a good time to remind everyone of this quote from billionaire Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
In a landscape of individual and trumped-up culture wars, into the breach of the all-encompassing battle of the rich against the rest of us steps Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta -- which includes Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Zuckerberg, a man who simultaneously proves that a human actually can stand upright without a backbone and that no amount of ungodly wealth is too much for something like character to get in the way of even more personal gain, disgraced himself on the national stage recently when he curled up in the fetal position and caved to four-time indicted, twice impeached, sexual assaulter, tax fraudster, insurrectionist inspirer, wannabe fascist dictator, convicted felon Donald Trump.
Meta has announced that it will stop using third-party fact-checkers to review the various material posted on its sites. Instead, it’ll rely on users to add notes to the posts if a correction is needed.
Trump and his allies are, unsurprisingly, very pleased. They’ve spent a lot of energy working the refs by claiming social media has censored conservative voices. Of course, when you unabashedly lie you have a tendency to get censored. But no more.
Forget the fact that back in 2021 Facebook shut down Trump’s account after he incited the violent insurrectionist attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. Or that Facebook was an important tool in Russia’s disinformation effort during the 2016 election, according to the report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
This is about free speech, Baby. Just like Zuckerberg says, “It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression.” Sure, it is.
Now, “free speech” to the Right means “we get to lie as much as we want.” And no, even though politicians lying to or misleading the public isn’t confined to one party, in the age of Trump and his gang of Right-wing, bootlicking, opportunistic sycophants it’s not even close. They’re the lying champions of all time. To say otherwise is to endorse a dangerous false equivalency.
Here’s what’s happening. Since the election, Zuckerberg has been puckering up in a desperate attempt to kiss Trump’s deranged ass long enough and hard enough to spare him any kind of serious retribution from the incoming criminal administration.
To be fair, Zuckerberg is just one of many rich guys who’ve been trying to curry favor with Trump. For instance, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has sold out his newspaper’s credibility for a seat at the Mar-a-Lago table. Both he and Zuckerberg have donated a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration. Let’s just call it an investment.
Zuckerberg conceded there will be more “bad stuff” on the platform as a result of this action. He called it a “trade-off.” Here’s the trade-off: Zuckerberg gets to protect himself and Trump and in return he gets his reputation buried even deeper into the swamp occupied by the filthy rich willing to sell out the rest of us for even more fabulous wealth.
Misinformation researchers said Meta’s decision to end fact-checking was deeply concerning. Nicole Gill, a founder and the executive director of the digital watchdog organization Accountable Tech, said Zuckerberg was “reopening the floodgates to the exact same surge of hate, disinformation, and conspiracy theories that caused Jan. 6 -- and that continue to spur real-world violence.”
Meta has also announced the removal of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity. He called these prohibitions “out of touch with mainstream discourse,” which means open season on immigrants and the LGBTQ community has begun on his platforms.
You can read the New York Times report on Zuckerberg’s abdication here.
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Look, I understand it’s hard to police a platform like Facebook. And I understand the importance of free speech. But I also understand how the concept of free speech has been weaponized by too many corrupt people to justify the Right’s infamous “firehose of lies” aimed squarely at our democracy and rule of law, and directed too many times for the gain of the rich benefactors of the Republican Party.
Anthony Fauci, a dedicated public servant who happened to run afoul of Trump, needed protection for himself and his family because of threats and lies disguised as free speech. Two Georgia election workers have won a multi-million-dollar judgement against Trump stooge Rudy Guiliani after he put them through living hell by using his free speech to willfully lie and accuse them of trying to rig the 2020 vote against Trump.
I understand too that ignorance isn’t an excuse, and that not being ignorant is a personal responsibility that far too many Americans are unwilling to assume nowadays.
This is where we are, and we can’t afford to give away any more real estate in our information sphere to the liars who would do the most harm. Our reality makes Zuckerberg’s decision all that much worse.
What are Democrats to do? Well, someone should wake up the DNC and the DCCC and tell them to staff up with fact-checkers who’ll monitor Facebook and add corrections to Right-wing lies wherever they’re called for. It may seem like spitting into the wind, but it has to be done. The opportunity to challenge a lie at its source can’t be passed up. The work of standing up to Trumpism will be tough and grinding.
Zuckerberg and his ilk aren’t going to make it any easier. It’s not in their best interest to do so. It’s in our best interest. The best interest not of the rich, but of the rest of us.
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