arr they still blurring out the Presidential Seal when Trump is speaking?
Posted on 11/15/2018 10:06:57 PM PST by yesthatjallen
Facebook is being hit with fresh criticism from Capitol Hill as lawmakers reacted harshly Thursday to a New York Times investigation that detailed the company’s efforts to wield influence in Washington after becoming aware of Russia-linked activity on its platform during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The explosive article laid out how Facebook’s leadership was reluctant to confront the Russian efforts on its platform and was unprepared for the subsequent firestorm and fallout, which involved the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Specifically, the Times reported that the tech giant used a Republican opposition research firm called Definers Public Affairs to accuse liberal financier George Soros of funding some of the groups that were speaking out against Facebook as it faced public scrutiny over its handling of both the Russian disinformation campaigns and the Cambridge Analytica debacle.
On Thursday, a group of Senate Democrats — Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Chris Coons (Del.) and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) — requested that the Justice Department "expand any investigation into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica to include whether Facebook — or any other entity affiliated with or hired by Facebook — retaliated against critics or public officials seeking to regulate the platform, or hid vital information from the public."
The Times story is likely to fuel some Democratic lawmakers' calls to regulate the platform and others, as many in the party have become furious over the string of data privacy breaches and what they see as a lack of accountability in the industry.
“It’s alarming, it’s appalling,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told The Hill. “It shows that they were not behaving like a neutral platform. It shows that they were engaged in information operations. That they have engaged in a strategy to avoid any oversight or regulations. This is what you get when an American corporation gets so big and is exempted from any meaningful oversight.”
The social network on Thursday moved into damage control mode, first by issuing a statement saying the New York Times story contained a “number of inaccuracies.” Later, CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to reporters on a conference call.
“I've said many times before that we were too slow to spot Russian interference, too slow to understand it and too slow to get on top of it,” Zuckerberg said. “And we certainly stumbled along the way. But to suggest that we weren't interested in knowing the truth or that we wanted to hide what we knew or that we tried to prevent investigations is simply untrue.”
Facebook also defended the work by Definers, saying it was “reprehensible and untrue” to suggest that linking Soros to Facebook’s critics was anti-Semitic.
The company terminated its contract with the firm on Thursday following the story’s publication, and on the call with reporters, Zuckerberg emphasized that he and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg were not aware of Definers’ work on their company’s behalf.
“This type of firm might be normal in Washington, but it's not the kind of thing I want Facebook to be associated with which is why we're no longer going to be working with them,” Zuckerberg said.
Color of Change, one of the groups that Definers reportedly targeted on behalf of Facebook, condemned what it said was anti-Semitism when Definers emphasized the Soros connection to groups speaking out against Facebook.
“Facebook's response to our campaign, which challenged them to improve their platform and create safe conditions for Black people and other marginalized groups, was to fan the flames of anti-Semitism,” Rashad Robinson, the group’s president, said in a statement Thursday. “By suggesting to reporters that Color Of Change is acting as the puppet of Mr. Soros merely because he is one of our many funders, they have given oxygen to the worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the white nationalist Trump base.”
The Times story also implicated lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) intervened on Facebook’s behalf as the company was facing a firestorm on the Hill over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Russian internet campaigns to sow discord among the U.S. electorate, according to the Times.
Schumer reportedly told Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has been leading the probe into Russian interference, to back off his criticism of Facebook, where Schumer's daughter works. Warner has been an outspoken critic of Facebook and other internet platforms since 2016 and has proposed a number of ways to crack down on them.
On Thursday, he declined to discuss whether Schumer asked him to tone down his remarks about the company.
“I'm not going to talk about any private conversations I had with the Leader,” Warner told reporters. “I can just say this ... he was very aware of the fact that our committee has been relentless and still have a lot of questions that need to be answered.”
A Senate source familiar with the meeting between the two senators told The Hill that Schumer advised Warner to focus his efforts on election interference out of concern that Facebook would bow to pressure from the right to forgo purging the network of fake Russian accounts and bots.
This entire article appears to mix fiction liberally with any factual content that may be present.
First, those “ads” you linked do not look like ads at all. They are the same types of memes that pop up by the thousands every day. I noticed that every one of them seemed to be posted by a different source, which usually means that they arose in basements, created by millenials who were being clever.
Second, in order to believe that the Russians were acting to promote Trump’s election, one has to believe that the Russians had a motive for doing so. But it is impossible to discern any possible motive. On the other hand, it is not at all difficult to figure out motives for Russia to have wanted Hillary to be elected. In her greed and lust for power, she colluded with Russia throughout the election. The “Trump dossier” and the Uranium One deal are two well-known examples (at least among informed people) of Russia/Hillary collusion.
Third, there is an underlying goal here, and that is to condition useful idiots to automatically dismiss any idea that conflicts with their conditioning. They are conditioned to believe that it is natural to believe radical leftist ideology and that anyone who rejects it is programmed against it (by ads!). They have already been completely programmed to reject any type of rational and evidence-based ideas as racist. Ironically, they are utterly incapable of perceiving just how thoroughly they have been indoctrinated.
Anyway, time to get off the soapbox.
these writers for The Hill are merely reinforcing NYT’s attempts to keep the meme going that FB helped Trump. what a complete joke:
Updated 6 Sept: CNBC: Trump accuses social media companies of interfering in 2016 and 2018 elections
•Trump tells The Daily Caller he thinks big tech firms “already have” intervened in the November midterm elections.
•He claims they intervened in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
•The president warns tech firms not to continue with alleged bias against conservatives.
by Ryan Browne
Trump told online conservative publication The Daily Caller he thinks big tech firms “already have” intervened in the midterms, and said Facebook and Google intervened in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“I mean the true interference in the last election was that — if you look at all, virtually all of those companies are super liberal companies in favor of Hillary Clinton,” Trump said, according to the outlet.
“Maybe I did a better job because I’m good with the Twitter and I’m good at social media, but the truth is they were all on Hillary Clinton’s side, and if you look at what was going on with Facebook and with Google and all of it, they were very much on her side.”
The president also warned tech firms not to continue with alleged bias against conservatives...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/trump-social-media-companies-interfered-in-2016-and-2018-elections.html
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
Obama Campaign Staffer Says Facebook Allowed Them to Harvest Masses of Data.. they had been allowed to use the platform in ways that would have otherwise been prohibited, because Facebook was “on our side,” according to Obama’s former director for media analytics, Carol Davidsen.
I didn’t need a Russian commercial to influence me to vote against shillary.
The left wants to nationalize Google and Facebook. If you understand that, every article and statement from the left makes total sense.
To paraphrase a John McDermott song...
Life is an ocean and critically thinking a boat.
In troubled waters, it keeps us afloat.
Where is one of those “Russian Ads” ?
How is a Russian anti Trump ad different from a Hillary campaign anti Trump ad?
LOL, I thought it was Blue on Blue in military parlance, but Red on Red (as in Communist Red on Red) fits too!
DING DING DING!
“I have always been suspicious of Facebook.”
My sister is on FB, and so are my cousins.
When my cousin visited my mom last weekend she took some photos woth Mom and put them on FB.
My sister looks a little like Mom.
Sis got a notice from FB that Cuz had posted a pic of her on the site. Obviously, they use some facial recognition software.
How does FB know? Sis’ pic is not in her profile.
(And my cat, Maris Crane, says “Good morning.”)
arr they still blurring out the Presidential Seal when Trump is speaking?
Exactly. Amazingly enough there are people here who want the same thing. They believe that having leftist bureaucrats "regulate" the big social media companies will keep them from discriminating against conservatives. The opposite is true. And what the regulations will do is cement the monopoly of big social media companies.
Chris Plante always says what the left doesn't want to ban they want to make mandatory. Also says the left says you can do whatever you want as long as it is mandatory. The left would like nothing more than mandatory government-run social media.
My Dear Madam; And a jolly Good Morning to your cat with my name.
Your sis’s experience with FB, just makes me more suspicious. It’s as though Zuckerberg came to the door, pushed his way in, all the time smiling, and searched around your house and mind, and left with a Sale sign under his arm.
And don’t get me started with those processes they use to further assault you.
I hope she deletes.
Far worse than Facebook is Alphabet’s Google and YouTube - though Twitter and Amazon are ripe for some hefty federal regulation and/or antitrust actions too. It’s time big Tech was reined in.
I’m so hateful toward FB that when the cameras come out at family reunions, etc., I hide. If they want to post their faces on FB, fine. My face had better not ... EVER ... show up on one of their FB pages. It’s personal. People need to ask permission before photographing anyone any more.
it certainly is an intrusion.
And that’s the best thing one can say about it.
So pretty much Facebook colluded with the Russians to influence an election.
So, which group is more dangerous when inteferring with an election.......Russia or Code Pink or the NAACP?
Like the old Soviet Union, Facebook is discovering joining the party (or establishment) only provides temporary protection from wrath of the system. The other firms and all individuals ignore this warning at their peril.
This is much larger than Facebook. The system must be discredited and destroyed.
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