(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Zuck Gives into Trump threat to Jail Him for Life and Tries to Ensure No Democrat Can Be Elected [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-08
The headline is a touch hyperbolic since I suspect that Zuckerberg is Musk-lite. he approves of Republican policies and so wants to do what he can to advance them. However, it is absolutely true that Trump threatened to jail Zuckerberg for life over how Meta handled misinformation during the election (despite basically giving the right almost everything they wanted). And it is absolutely true that his proposed head of the FBI is a conspiracy theorist with an enemies list. So, while Zuck probably wanted to help Republicans anyway, the fact that he at least gave the appearance of giving into threats should not be minimized.
Meta is getting rid of fact checkers, accusing them of bias, and replacing them with community notes, similar to those on Twitter. Did they provide any evidence that fact checkers are biased in any way, aside from complaints from the right wing that their disinformation is getting fact checked? Reader, they did not. Did they provide any evidence that community notes are more accurate or better at handling disinformation? Reader, they did not. They did say they were moving the fact checking team out of California and into Texas, to ensure that the fact checking is bias free.
That gives the game away, of course. They intend to suck up entirely to the right wing, who hate California but would be fine with any bias displayed by Texans.
This is part of a long-standing pattern among social media companies. Musk has unleashed the far-right wing on twitter. As noted, Facebook has favored the right wing for at least though the Biden Administration. TikTok’s algorithm already favors far right content and is likely to continue to do so. We already know that democrats have an information environment problem — this is only going to make that worse.
Trump did best in areas that are considered a news desert — a place that does not have local news. We also know that places like the Washington Post and the Los Angelos Times are run by people who, at a minimum, are more interested protecting their businesses from Trump rather than protecting democracy from Trump. Democrats start at a huge disadvantage in the information environment and these kinds of moves will only make it worse.
Brian Buetler points out that economic sentiment is already improving, even though literally no policy or underlying numbers have changed. Only the propaganda has. The Democrats work in an environment where a significant portion of people never see good information about Democrats. Having the social media algorithms favor right wing sources and doing little to control out and out lies is going to make that situation worse. No matter how good the Democrats are about trying to get their message out (and I will grant you they are quite bad), if the major media platforms are hostile to them, their message is simply not going to reach a significant portion of people. And when it does, it will tend to be filtered through right wing messengers.
Competing in that environment is extremely difficult, and the media giants — places like Amazon that just paid what could be construed as a 40 million dollar bribe via a documentary about Melani Trump — are just going to make it harder. It is conceivable that unless the Democrats build an alternative media environment, they will literally only win in the face of overwhelming and clear disaster.
A combination of Trump’s threats and basic desire by the media owners to advance their own wealth and power appear to be creating an environment where those companies are openly supportive of far-right wing goals and action, or at least tolerant of them, and opposed to and/or suppressing media from the center-left. That kind of environment is clearly meant to suppress Democrats without resorting to heavy handed government control, similar to how Hungary and India operate today. It is, in and of itself, a major threat to a healthy democracy, and Democrats and supporters of liberal democracy should react accordingly.
Democrats need to rebuild their information infrastructure, and they need to change the incentives for these firms. They need to support changes that would limit behavioral advertising, a solid good in and of itself, and reinvigorate product liability for these companies. It is not a panacea, but changing how they make money could have an impact on how these companies treat propaganda and lies on their networks. What they cannot do is expect to reach people in this information environment without significant changes in that environment.
Big Tech and mainstream media have chosen a side — and believers in little d democracy are going to have to believe them if they hope to deal with the coming authoritarianism effectively.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/8/2295643/-Zuck-Gives-into-Trump-threat-to-Jail-Him-for-Life-and-Tries-to-Ensure-No-Democrat-Can-Be-Elected?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
