Let’s talk about how Facebook and their quest for “neutrality.” Usually summed up by Mark Zuckerberg’s favorite ridiculous sentence: Facebook will not be arbiters of truth.
Here’s a series of events regarding “left-wing”/“right-wing” politics/news stories as it pertains to Facebook.
- May 2017 - Facebook is tweaking the News Feed to cut down on terrible ads and spammy posts: Facebook makes changes to the news feed to cut back on bullshit. As you might expect if you’ve kept your eye on the types of stories coming from right-leaning publications, this reduced traffic from publications on the “right” more than the “left”.
- July 2018 - New study finds Facebook algorithm hurt Republican more than Democrat lawmakers: It’s confirmed that cutting back on spam and other bullshit hurts Republicans more than Democrats.
- October 2020 - Facebook reportedly choked traffic for left-leaning news sites including Mother Jones: In response to Republican complaints, Facebook (with the approval of Zuckerberg himself) reduced the visibility of left-leaning publications like Mother Jones.
So not being the “arbiters of truth” means you strive for neutrality in all cases even when you aren’t dealing with neutral sides.
Which then of course, means you’re susceptible to groups who aren’t acting in good faith to paint whatever picture they want and manipulate you. So now we have Republicans manipulating Facebook and Facebook manipulating the world.
But if you have any questions about what “side” Mark Zuckerberg is on, things like this (November 2019) might clear it up:
On Thursday, NBC News revealed that the CEO of Facebook had a secret dinner at the White House in October with President Donald Trump. Zuckerberg was accompanied by Facebook board member and long-time mentor Peter Thiel. Thiel is notorious among Silicon Valley billionaires for explicitly endorsing Trump in 2016 and speaking at the Republican National Convention that year. Thiel, a libertarian who runs a company that enhances government surveillance efforts, has also questioned the value of women voting.
That October dinner was the second in two months at which Zuckerberg dined with Trump. It followed a series of dinners at Zuckerberg’s home in California with conservative pundits and activists like white supremacist Tucker Carlson of Fox News.
Facebook is a trash company run by a spineless robot of a CEO.