[Esco20 originally posted this on 2/13/20]

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.

An end to "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong

China passed a draconian new national security law for Hong Kong on Tuesday, a move which will dramatically erode the city’s freedom’s under the “one country, two systems” agreement and whittle away at Hong Kong’s relative autonomy from mainland China. [NPR / Emily Feng] According to Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, the law criminalizes “acts of secession, subversion of state power, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign or external forces to endanger national security.” [CNN / Helen Regan] Pro-democracy advocates, however, say the law will be used to crack down on protests and activism in Hong Kong. It was passed just a day before the anniversary of Hong Kong’s July 1, 1997, handover to China from the UK. [NYT / Chris Buckley, Keith Bradsher, and Tiffany May] As Emily Rauhala, a foreign affairs correspondent for the Washington Post, pointed out on Twitter Tuesday, the law “seems to effectively criminalize *ordinary* life in Hong Kong: saying what you please, communicating as you please, gathering as you please, protesting as you please.” [Twitter / Emily Rauhala] And the law’s effects are already apparent: At least one pro-democracy party in Hong Kong disbanded on Tuesday as activists worry about what comes next for the city. [Washington Post / Shibani Mahtani] Nonetheless, some activists say they plan to march on Wednesday in protest of the new law, despite a ban by police. “The aim is to show people that even with the national security law, we must exercise our right to protest,” one Hong Kong district council member said. [South China Morning Post / Sum Lok-kei and Clifford Lo]

The Russian President (NOT) Putin:Russian bounties, American lives, and White House inaction

Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images

On Friday last week, a New York Times scoop revealed that Russian military intelligence has been offering bounties to Taliban forces for the killing of American and British troops in Afghanistan. [NYT / Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, and Michael Schwirtz] Now, new reporting suggests that President Donald Trump knew as early as spring 2019 that Russia was placing those bounties. In addition to the President’s Daily Brief, then-National Security Adviser John Bolton briefed Trump directly on the assessment in March last year. [AP / James LaPorta] It’s unclear how many deaths can be directly tied to the bounties, but intelligence suggests that “several” US service members were killed as a result. In total, 16 Americans died from “hostile gunfire or improvised bombs” last year, as well as two so far in 2020. [Washington Post / Ellen Nakashima, Karen DeYoung, Missy Ryan, and John Hudson] On Tuesday, a subsequent New York Times report found that US intelligence intercepted financial transfer data showing GRU payments to a Taliban-linked account. The transfers are believed to be connected to the bounty program. [NYT / Charlie Savage, Mujib Mashal, Rukmini Callimachi, Eric Schmitt, and Adam Goldman] The intelligence was also considered credible enough that it prompted a National Security Council meeting to determine possible responses to the bounties, though White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted Monday that there is “no consensus” on its veracity. [CNN / Barbara Starr and Paul LeBlanc] As the Daily Beast reported Monday, the exact timeline for when the president might have been briefed, and on what, remains somewhat unclear, in part because Trump “has little patience for intelligence briefings, especially when the news isn’t good for him.” [The Daily Beast / Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng] On Sunday, Trump denied the story on Twitter, though multiple credible reports contrary to his tweet have since emerged. “Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP,” he wrote, describing the story as a “fabricated Russia Hoax.” [Twitter / Donald Trump] In reality, it's vanishingly unlikely that Trump was never briefed. That leaves two options, as Vox's Zack Beauchamp explains: Either Trump was briefed and was so genuinely disinterested that it never registered, or he's deliberately lying to the American public. In any case, it's good news for Russia. [Vox / Zack Beauchamp] Congress has reacted to the story with alarm, with members of both parties calling for more information. A small group of House Republicans — no Democrats were included at the time — received a briefing Monday. [NPR / Philip Ewing] On Tuesday, select House Democrats were also briefed by the White House — but House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff told reporters that “the right people to give the briefing really were not in the room.” [Politico / Heather Caygle, Kyle Cheney, and Sarah Ferris]

Coronavirus Updates: New York Sees Fewest Daily Deaths Since Mid-March

GOTHAMIST

 Five people died from COVID-19 in New York State on Saturday—the lowest number of deaths in one day since March 15th, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Sunday.

But as the coronavirus cases drop in New York, the governor is now concerned the virus will spread once again as other states see cases rise amid businesses reopening.

With five deaths and fewer than 900 hospitalizations, Cuomo said on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday morning, "How does that number go up? Two ways. Lack of compliance—and I'm diligent about staying after New Yorkers and local governments that have to police it—and second, I'm now afraid of the spread coming from other states, because we are one country and people travel."

"I'm afraid the infection rate in the other states will come back to New York and raise that rate again," Cuomo said. "If these states keep going up, we're going to have a national crisis like we have never seen. They said this was the way to help the economy by reopening. It's been the exact opposite."

"Every time the virus goes up, the stock market goes down. And if those states continue to increase, you’ll see it go all across the nation. You’ll see New York on the rise, again, and you’ll see the other states starting to go up even more," Cuomo said.

In New York, hospitalizations dropped to 869—39 fewer than the previous day. Newly admitted patients dropped by 24 to 54, and the number of people in intensive care units dropped by 1 to 229. Total deaths rose to 24,835.

Of 61,906 tests conducted Saturday, 0.99% were positive. In New York City, the positivity rate was 1.1%.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said on Meet the Press Sunday morning that fatalities and hospitalizations were the lowest in two months, but noted some southern states are seeing surges. Azar emphasized personal responsibility—like wearing face coverings—and community contact tracers in counties seeing cases surge. But President Donald Trump rarely wears a mask himself and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the U.S. needs about 100,000 contact tracers—more than three times what the country currently has.

The secretary and president are "basically in denial about the problem," Cuomo said when asked on Meet the Press about Azar's comments.

"They don't want to tell the American people the truth and they don’t want to have any federal response except supporting the states, supporting the states," Cuomo said. "This is a virus. It doesn’t respond to politics. You can’t tweet at it, you have to treat it."

Video Shows Crowd In Harlem Throwing Bottles At Police Trying To Break Up Street Party

GOTHAMIST

COURTESY @BAGLUCK_

A Harlem block party that started on Saturday night and lasted through dawn on Sunday ended in a flurry of bottles being thrown at NYPD squad cars, according to videos posted on social media.

No one was arrested or reported injured during the incident—but police did recover several spent shell casings and two fired bullets, an NYPD spokesperson confirmed.

Cops responded after shots were detected via shotspotter technology at 133rd Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard about 3:45 a.m., the department spokesperson said.

No guns were recovered at the scene.

When officers arrived, they tried to disperse the group of about 500 people, when some people began throwing bottles and debris at police, according to the NYPD.

As video shows numerous people throwing bottles and other trash at officers in vehicles, the police cars can be seen backing up—a stark contrast to a month ago when officers drove into a group of protesters in Brooklyn.

The police response appeared to be toned down in comparison to tactics used by the NYPD during protests against police violence in late May and early June—when officers were seen beating people with batons and pepper spraying indiscriminately.

The spokesperson said verbal orders were given to the group to leave overnight.

An NYPD vehicle's windshield and driver's side window were damaged, but no officers were injured and no civilians were reported injured either, according to police.

Another video shows a higher ranking NYPD officer in a white shirt walking in the middle of the crowd on the street, observing the scene, as a group of revelers shoot fireworks off.

Social media posts for a planned cookout Saturday night indicate the 5 a.m. crowd was from that party, which lasted into the night until the sun rose.

"This wasn't a protest this was a gathering with good vibes not a single argument on that corner for over 12 hours," the Instagrammer @bagluck_ wrote. The person said in a direct message to Gothamist, "Everything was cool till the police started harassing people," but did not immediately provide more details.

The cops' union, Police Benevolent Association, quickly used the video to slam Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson for "surrendering our city" and police using a "light touch" in response to shots fired.

A Harlem hair salon owner whose business was nearby the center of the all-night party was frustrated with the bottle-throwers, saying in an Instagram post she doesn't "condone any negativity or violence."

"It's nothing cute about vandalizing where you live or work," wrote Michelle Smalls, who some call the Queen of Harlem. She added she's "happy" Harlem could get together without violence despite the bottle-throwing.

Video posted Sunday morning shows the streets cleaned up.

The NYPD is investigating what happened.

Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says

The Trump administration has been deliberating for months about what to do about a stunning intelligence assessment.

Trump Got Written Briefing in February on Possible Russian Bounties, Officials Say

The investigation into Russia’s suspected operation is said to focus in part on the killings of three Marines in a truck bombing last year, officials said.

NY TIMES
American officials provided a written briefing in late February to President Trump laying out their conclusion that a Russian military intelligence unit offered and paid bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, two officials familiar with the matter said.

The investigation into the suspected Russian covert operation to incentivize such killings has focused in part on an April 2019 car bombing that killed three Marines as one such potential attack, according to multiple officials familiar with the matter.

The new information emerged as the White House tried on Monday to play down the intelligence assessment that Russia sought to encourage and reward killings — including reiterating a claim that Mr. Trump was never briefed about the matter and portraying the conclusion as disputed and dubious.

But that stance clashed with the disclosure by two officials that the intelligence was included months ago in Mr. Trump’s President’s Daily Brief document — a compilation of the government’s latest secrets and best insights about foreign policy and national security that is prepared for him to read. One of the officials said the item appeared in Mr. Trump’s brief in late February; the other cited Feb. 27, specifically.

Moreover, a description of the intelligence assessment that the Russian unit had carried out the bounties plot was also seen as serious and solid enough to disseminate more broadly across the intelligence community in a May 4 article in the C.I.A.’s World Intelligence Review, a classified compendium commonly referred to as The Wire, two officials said.

The world marks two tragic pandemic milestones

VOX

Over the weekend, the global Covid-19 death toll surpassed 500,000 even as the US continues to see a surge in cases of the virus. Currently, the US accounts for just over a quarter of the death toll, with more than 125,000 fatalities. [CNN / Zamira Rahim] The world also hit 10 million cases of the virus on Saturday, more than six months after the first coronavirus cases were identified in Wuhan, China. [Reuters / Cate Cadell] Both milestones come as conditions are worsening in the US: Cases are spiking around the country, and several states have hit all-time high daily case numbers in the past week. [NBC News / Yuliya Talmazan] According to an NPR tracker, 38 states are seeing an uptick in cases, including seven states that have seen a triple-digit percentage increase compared to two weeks ago. Florida has been one of the states hardest hit: It’s reporting an average of 6,255 daily cases for the week. [NPR / Stephanie Adeline, Connie Hanzhang Jin, Alyson Hurt, Thomas Wilburn, Daniel Wood, and Ruth Talbot] Texas is also approaching the crisis point: In Houston, some hospitals are reaching ICU capacity as more people are hospitalized due to the disease, though models suggest the virus has yet to peak there. [NYT / Sheri Fink] As Vox's German Lopez points out, the current spike in US cases was not just predictable but preventable. A rushed reopening and reduced social distancing measures allowed the virus to surge back, and it's unclear where states will go from here. [Vox / German Lopez]

In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS sides with abortion rights

VOX

On Monday, the Supreme Court struck down a Lousiana law restricting abortion access in a 5-4 decision. Chief Justice John Roberts, who also penned a separate concurring opinion, joined the Court’s liberal wing. [ABC News / Alexandra Svokos] The case — June Medical Services v. Russo — is a major win for abortion rights advocates, many of whom had feared that a more conservative Court would uphold the Louisiana law and undercut Roe v. Wade. [LA Times / David G. Savage] The law in question, which mandated that all abortion providers in Louisiana have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, is what is known as a TRAP law: a targeted restriction on abortion providers that makes it harder for those providers to operate. [The Cut / Hannah Gold] Though it was passed in 2014, the Louisiana law never went into effect. It was first blocked by a district court judge before being upheld by the Fifth Circuit; the Supreme Court again put the law on hold while it considered the case. [NPR / Nina Totenberg and Brian Naylor] While Monday’s decision is good news for abortion rights, it doesn’t mean that Roe is safe. As Vox’s Ian Millhiser writes, Roberts’s opinion is “laden with hints that, in a future case, he is likely to vote to restrict — or even eliminate — the constitutional right to an abortion.” [Vox / Ian Millhiser] The Supreme Court also handed down another influential decision Monday. In Seila Law v. CFPB, the Court decided 5-4 that the president has the power to unilaterally fire the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at will. [NYT / Adam Liptak] When the agency was established following the 2008 financial crisis, it was designed to operate independently. Monday’s decision attenuates that independence, but allows the agency to continue its works rather than striking it down outright. [Roll Call / Todd Ruger and Jim Saksa] The Court also passed up a major case Monday when it turned down an appeal regarding the federal death penalty. The decision clears the way for executions to resume for the first time since 2003 under new Justice Department policy. [Washington Post / Robert Barnes and Mark Berman]

City Hall Occupation To Cut NYPD’s Budget Stretches Into Third Day

GOTHAMIST

Hundreds of protesters remained in City Hall Park on tarps and under beach umbrellas for the third day in a row, demanding that Mayor Bill de Blasio agree to reallocate at least $1 billion of the NYPD’s $6 billion budget.

“We have thousands of New Yorkers, who, despite corona, are coming out and saying there’s too much money in the police budget,” said Carlene Pinto, a Black Lives Matter Activist and community organizer in Harlem. “We’ve cut hospitals, we’ve cut schools, we’ve cut everything else, why can’t we cut the police as well?”

Smoke from a sage stick snaked through the air as participants shifted along the sidewalk to stay in the shade of the surrounding trees as the hours passed by. Volunteers distributed water, pizza, and donuts at the edge of the street and occupants set up a makeshift first aid station and a lost and found.

“We’ve been to a lot of other protests, and this one has an amazing sense of community,” said Kristin Blaske, 23, of Carroll Gardens. “The media can see from this that we are not just, as they would say, ‘animals.’ We do care for one another. There’s so many supplies, everyone is looking out for each other. No one is telling us that we need to do these things for each other, it’s just what we know we should be doing.”

Protesters also came equipped with women’s products to share, and art supplies to make signs. They sprawled across the square on blankets, tarps, and sheets (tents are not permitted). Dozens of protesters have also been staying overnight.

The NYPD was keeping close watch over the small village that had popped up on Centre Street. There were about a dozen police officers at the site during the afternoon, sprinkled around the perimeter.

The US recorded 45,000 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, the largest single-day increase of the pandemic after the number of infections surged in at least seven states including Florida, Georgia, Utah, Tennessee, Idaho, Nevada and Arizona. 

New Numbers Showing Coronavirus Spread Intrude on a White House in Denial

In the past week, President Donald Trump hosted an indoor campaign rally for thousands of cheering, unmasked supporters even as a deadly virus spread throughout the country. He began easing up on restrictions that had been in place at the White House since Washington instituted a stay-at-home order in response to the coronavirus in March, and he invited the president of Poland to a day of meetings. Then, Thursday, he flew to Wisconsin to brag about an economic recovery that he said was just around the corner.

But by Friday, it was impossible to fully ignore the fact that the pandemic the White House has for weeks insisted was winding down has done just the opposite.

The rising numbers in Texas, Florida and Arizona made that clear, as well as the reality that those are all states where the president and his Republican allies had urged people to return to normal.

In a reflection of a growing sense of anxiety over the new numbers, Vice President Mike Pence and members of the coronavirus task force held a public briefing for the first time in two months. But ever loyal to Trump’s desire for good news, Pence tried to tiptoe around the statistics that Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the task force coordinator, pointed to, showing surging cases and hospitalizations in Florida, Texas, Arizona and other states.

• The shared burden of millions of Americans suspending their lives — with jobs lost and daily life upended — has not been enough to beat back Covid-19.
• As cases surge, it is clear many governors underestimated the virus and rushed to reopen too soon, our correspondents write in an analysis.

From 47 Primaries, 4 Warning Signs About Voting in a Pandemic

State election officials face shortages of money, poll workers, capacity to print ballots and public trust — without much time to fix them.

• Some Mississippi I.C.U.s are full, while Houston is on red alert.
• 
  

More proof Trump’s coronavirus handling is hurting him politically

WASHINGTON POST

Over the past two months, former vice president Joe Biden’s lead over President Trump in the RealClearPolitics average of national polling of the upcoming presidential contest has nearly doubled. It’s a period that has overlapped with a number of major shifts in the country and in the national mood, including the ongoing — and now resurging — coronavirus pandemic and widespread protests focused on racial equality. So it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to assume that perhaps those two things are correlated.

President Trump steps off Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House after his June campaign rally in Tulsa. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

New data from the Pew Research Center bolsters the idea that Trump’s position in the polls is worsening as a function of what’s happening in the country. Specifically, it seems likely that the pandemic is pushing his approval ratings lower, which, in turn, is making his position in the presidential contest more precarious.

There are two changes since April that hint at this change in an obvious way. The most obvious is that Pew has Biden’s lead over Trump improving from two points that month to 10 now. Biden is now supported by 54 percent of the country, according to Pew, compared with Trump’s 44 percent.
At the same time, satisfaction with the direction of the country has collapsed. That month, 31 percent felt satisfied with how things are going in the country compared with 68 percent who said they were dissatisfied, a net minus-37 view of the nation. That gap has grown to minus-75 points, thanks largely to a collapse in satisfaction among Republicans. Only about a fifth of Republicans still express satisfaction about how things are going.