Uh, oh. Donald Trump is in big trouble with Facebook. No one says no to POTUS and lives to tell about it — at least figuratively. The reason is that he has the unattractive combination of being a bully and a fighter. The commander-in-chief proudly claims that he hit his teacher when he was in second grade. Nice.
Twitter recently gently dinged him for putting inappropriate material in his tweets. Trump tried hitting the company back. Rather than cave, as the Republicans have done, Twitter said “See you and raise you one.” This mega-company has a full hand to play, because POTUS appears to be addicted to his tweets.
Tuesday Facebook actually put an informational disclaimer on one of the man who sits in the Oval Office’s posts. This is remarkable, because the company’s owner and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been seen at the White House with Trump recently. Immediately afterward, Zuckerberg changed his guidelines to accommodate the president.
This offending post was placed by the president. In it, POTUS claimed that “mail-in voting” would mean a “corrupt” election. Of course, that is miles from the truth.
Mega-billionaire Zuckerberg apparently intends to go through with its pledge to fight misinformation, even that from world leaders, according to CNN Business. That is a small but seismic change for Facebook, moving itself away from a hands-off policy on political posts.
The president posted on Facebook:
‘Mail-In Voting, unless changed by the courts, will lead to the most CORRUPT ELECTION in our Nation’s History! #RIGGEDELECTION’
‘Get official voting info on how to vote in the 2020 US Election at usa.gov.Get Voting Information‘
The link takes us to simple, clear, and factual information about the issue of mail-in voting:
Facebook basically indicated that it would not check political leaders’ posts. Perhaps, Zuckerberg sees that the Democrats will be taking the presidency and the Senate, meaning the freewheeling days are coming to a close. After all, the country has not fostered companies that are too large, preferring to break them up and/or implement restrictions on them.
In 2016, Facebook sold ad space to Russians who even paid in rubles without any consequences. It was basically a take-the-money-and-run situation.
In the past, the gigantic company’s policy has been against fact-checks, but it also promised to remove posts that lead to violence or mislead voters about their voting process.
Facebook handed itself a huge loophole that would easily accommodate the Titanic had it not sunk to the ocean’s floor. It offered to add labels to world leaders’ posts that would have normally been removed for violating platform rules. The loophole was that these posts could stay put if they were “newsworthy.”
It appears that Zuckerberg decided to follow Twitter’s model.
A group of activists has loudly protested Facebook’s lax attitude and urged the company to take down “hateful content and misinformation.” They pressed for Zuckerberg to include world leaders in that move. The activists and over 1,000 advertisers used boycotting in order to move Facebook.
‘This warning seems pretty useless — it might even seem that Facebook is endorsing what Trump is saying and providing a path for more information.’
