Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to regulate political speech on the social media platform he founded makes him not only Trumpian, but also authoritarian, according to Hillary Clinton.
Because if there is one thing that authoritarians are known for, it’s their unwillingness to police speech.
Clinton’s not-very-insightful commentary comes via the Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance, who likewise believes Zuckerberg is failing the republic by refusing to crack down on Facebook’s millions of users.
The failed presidential nominee is “specifically alarmed by what she views as Mark Zuckerberg’s unwillingness to battle the spread of disinformation and propaganda on his own platform,” LaFrance writes. “There was the time, last spring, when a slowed-down video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi caught fire online. The distorted speed, which made Pelosi appear as though she was slurring her words, seemed designed to make her appear cognitively impaired.”
Clinton claims she contacted Facebook to ask why it had not removed the Pelosi video, even though YouTube already had.
“I said, ‘Why are you guys keeping this up? This is blatantly false. Your competitors have taken it down,’” the former secretary of state claims. “And their response was, ‘We think our users can make up their own minds.’”
For both Clinton and LaFrance, this was the absolute wrong answer.
The Atlantic editor writes:
I wrote at the time that Zuckerberg’s interpretation was unsatisfying for one thing, and for another.
She then writes that she asked Clinton whether “she too sees a Trumpian quality in Zuckerberg’s reasoning.”
Clinton answered in the affirmative, saying “it’s Trumpian” and “it’s authoritarian.”
The failed 2016 Democratic nominee did not leave it at just that. She said that talking to Facebook is “like you’re negotiating with a foreign power sometimes.” Clinton also claimed that she has had conversations “at the highest levels” within the organization.
“[Zuckerberg] is immensely powerful,” Clinton told LaFrance. “This is a global company that has huge influence in ways that we’re only beginning to understand.”
What a funny thing to say. Politicos, especially Democrats, seemed to understand Facebook’s influence well enough back when co-founder Chris Hughes was brought on as a key strategist for the Obama 2008 campaign, spearheading its “highly effective Web blitzkrieg.” Democrats seemed to understand Facebook’s influence well enough back when the Obama 2012 reelection effort harnessed the social media site’s user data to give the incumbent president another four years in the White House.
But who remembers that?
Also, pause for a moment to reflect on the fact that Clinton is upset that a lone tech oligarch who she alleges wields an enormous, seemingly unprecedented amount of power and influence is not doing more to regulate speech. Clinton is disturbed that a man who she claims has too much power does not exercise it more over the public.
Clinton continued, saying she believes Facebook is “not just going to reelect Trump, but intend[s] to reelect Trump.”
Zuckerberg, she added, has been “somehow persuaded … that it’s to his and Facebook’s advantage not to cross Trump. That’s what I believe. And it just gives me a pit in my stomach.”
“They have, in my view, contorted themselves into making arguments about freedom of speech and censorship,” Clinton added, “which they are hanging on to because it’s in their commercial interests.”
And to think it was just a few years ago that Democrats and their allies in the news media bragged that Facebook and its massive trove of user data helped Obama secure the 2012 election. Back then, Facebook’s power was as a good thing.
What a difference one lost election makes.
