Thanks, Democrats! Two more years of Russia! Russia! Russia!
Posted on 11/14/2018 8:07:19 PM PST by yesthatjallen
Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline (D) sharply criticized tech giant Facebook on Twitter on Wednesday evening, arguing that the social media company can't be trusted any longer to regulate itself.
In a series of tweets, the lawmaker ripped into Facebook executives over a New York Times report detailing how the company used a Republican opposition research firm to link public detractors of the company to billionaire Democratic donor George Soros amid criticism of Facebook for its use by Russian operatives to influence Americans during the 2016 election. The report was based mainly on anonymous, insider accounts.
"We’ve known for some time that Facebook chose to turn a blind eye to the spread of hate speech and Russian propaganda on its platform," Cicilline wrote Wednesday night.
"Now we know that once they knew the truth, top Facebook executives did everything they could to hide it from the public by using a playbook of suppressing opposition and propagating conspiracy theories," he added. "It is long past time for us to take action."
Cicilline, who is the ranking member and likely incoming chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law and also sits on the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet, also accused Facebook executives of attempting to "buy Congress's silence" on the issue and prevent lawmakers from taking meaningful action.
"I am confident that, despite Facebook’s best efforts to buy Congress’s silence, the will of the American people will prevail," he wrote.
"Next January, Congress should get to work enacting new laws to hold concentrated economic power to account, address the corrupting influence of corporate money in our democracy, and restore the rights of Americans," he added, referring to the incoming Democratic majority set to take office in January.
Facebook has faced criticism from lawmakers and others for months over its response to reports that Russian operatives sowed divisive and often false information to Americans in swing states about key issues during the 2016 election campaign.
A Facebook spokesperson responded to the Times report Wednesday by saying that the company was doing what it could to root out "bad actors."
"This has been a tough time at Facebook and our entire management team has been focused on tackling the issues we face," a Facebook spokesperson said. "While these are hard problems we are working hard to ensure that people find our products useful and that we protect our community from bad actors."
Mind you, I don't want the government to regulate websites.
However, Democrats do and they're leading the charge. If they succeed, they will get to set the rules.
If we don't get in the game and we keep waiting for 'the invisible hand' to sort things out, Democrats will write the rules for the internet and Conservatives and Republicans are going to be excluded.
Agreed.
And i’ve kept my posts clean for a few weeks now but I can’t take it anymore.
Rep. David Cicilline can go @#$# his mother.
i’m sorry everyone.
Back to being civil.
Congress is expressly prohibited from making laws that “regulate” the press. ...........................Comrades “The Press” is already regulated, and they are mostly loyal party members.
Oh please
Fake book is for women to gossip chat with spy on and give support to eachotger. Nothing more
the most embarrassing video ever, which Zuck put up on FB at the time. doesn’t look like Russian propaganda to help Trump, though! lol.
24 Jun 2016: Youtube 7:49: Mark Zuckerberg Live with President Obama after the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford
Mark Zuckerberg meet ex President of the United States, Barack Obama and a panel of other young entrepreneurs at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit on Stanford’s campus in Palo Alto. While the discussion is scheduled to focus on business, Zuckerberg has recently been celebrating the power of live video to bring “more openness to the political process.” Earlier this week, Facebook Live and its competitor Periscope proved invaluable for bringing a sit-in on the House floor to millions of people.
FIRST COMMENT: Holy crap, this is so uncomfortable to watch Mark. I can imagine him thinking “make eye contact, make eye contact, make eye contact....nod, nod, nod, smile...nope too much, ask a question.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ByyepnhOiI
Facebook is a big nugget useful idiocy.
The Left salivates for control of it.
Facebook will find no allies.
They’ve spent all this time suppressing conservative speech on their platform; they should not expect any supporters from the right.
They will be hung out to dry, as they hung us out to dry. The boot of the government will crush them....and no one will care.
They that sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
But they never say any such thing about the government they worship.
NOTHING can be trusted to regulate itself except for some moral individuals. Our society has now become criminogenic; having set out any number of exemplars of reward for criminal activity. Only fools follow the law now.
Be very careful. Giving the govt control does not usually work out well
Yeah, FB doesn’t censor enough for their tastes.
When I initially read the headlines, I thought that maybe the democrats are right on the issue. However as the power hungry villains that they are, any changes to FB will be twisted to their own wicked ways while turning it even more oppressive to conservative & republicans.
I saw a cartoon pic on Pookie’s Toons which depicted Zuckerberg as Soros 2.0! It’s a very true picture indeed except that the evil son of Soros is married to Chelsea Clinton.
I can just about garr-ron-tee that Zuck and his working lackies voted for the Dems in the last election.
They reap what they sew.
Welcome to Trotsky’s world Mark Zuckerberg!
A purge couldn’t have happened to a more deserving lowlife.
Now don’t get all over me on this.
Or DO get all over me on this. up to you as i respect your opinion
He was the LEAST closed minded as far as giving equal time and hearing out conservative views and has made some statements in the past that made him sound slightly libertarian more than liberal
or he wouldn’t be in this trouble with the russia crap if he was all about dems.
i dont know
FR has had a presence on it with no issues that i know of and to say our comments there are conservative is an understatement :)
he’s not great. but he never was bezos
Facebook is not the press. They are media.
While I agree in principle that the lack of effective monetary flow through an entire society is a bad bad thing long term, democrats have shown repeatedly that their attempts to solve it have reduced the flow of capital, particularly to the lowest socioeconomic classes.
Industries never self regulate, that’s a right wing myth. Industries have shown again and again when when left to self regulate, they do not.. then they get chastised for it.. back off only to do it again and the cycle repeats until government ends up regulating them.
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