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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOcasio-Cortez stumps Zuckerberg with questions on far right and Cambridge Analytica
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/23/mark-zuckerberg-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-facebook-cambridge-analyticaOcasio-Cortez stumps Zuckerberg with questions on far right and Cambridge Analytica
Wed 23 Oct 2019 23.15 BST Last modified on Thu 24 Oct 2019 09.17 BST
Mark Zuckerberg faced a grueling examination from the Democratic lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday, with questions over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Facebooks reluctance to police political advertising.
(snip)
In order for us to make decisions about Libra, I think we need to kind of dig into your past behavior and Facebooks past behavior with respect to our democracy, the New York congresswoman said, before asking Zuckerberg when he had first learned of Cambridge Analyticas operations.
(snip)
Internal Facebook correspondence uncovered in 2019 as part of a lawsuit revealed executives knew of potentially improper data collection by Cambridge Analytica as early as September 2015. The Guardian first reported on the existence of the firm in December 2015.
Zuckerberg claimed on Wednesday that he learned of Cambridge Analytica around the time [the news] became public around March of 2018. Ocasio-Cortez asked if anybody on Zuckerbergs leadership team knew about the firm before the report published by the Guardian on 11 December 2015.
I believe some folks were tracking it internally, Zuckerberg said. I do think I was aware of Cambridge Analytica as an entity earlier, but I dont know if I was tracking how they were using Facebook specifically.
Ocasio-Cortez went on to ask the executive about Facebooks policy on exempting political advertising from factchecking, asking if she could pay to advertise an incorrect election date to people in a primarily black zip code, for example.
Zuckerberg said Facebook does support removing content in cases of violence or of census or voter suppression. He did not answer whether the company would take down outright lies if they were in political advertisements.
This month, the company declined to take down a Trump campaign ad that included a misleading portrayal of the former vice-president Joe Bidens work in Ukraine.
Do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of factchecking on political advertisements? Ocasio-Cortez asked.
She also asked Zuckerberg about his dinner parties with far-right figures and if at those meetings he addressed the popular rightwing theory that Facebook cracks down on conservative speech, a question Zuckerberg also dodged.
(snip)
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Ocasio-Cortez stumps Zuckerberg with questions on far right and Cambridge Analytica (Original Post)
nitpicker
Oct 2019
OP
Response to nitpicker (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
Mc Mike
(9,115 posts)2. He's a swine.
Rep. O C and Rep. Porter are great.
blm
(113,082 posts)3. She is doing great work.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)4. Yes. FB's use against democracy here and abroad was repeatedly
hit by many of our Democrats. And Ocasio-Cortez's fast barrage did seem to shake the practiced rhetoric he's been refining for some time.
Rep. Maxine Waters opening statement is damning:
Facebook enabled the Russian government to interfere with our election in 2016 with ads designed to pit Americans against each other, suppress the vote and boost Trump. ... Three years later these activities are still continuing on Facebook. We learned just this week that Russia and Iran are using the same tactics to meddle in our next election.
On political speech, last week you announced that Facebook would not be doing fact-checking on political ads, giving anyone Facebook labels a politician a platform to lie, mislead and misinform the American people, which will also allow Facebook to sell more ads. The impact of this will be a massive voter suppression effort that will move at the speed of a click. Your claim to promote freedom of speech does not ring true.
Mr. Zuckerberg, each month, 2.7 billion people use your products. Thats over a third of the worlds population. Thats huge. Thats so big that its clear to me and to anyone who hears this list, that you believe that you are above the law, and it appears that you are aggressively increasing the size of your company, and are willing to step on or over anyone-- including your competitors, women, people of color, your own users, and even our democracy-- to get what you want. With all of these problems I have outlined, and given the companys size and reach, it should be clear why we have serious concerns about your plans to establish a global digital currency that would challenge the U.S. dollar.
In fact, you have opened up a serious discussion about whether Facebook should be broken up.
https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=404587
On political speech, last week you announced that Facebook would not be doing fact-checking on political ads, giving anyone Facebook labels a politician a platform to lie, mislead and misinform the American people, which will also allow Facebook to sell more ads. The impact of this will be a massive voter suppression effort that will move at the speed of a click. Your claim to promote freedom of speech does not ring true.
Mr. Zuckerberg, each month, 2.7 billion people use your products. Thats over a third of the worlds population. Thats huge. Thats so big that its clear to me and to anyone who hears this list, that you believe that you are above the law, and it appears that you are aggressively increasing the size of your company, and are willing to step on or over anyone-- including your competitors, women, people of color, your own users, and even our democracy-- to get what you want. With all of these problems I have outlined, and given the companys size and reach, it should be clear why we have serious concerns about your plans to establish a global digital currency that would challenge the U.S. dollar.
In fact, you have opened up a serious discussion about whether Facebook should be broken up.
https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=404587
As Maxine pointed out, this must be fixed, and Zuckerberg will be doing his best to keep power in Republican hands. Like the Republicans and Russia, Democrats and our democracy are an existential problem.
Rhiannon12866
(205,839 posts)5. Kudos to Maxine Waters, yet again!
Looks like she and AOC make a great team!