George Soros: Mark Zuckerberg Should Not Be in Control of Facebook

The social media company is going to get Trump re-elected — because it’s good for business.


NY TIMES, GEORGE SOROS

At a dinner last week in Davos, Switzerland, I was asked if I thought Facebook was behaving more responsibly today than it did during the 2016 presidential election.

“Not at all,” I answered. “Facebook helped Trump to get elected and I am afraid that it will do the same in 2020.” I explained that there is a longstanding law — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — that protects social media platforms from legal liability for defamation and similar claims. Facebook can post deliberately misleading or false statements by candidates for public office and others, and take no responsibility for them.

I went on to say that there appears to be “an informal mutual assistance operation or agreement developing between Trump and Facebook” in which Facebook will help President Trump to get re-elected and Mr. Trump will, in turn, defend Facebook against attacks from regulators and the media.

George Soros

“This is just plain wrong,” a Facebook spokesman told Business Insider.

I disagree. I believe that Mr. Trump and Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, realize that their interests are aligned — the president’s in winning elections, Mr. Zuckerberg’s in making money.

Let’s look at the evidence: In 2016, Facebook provided the Trump campaign with embedded staff who helped to optimize its advertising program. (Hillary Clinton’s campaign was also approached, but it declined to embed a Facebook team in her campaign’s operations.) Brad Parscale, the digital director of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and now his campaign manager for 2020, said that Facebook helped Mr. Trump and gave him the edge. This seems to have marked the beginning of a special relationship.

Brad Parscale, Donald Trump’s digital director, did not offer any data to back up his claims that micro-targeted Facebook ads were decisive in Trump’s victory. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

More recently, direct contact between the two men has raised serious questions. Mr. Zuckerberg met with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office on Sept. 19, 2019. We don’t know what was said. But from an interview on the sidelines at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 22, we do know what Mr. Trump said about the meeting: Mr. Zuckerberg “told me that I’m No. 1 in the world in Facebook.” Mr. Trump apparently had no problem with Facebook’s decision not to fact-check political ads. “I’d rather have him just do whatever he is going to do,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Zuckerberg. “He’s done a hell of a job, when you think of it.”

The president’s 2016 campaign mounted a robust data-centric communications effort and has continued to build on that program over the past few years, using Facebook as a key part of their strategy.

Facebook’s decision not to require fact-checking for political candidates’ advertising in 2020 has flung open the door for false, manipulated, extreme and incendiary statements. Such content is rewarded with prime placement and promotion if it meets Facebook-designed algorithmic standards for popularity and engagement.

What’s more, Facebook’s design tends to obscure the sources of inflammatory and false content, and fails to adequately punish those who spread false information. Nor does the company effectively warn those who are exposed to lies.
I expressed my fear that with Facebook’s help, Mr. Trump will win the 2020 election. The recent hiring of a right-wing figure to help manage its news tab has reinforced those fears. 

[Campbell Brown, a former NBC News anchor who has been at Facebook since 2017, has been tapped to lead the program. Before joining Facebook, Brown served as editor-in-chief of The 74, an education policy news website that was funded by the family foundation of Betsy DeVos, who subsequently joined Trump’s cabinet, as Judd Legum has reported. And under Brown’s tenure, Facebook News has credentialed the noxious hate site Breitbart.com as one of the sites the tab will promote. Brown’s defense of that decision -- that Breitbart.com “meets our integrity standards for misinformation” -- suggests that those standards will be absurdly low for right-wing media.Media Matters]

In my comments in Davos, I also pointed out that Facebook has been used to cause worse damage in other countries than the United States. In Myanmar, for example, military personnel used Facebook to help incite the public against the Rohingya, who were targeted in a military assault of incredible cruelty including murder, rape and the burning of entire villages: Around 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh. The International Court of Justice in The Hague is currently deliberating whether these atrocities qualify as genocide.

But within the last year, Facebook has introduced new features on its mobile app that actually intensify the fire of incendiary political attacks — making them easier and quicker to propagate. The system is cost-free to the poster and revenue-generating for Facebook. Good for Facebook, bad for democracy.

Matt Walters, an avid Bernie Sanders supporter, inside his home in Almont, Mich. Walters shares memes against Elizabeth Warren to several Facebook groups with the potential for thousands of people to see these images. (Ali Lapetina/For The Washington Post)

The responsible approach is self-evident. Facebook is a publisher not just a neutral moderator or “platform.” It should be held accountable for the content that appears on its site.

Speaking at a cocktail party in Davos on Jan. 22, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, repeated the worn Silicon Valley cliché that Facebook is trying to make the world a better place. But Facebook should be judged by what it does, not what it says.

I repeat and reaffirm my accusation against Facebook under the leadership of Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg. They follow only one guiding principle: maximize profits irrespective of the consequences. One way or another, they should not be left in control of Facebook.

George Soros (@georgesoros) is the founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations.

Pelosi Says Altered Videos Show Facebook Leaders Were ‘Willing Enablers’ of Russian Election Interference.
WASHINGTON POST

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that Facebook’s refusal to take down an altered video of her shows that the company’s leaders were active contributors to online disinformation and “willing enablers” of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Pelosi’s comments to KQED News, her first public response to the video since The Washington Post first reported its spread online last week, revealed a dramatic escalation of tensions between the Democratic leader and the world’s most popular social network.

“We have said all along, ‘Poor Facebook, they were unwittingly exploited by the Russians.’ I think wittingly, because right now they are putting up something that they know is false. I think it’s wrong,” she said, according to a transcript of the conversation provided by Pelosi’s office. “They’re lying to the public. . . . I think they have proven — by not taking down something they know is false — that they were willing enablers of the Russian interference in our election."

“For me, I’m in the arena, I’ve been the target all along,” Pelosi added. But “I wonder what they would do if [Facebook chief executive] Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t portrayed, you know, slowed down, made to look” drunk, she said. If it was “one of their own, would this be — is this their policy? Or is it just a woman?”

[Faked Pelosi videos, slowed to make her appear drunk, spread across social media]

Facebook, which declined to comment, has acknowledged the video is doctored but declined to remove it, saying in a statement Friday to The Post, “We don’t have a policy that stipulates that the information you post on Facebook must be true."

Facebook said it has heavily reduced the video’s appearances in people’s “news feeds,” and that the video now plays alongside a small informational box linking to fact checks indicating it is false. but still allows it to be viewed and shared.

Monika Bickert, a Facebook vice president for product policy and counterterrorism, said Friday on CNN that the company would remove the video only if it originated from a fraudulent account or posed a threat to public safety.“We think it’s important for people to make their own informed choice for what to believe,” Bickert said. She added later, “We aren’t in the news business. We’re in the social media business."

[Facebook defends decision to leave up fake Pelosi video and says users should make up their own minds]

SOCIAL MEDIA RUINS FRIENDSIPS

Survey: Social Media Ruins Friendships

Forget the Real World house. Twitter is, apparently, where people “stop being polite and start getting real.” A new study finds that people on social media are ruder and more likely to hurl insults than they would be in person, and the increase in incivility is leading to friendships ending. The survey found that 78 percent of respondents noticed that people are increasingly more uncouth on social media than they are face to face. Arguments caused from that behavior has led to blocking, unsubscribing, and unfriending offending users, 19 percent of respondents say—with friendships also ending in the real world. #Harsh.  [From The Daily Beast Cheat Sheet]