Pajiba

Facebook Is Bad

October 24, 2019

Yesterday, while several House committees were investigating impeachment, the House Finance Committee met with Mark Zuckerberg to discuss his new cryptocurrency, Libra. Zuckerberg tried to pitch the idea that Libra is independent of Facebook, which is a bunch of hooey, and good lord, do we really want Tom from Succession controlling both social media and world currency?

We do not.

No one got any satisfactory answers out of Zuckerberg regarding Libra, but damn, Zuckerberg got tore up on a couple of other issues involving Facebook, namely the fact that they refuse to fact-check political ads. AOC reduced Zuckerberg to a puddle of goo. She softened him up by suggesting that a social network responsible for Cambridge Analytica should not be put in charge of a world currency. Then she went in for the kill:

What Zuckerberg is saying is that politicians can lie in their ads, and that the American people should be able to make independent judgments themselves based on what? ... the misinformation spread on Facebook? Basically, Zuckerberg is saying that the most powerful social media network in the world should be allowed to be used as a tool by politicians to spread disinformation, disinformation bolstered by Russian bots.

Jesus Christ, it is so pathetic.

But at least Facebook weeds out videos of actual murders and other horrors and atrocities, which they do by hiring thousands of people to watch these videos 8 hours a day, giving them 9 minutes each day to cry in the stairwell while under supervision. The text written by Elizabeth May summarizing this video is not an exaggeration. It is actually how Zuckerberg responds.

Is a lack of empathy a prerequisite for power in this country?

  • Share:

You Might Also Like

0 comments