“May the Best Liar Win” - Ending Facebook's 2020 Election Scheme
Are you willing to take one day a week off from Facebook to save democracy? Read on...
Facebook has decided that it’s okay for Donald Trump’ campaign to run ads containing boldfaced lies. Over and over and over again. When a foreign power does this, it’s bad. When a home grown belligerent billionaire does this, it’s good. USA! USA!... sorry, I got carried away...
Senator Elizabeth Warren’s campaign has responded to this malicious misinformation campaign by running a campaign that starts out claiming Facebook has endorsed Donald Trump. A couple of sentences down, they admit this is a lie. The point has been made because the Warren ads were approved.
So now, the rules of the electoral advertising game on Facebook are, “may the best liar win.”
The Trump campaign is among Facebook’s larger advertisers, and in any other context this decision to allow deliberate deception would be a “money talks” situation.
The San Diego Union Tribune editorial board recognized the inherent dangers of this policy, with a (soon to be published) dispatch saying, in part:
...As Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein noted, having the company stay out of fact-checking will make it less likely to face claims of political bias for keeping certain allegations off its platform. A recent independent audit by former Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, that Facebook had commissioned wasn’t damning, but it did show a content review process that appeared arbitrary — inviting suspicion and fear of bad faith. Zuckerberg may have concluded this is one headache Facebook can do without.
But is that his actual motive? Or does the Facebook CEO relish the idea that Trump will viciously go after Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren and others who want to break up Facebook? In a tape of a meeting with employees that was leaked to The Verge, Zuckerberg said, “if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.”
Facebook is already running a Trump campaign ad that was rejected by CNN and NBC. It flatly asserts then-Vice President Joe Biden pressured the Ukraine to fire a prosecutor so as to end an investigation of his son, Hunter Biden. But there was strong contemporaneous evidence that Washington wanted the prosecutor fired because he was ignoring corruption — not because of Hunter Biden...
Would it be okay with a fringe candidate --I’d name a couple of obvious choices here, but don’t want the hate mail that inevitably follows-- running antivaxx ads? How about candidate ads quoting theocrats blaming gays for disease?
The standard argument for fighting back against Facebook’s social media tyranny is to quit the platform. And if that suits you, fine.
Having lived all over the place in my five decades or so as an adult, quitting Facebook means cutting off hundreds of past friendships, relationships, and acquaintances. In a world where alienation and isolation are pervasive, this doesn’t work for me. And, I suspect, for a lot of other people.
I do have an idea of how to get their attention. It needs the help of somebody or some entity with a much larger reach than I’ll ever have. Maybe MoveOn… Indivisible… Rachel Maddow.. Or Stephen Colbert, even. Please! the idea is free. No credit needed.
It’s simple. Let’s start taking one day a week off from Facebook. If enough people do it, the bean counters in the back office might just notice. It could be like Meatless Mondays or Climate Strike Fridays, something people can opt into with minimal hassle.
The social media researchers on the interwebs seem to think that Wednesday is the best day for advertisers on Facebook.
So that’s my bit… Now if we just had a catchy slogan...
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com