I see where a number of Facebook employees signed a letter addressed to their CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his top brass, protesting a FB decision to allow paid political ads to publish lies and misinformation, leading up to the 2020 elections, without being fact-checked. Apparently, Facebook has a whole corporate division tasked with fact-checking commercial advertising… and even individual posts by users. (Shall we call them “Friends”?)
Certain Facebook employees seem to think that political ads ought to receive the same treatment. Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t so sure.
The main problem, as I see it, is that it’s the core job of politicians — their essential task — to tell us lies. If you fact-checked a speech by your typical elected representative, for example, you’d have to redact 90 percent of the speech. You’d be left with something like this:
In the two years before my election, violent crime [fact-checked]. Murders were [fact-checked] nationwide. [Fact-checked]. But with your help [fact-checked]. [Fact-checked]. Under this administration, we are [fact-checked]. You deserve [fact-checked]. [Fact-checked] for you and your family…
If Facebook started fact-checking political ads, we’d simply never see any. Just blank boxes. What would happen to Facebook’s profits? We dare not think.
Apparently, a political activist named Adriel Hampton who runs his own marketing firm in San Francisco, has registered at his local post office on Monday morning as a candidate for governor of California. Hampton told CNN Business that he will use his new status as a candidate to run false ads on Facebook (FB) about President Trump, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and other Facebook executives. He said he also plans to run false ads on Facebook about executives of Twitter, which also has a policy of not fact-checking ads run by candidates.
But this brings us around to the question: what about everything else that gets posted to social media?
“I had a great birthday with the wife and kids…”
“Make great videos in minutes with our new app…”
“Having lotsa fun in Houston…”
“We’re strengthening the communities we serve…”
“Gorgeous mountain wedding, everyone felt the love…”
“This year, try ZipRecruiter for free…”
My dad used to say, you can tell when a politician is lying: whenever his mouth is moving. But maybe that’s true for everyone.
And maybe we actually like it that way?
I remember a rough patch in my marriage to my ex-wife Darlene, when I suspected she was having an affair with a guy at her office, so I came right out and asked her. “By the way, Darlene, are you having an affair with that guy at your office?” You know, sort of off-hand and casual, like it didn’t really matter if she was or wasn’t.
When you’re accusing your wife of having an affair, it can cause bad feelings. So you have to be careful.
Darlene assured me that nothing was going on. And that made me happy.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.