Facebook co-founder says it’s ‘time to break up’ the social media giant in scathing op-ed
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has called for the break-up of the social media behemoth and lamented the “staggering” and “unchecked” power of CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a lengthy and searing oped.
Hughes co-founded Facebook with Zuckerberg in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 and watched “in awe” as the company grew over the last 15 years — but said he now feels a “sense of anger and responsibility” about how all-powerful and out-of-control the social media giant has become.
Lashing out at the company, Hughes wrote in a piece published by the New York Times that Zuckerberg’s power and influence goes “far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government.”
“There is no precedent for [Zuckerberg’s] ability to monitor, organize and even censor the conversations of two billion people.”
Hughes berates Facebook over “sloppy privacy practices,” “violent rhetoric and fake news,” and the “unbounded drive to capture ever more of our time and attention.” It’s not that Zuckerberg is a bad person, he writes, but “he’s human” and his focus on growth “led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks.”
ALSO ON RT.COMFacebook ban on Alex Jones and others is a form of modern-day book burningHughes also bemoans the fact that the powerful CEO controls three core communications platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) and says that lack of competition, market or government regulation is a major problem. If a competitor crops up, Zuckerberg can simply choose to shut it down “by acquiring, blocking or copying it” in the manner it did with the Instagram and WhatsApp mergers.
The lack of competition means that “every time Facebook messes up, we repeat an exhausting pattern: first outrage, then disappointment and, finally, resignation.”
“Mark alone can decide how to configure Facebook’s algorithms to determine what people see in their News Feeds, what privacy settings they can use and even which messages get delivered.”
Hughes also worries that Zuckerberg has “surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them.” He believes that neither Facebook’s offer to appoint a “privacy czar” or the expected Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fine of $5 billion will be enough to rein in the company.
The answer and solution lies in more government regulation and subsequent market competition, Hughes says. But Facebook isn’t afraid of just “a few more rules,” so the action needs to be more dramatic, he suggests.
“The American government needs to do two things: break up Facebook’s monopoly and regulate the company to make it more accountable to the American people.”
That will involve separating Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram into three individual companies and banning future acquisitions “for several years.”
The FTC should never have permitted these mergers, but it’s “not too late to act.” There is “precedent for correcting bad decisions,” he says, pointing to 2009 when Whole Foods settled antitrust complaints by selling off the Wild Oats brand and stores it had acquired years earlier.
ALSO ON RT.COMFacebook ban on Alex Jones and others is a form of modern-day book burningHe notes that time is of the essence, however, as Facebook has been working quickly to integrate the three platforms, precisely in order to make splitting them up more difficult.
“Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American. It is time to break up Facebook.”
Hughes also suggests the creation of a new government agency specifically to empower Congress to regulate tech companies and protect user privacy.
He says the agency should “create guidelines for acceptable speech on social media” while noting that the idea might seem “un-American” at first. The standards therefore should be “subject to the review of the courts” and would be similar to already accepted rules on speech like not shouting “fire” in a theater, provoking violence or making false statements to manipulate stock prices.
Ultimately, he says, an aggressive case taken now against Facebook would persuade other behemoths like Google and Amazon to “think twice” about stifling competition out of fear that “they could be next.”
Twitter Bans ‘MAGAPhobia’ Account That Chronicled Violence Against Trump Supporters
An account documenting anti-Trump violence was banned from Twitter last night.
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Last night Twitter banned a new account, @MAGAPhobia, created to chronicle instances of violence used against conservative supporters of President Donald J. Trump.
In the midst of a late night purge of conservative accounts, Twitter banned the conservative user who used the platform to log all instances of violence used against supporters of President Trump. As Big League Politics has detailed over the last several months, vocal supporters of the president are routinely attacked in public, have their property vandalized or destroyed, and face intimidation for simple acts, such as wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat or having it displayed in a vehicle.
Also last night, a parody account mocking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was banned last night, with Twitter sending the user an email suggesting he did not properly identify it as a parody, even though the word “parody” was used both in the account’s name and bio.
Anti-Trump violence appears to be on the rise around the country.
Just this year, prominent Trump supporters Brandon Straka, Michael Knowles, and Owen Shroyer were all attacked in one day, an immigrant man was attacked in his neighborhood for wearing a ‘MAGA’ hat, a man was attacked for wearing his ‘MAGA’ hat during a Christchurch mosque vigil, a Massachusetts woman attacked a man for wearing his ‘MAGA’ hat then claimed to be the victim of the altercation, and Canadian conservative Faith Goldy and another man were attacked in nearby Toronto, Canada for wearing pro-Trump accessories and holding signs with anti-racism slogans.
The situation is exacerbated when considering crimes against private property.
Since March, at least three individuals have had their property vandalized for supporting President Trump. A recreational vehicle used to sell pro-Trump merchandise outside rallies was battered overnight, a man had his tires slashed by a woman who later admitted to being provoked by the ‘MAGA’ hat on his dashboard, and just this week tires were slashed outside a pro-Trump event.
Anti-Defamation League Admits Colluding with Tech Giants to Facilitate Big Brother Censorship
This organization that foments hate against conservatives is doing everything in its power to manifest the Orwellian Nightmare.
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With pro-Trump voices being booted from Facebook and the social media crackdown ramping up before 2020, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is bragging about the legwork they have done to build up to this moment.
The ADL, once considered an admirable pro-Jewish organization that combated anti-Semitism, has turned into a partisan political censor facilitating Big Brother and trying to stifle President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda.
They admitted as much during a summit with the uber-globalist Council on Foreign Relations earlier this year where the organization’s leader bragged about enabling the tech giants’ push for extreme Draconian censorship.
“We work with Google on using AI to try and interrupt cyber-hate before it happens,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, Chief Executive Officer and National Director of the ADL, about his organization’s trailblazing work in the field of Orwellian pre-crime.
“We work with YouTube to get them to change their algorithms so it lessens the likelihood that a young person is going to run into some of these anti-Semitic conspiratorial videos,” he added.
Greenblatt brought up Facebook specifically and how the ADL enables the tech giant’s ability to manipulate information for the purposes of combating alleged hate. He deployed double-speak to justify his organization’s anti-constitutional push.
“So there are different ways [Facebook] can tweak their algorithms and adjust their products so they think not only about free speech… but protect the user’s right to not be harassed or hated,” he said.
He was particularly laudatory toward Facebook in how they were a front-runner in leading the charge toward Big Brother.
“They have done some good things to deal with very specific cases by taking swifter action when people perpetrate online bullying or online harassment,” Greenblatt said.
He feels that legislators should take further action in passing bills that would further destroy freedom of expression and other core liberties.
“There is a gap in the legal regime. There are techniques that extremists have used online to terrorize Jews and other people like doxing, and swatting and different forms of cyberbullying that are not covered by existing laws and need to be,” Greenblatt said.
He doesn’t seem particularly considered with left-wing terror groups like ANTIFA deploying these harmful tactics though. Democratic leaders like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) do not seem to be on his organization’s radar. Instead, his focus is entirely on restricting the speech of conservative and right-wing voices.
Greenblatt concluded by saying that “the abuse online can be far, far worse than anything physical” and that “we need legislators to catch up and fill some of the gaps.”
While the fake news media likes to ballyhoo about the Rooskies, it is organizations like the ADL that pose the real threat to the integrity of our democracy.
Report: Facebook Sets Up ‘War Room’ for European Elections
By Lucas Nolan
Politico recently profiled Facebook’s new “European election war room” ahead of upcoming E.U. elections.
A recent report from Politico provides an insight into Facebook’s new “election war room” established ahead of the upcoming European election. Facebook has previously deployed a similar “war room” in the United States ahead of the midterm elections in November 2018. In October, Breitbart News reported on the war room providing an insight into the aim of the project. Facebook’s Product Manager of Civic Engagement, Samidh Chakrabarti, said in an interview that the war room is a physical room which will be used to “take quick and decisive action” against possible cases of foreign interference during the midterm elections.
“We have many measures that we’ve put in place to try to prevent problems: the political ad transparency, blocking fake accounts, combating foreign interference, and preventing the spread of misinformation. But we know we have to be ready for anything that happens,” stated Chakrabarti. “And so that’s why we’ve been building this war room, a physical war room [with] people across the company, of all different disciplines, who are there. So, as we discover problems that may come up in the hours leading up to the election, we can take quick and decisive action.”
Now, Politico has reported on the company’s efforts to establish a similar project in Dublin, Ireland ahead of the upcoming European elections. Politico described the project writing:
The group of twentysomething coders, engineers and content specialists sit hunched over multiple screens, scanning the platform for potential illegal behavior. Wall-mounted television monitors keep them up to date on the latest chatter on the world’s largest social network, Instagram and WhatsApp. A single European Union flag hangs on the wall, next to a poster emblazoned with the slogan “New Ways of Seeing.”
Yet despite Facebook’s 40-person European election “operations center,” which got underway on April 29, the tech giant is struggling to keep on top of the threats.
Political groups from Hungary to Spain have been able to circumvent Facebook’s new political transparency tools to quietly buy partisan social media advertising aimed at swaying potential voters, according to an analysis by POLITICO. That includes paid-for messages by Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, Verein Recht und Freiheit (Association for the Conservation of the Rule of Law and Civil Liberties), a support group for right-wing politicians in Germany and Petra De Sutter, a Belgian candidate for the Green Party.
It seems that Facebook is aware, however, of accusations of censorship and bias. The company’s chief lobbyist in Europe told Politico that Facebook is avoiding taking too harsh a line on the content allowed on the platform:
“We recognize that some people think we should remove everything,” said Richard Allan, Facebook’s chief lobbyist in Europe, in reference to the reams of political content now flooding the digital platform. “But we have concerns of removing everything during a political election.”
“We don’t believe it’s the right place to be for us to be the regulator of political campaigns,” he added. Facebook may not want the role, but its global reach puts it at the heart of the democratic process from France to the Philippines.
Politico described the new Dublin team tasked with monitoring misinformation, writing:
The team, which includes speakers of all of the EU’s 24 official languages, is split along national boundaries, with specialists — primarily men who would not look out of place in any startup office — monitoring activity on both Facebook’s social media platforms and those of rivals, notably Google and Twitter.
Facebook would not say how much content the group reviews daily, though each Facebook staffer had multiple screens open monitoring news events and other political discussions online.
Once an issue is flagged, Facebook’s engineers can then work with their counterparts across Europe and elsewhere to determine if the activity infringes the company’s standards, and then delete, play down or leave the content on the network, depending on the outcome. Topics for review include possible misinformation, voter suppression and hate speech, and the company said that it had investigated hundreds of incidents within the last week.
“Even though we’re a tech company, speaking face to face is invaluable,” said Sturdy, the Facebook executive.
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