It is an unfortunate fact of American life that the rather tepid enforcement of our antitrust laws has now completely evaporated. Remember when Microsoft was sued or making it hard to change the default browser in Windows. IOs makes it impossible, but no one does anything about it.
Far worse is Facebook, which is headed by one of the world’s biggest assholes, an asshole of Trumpian proportions:
This past week, Mark Zuckerberg chastised Jack Dorsey of Twitter for putting a note on one of Donald Trump’s sensationalistic tweets that threatened Minneapolis protesters that “we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter decided the tweet glorified violence, a violation of Twitter Terms of Service, and forced the reader to lift a screen to read it.
“If anyone, including a politician, is saying things that can cause, that is calling for violence or could risk imminent physical harm…we will take that content down,” Zuckerberg had testified to Congress in response to a question by Congresswoman Alexandria Octavio Cortez (D-NY) last October. Yet, in response to a tweet invoking violence by Trump, posted on his personal account this week, Zuckerberg asserted that it was “free expression” and did not violate Facebook’s Terms of Service. He allowed the same posting to not be flagged on Facebook or Instagram.
Zuckerberg also asserted “I don’t think that Facebook or internet platforms in general should be arbiters of truth,” to CNBC’s Andew Ross Sorkin in a May 28 interview.
…
However, Zuckerberg is misleading the press and the public in implying that Facebook doesn’t “fact check” content. In fact, Zuckerberg has boasted that Facebook has set up a “Check Your Fact” division to police the Internet for “fake news.” The “Check Your Fact” program includes a “panel” of “independent” fact checkers who have enormous powers to “flag links on the social network as false, demoting their ranking in the News Feed as well as the visibility of the entire outlet that posted it.”
And one of those fact checkers, among other right-wing panel members, is none other than Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller.
BuzzFlash discovered this after I posted a Politico article on BuzzFlash Nation on Facebook the morning of Saturday, February 29, the day of the South Carolina Democratic Primary. Trump had held a campaign rally in Charleston the night before, aimed at stealing headlines from the Dems. The article header can be seen in the image at the top of this page, and the lower portion of the Politico article Facebook image also indicated that Trump presented the concern about a potential Coronavirus catastrophe (this was around the time that he was still claiming that it would “disappear” like “magic”) as a Democratic “hoax.” “Trump rallies his base to treat Coronavirus as a ‘hoax,’” Politico wrote, and that is what he did at that time.
In the afternoon, I was posting articles on BuzzFlash Nation on Facebook and scrolled down the page only to find that the Politico article that appeared eminently sound had been declared “False Information” and had a screen over it, as if it were “fake news.” I went to the Politico Facebook page, scrolled down, and found that indeed the same “False Information” screen was placed over the article summary and headline link on the Politico Facebook page. When I clicked open the screen, I found the message below:
…
When I clicked open the screen, I ultimately found a written “opinion” on how a Daily Caller staffer had “determined” that the Politico story was “False Information,” which appeared to be a partisan screed to make Trump appear to be serious about the Coronavirus, a hard case to make, particularly at that time. Heck, just a week or so ago, Trump’s dimwitted son, Eric, implausibly claimed that indeed the Coronavirus was a “hoax” and would disappear after the Democrats lost the November election.
The article goes on to demonstrate that Zuckerberg’s fact checkers have a pronounced right wing slant and makes the case, which is surely true, that he will enable the spread of Republican lies in the coming election. Facebook is a monopoly and should be broken up, just as Ma Bell was, for it is capable of far more damage than was the phone company at the time of its breakup. It will be a tough job, because even if the Democrats take over and Biden appoints an attorney general interested in taking Zuckerberg down, the Supreme Court will no doubt step in and explain that over 100 years of precedent is just so wrong, and anti-trust laws are unconstitutional when applied to Republican enablers.