Mark Zuckerberg's Ridiculously Wrong, Misleading, And Self-Serving Statements Regarding Twitter Fact-Checking The President

from the oh-shut-the-fuck-up dept

As we continue to deal with the fallout of our thin-skinned President throwing a hissy fit over Twitter daring to provide more context to conspiracy theory nonsense that Trump himself tweeted, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has apparently decided that it’s more important to stomp on Twitter while it’s down, rather than protect the wider internet. In a shameful display of opportunistic nonsense, Zuckerberg went on Fox News and pretended that Facebook was somehow not interested in moderating content the way Twitter did:

“We have a different policy, I think, than Twitter on this,” Zuckerberg told Dana Perino, host of the Fox News show The Daily Briefing, in an interview clip. The full interview is expected to air on Thursday.

“I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online. In general, private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that,” Zuckerberg added.

Perino said that Zuckerberg told her that Facebook refuses to intervene in censoring public posts unless there’s a threat of imminent harm. She added that Facebook is “hands off” when it comes to political speech.

Sure, they have a different policy, because almost all sites have different policies, but if you compared Facebook’s policies on content moderation to Twitter’s you’d find that Facebook does vastly more moderation than Twitter has ever done and Facebook introduced similar “fact checking” efforts years ago. To pretend that Facebook doesn’t do the exact same thing that Twitter is accused of doing here is just ridiculous. And, we all agree that no platform should be “the arbiter of truth” but that’s not the same as saying “do no moderation” (and again, Facebook does a ton of moderation). As for the final claim that Facebook is “hands off” when it comes to political speech, that’s also false. Facebook is hands off on political ads, but not all political speech. And so is Twitter, in that it bars all political ads in the first place.

This is disappointing, but all too common from Facebook, the company that stabbed the open internet in the back by supporting FOSTA a few years ago. The company has clearly made the decision that it can sell out the open internet in favor of more political clout.

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Companies: facebook, twitter

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Comments on “Mark Zuckerberg's Ridiculously Wrong, Misleading, And Self-Serving Statements Regarding Twitter Fact-Checking The President”

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42 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Weird, you mean the guy who has met with Trump and whose supposedly agnostic approach to correcting blatant misinformation on his platform, even when it came from illegal campaign interference by known foreign agents, doesn’t think he should do anything about circumstances that favor Trump and anyone else who thinks that the truth doesn’t matter?

Koby (profile) says:

Re: Re: Not Moderation

And it’s still legal so what’s your point?

Just because something is (currently) legal does not make it moral. Creating an open free speech platform, and then adding a bias to punish those with whom you disagree is a morally ugly position to take. And that is why the calls for section 230 reform are growing louder. Every time someone says "but it’s legal!", more people realize "that’s true, so we need to make a change".

This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Not Moderation

"Just because something is (currently) legal does not make it moral."

Hang on a sec ….
1) Donald’s tweet claimed things that are not true which makes it immoral but it remains legal.
2) Twitter added a refernce to said tweet(s), this is both moral and legal.

Which one do you think was not moral?

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Not Moderation

the calls for section 230 reform are growing louder

Those calling for section 230 "reform" are people who either 1) don’t understand it, 2) have an underlying agenda that section 230 obstructs, or 3) think that "free speech" means others must be forced to listen to them.

For all the argument about what 230 "was meant to do," consider that its writers are both still alive, and one of them is still in office. Why not just ask them if 230 is being used in the manner they intended?

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

Creating an open free speech platform, and then adding a bias to punish those with whom you disagree is a morally ugly position to take.

Numerous Mastodon instances have open sign-ups; anyone can make an account, just like on Twitter. Most instances also have rules against users posting certain kinds of legally protected (but morally repugnant) speech. Should the law force the owners of those instances to…

  1. shut down those open sign-ups and prevent all federation with Mastodon instances that have open sign-ups,
  2. allow all speech that the rules banned and federate with all Mastodon-based instances (including Gab instances) regardless of the wishes of those instance owners, or
  3. shut down all of the instances that refuse to comply with either (or both) of the previous options?

Remember: According to your logic, any option that allows the instances in question to both remain open to the public and “censor” legally protected speech (including the hiding of such speech from other instances that would otherwise be seen via federation) according to the whims of the instance owners is, as you put it, “morally ugly”.

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Mike Masnick (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Not Moderation

Just because something is (currently) legal does not make it moral.

Please explain how providing context is immoral?

Creating an open free speech platform, and then adding a bias to punish those with whom you disagree is a morally ugly position to take.

What "bias"? The first use of that fact checking I saw was to correct people saying incorrect things about Mike Pence.

And WHEN and in WHAT WORLD is adding more context immoral? In what insane brain space do you live in that adding more speech is somehow an affront to free speech.

And that is why the calls for section 230 reform are growing louder.

Only from idiotic dipshits.

Every time someone says "but it’s legal!", more people realize "that’s true, so we need to make a change".

Which is barred by the 1st Amendment. Planning on changing that any time soon?

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Scary Devil Monastery (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Not Moderation

"Every time someone says "but it’s legal!", more people realize "that’s true, so we need to make a change"."

By nationalizing private property, effectively saying that if you open your home to someone that person will be entitled to squat forever in your living room?

Fact of the matter there’s very little you can do to 230 without effectively abolishing the right of any american to start an online service and keep owning it.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Not Moderation

It was mitigating a blatant lie with a link to factual information.

Now, they can’t spend time correcting all you flat-earthers, but interfering in elections, i believe, was a thing of some importance recently that everyone wanted handled.

Call it whatever you want, your categorization is immaterial and irrelevant.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Not Moderation

you are totally right. How dare Twitter host their own speech, on their own website, when it disagrees with someone elses’ speech on the same page. That’s not how free speech works, disagreeing with other is totally not allow. /s

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Not Moderation

This is the pattern you see online a lot. People who bitch about being downvoted (but not having their comments deleted or their accounts banned unless they explicitly break a TOS rule) as if it’s censorship, when they don’t recognize that downvoting is other people using their own speech.

These people are disingenuous and are attempting to use free speech ideology as a weapon against people who do support actual free speech.

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Anonymous Coward says:

If we are ever to have truly "free" speech on the internet, then the platforms absolutely have to allow anything to be posted, even if it isn’t true. Historically, newspapers, radios & TV have published material that was wrong and may have even caused people harm. Those same places have also restricted ads or refused to run articles because their editor didn’t like them and have been chastised ever since. (Think the southern papers who didn’t mention the civil rights bill in their newspapers). Free speech should always be just that – free without any restrictions. Otherwise we don’t have free speech.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Even though Zuckerberg is lying that Facebook doesn’t do thoughtpolicing, his statement itself is what most Americans believe should be the case across Big Tech.

However, I don’t think anyone is saying Zuckerberg should be able to go after Techdirt for the defamation you wrote on Techdirt … just you personally.

Bloof (profile) says:

As Fox news have proven, there’s more money in bulls**t than there is in truth and as long as that’s the case, Zuckerberg and facebook will continue to support it while, pretending to be neutral. ‘We can’t be held responsible for any of the damage we’ve caused as we accept money from honest people as well as liars, it’s not our fault liars have more of it.’

Anonymous Coward says:

Facebook is a social media website with many private groups and community’s and corporate accounts . Twitter is more like a microblogging online service. The point of of sections 230 is to allow websites to moderate content as they wish, to block users or ban certain types of content
Of course Facebook moderates it’s users posts and bans
extreme political content
Twitter does not have live streaming or certain services like Facebook Rooms user to user video conferencing. Section 230 allows websites to set their own standards and policy’s as to what content
they allow and how they moderate their users
I think trump is just acting out and attacking China
and tech company’s maybe to distract his followers
from the fact that his policy’s re the covid 19
have been a disaster

Anonymous Coward says:

I would like to know how you can Fact Check Trump on an Opinion of what can happen in the Future?

All the while the NAACP themselves are talking about massive voting fraud!!! The Judge in fact was doing voter fraud also. There’s been a number of voting fraud cases being reported. Fact-checking an Opinion of something in the future by CNN Reporters who are Anti-Trump. They sure aren’t FACTS. This site so so bias.

Anonymous Coward says:

This is just one more asshole and website getting in some sucker punches
on Trump…you need to remember what this man has been through and still going through single handedly, any other man would have been crushed under the weight of all the pressure he has carried on his shoulders…
I say to you …you couldn’t stand on your tip toes and reach his heels…
Me and at least 73 Million agree, and you better believe their were a hell of lot more of us to vote for Trump but all the dumb dems and niggers and socialist, all of them , they that hate America did lie and cheat to steal the election…oh what you don’t think they would do such a thing…let’s see…the kind of people we’re talking about that represents the Democratic party ,as the whole world has seen..have burned down and looted private properties , have violently attacked innocent people and brutalized the police..in other words, behaving like the animals they really are…come on..show us your true colors..

Anonymous Coward says:

Fuck Zuckerman… He’s against Trump, guess he wants to go with the popular easy flow and jump on the band wagon and kick a guy when he’s down, only Trump ain’t down and it’s not over …but Zuckerman is a Jew , how in the world can he stand with Obama&democrats, when Trump is the one president that has done the most for the Jewish people…Obama turned his back on them , threw them under the bus, but that’s only because he’s a Muslim and a nigger who hates America, and all white people and Jews, the church he was faithful to, preached …that God should not bless America but God should damn America, you know I’m not making this up, I’m just stating the facts, you can look it up for yourself. Oh and don’t even try to pull out your race card , because it’s also a fact that blacks, Mexicans ,whatever, hate white people all they do is come against Whites , they want to kill and destroy Whites, take everything they have worked hard for, with an attitude of entitlement, they are way more prejudice than whites . Here’s a little fact of History you don’t hear to often but you can look it up…it wasn’t the white people who sold the black’s to the white slave ships,…hmmm really !,well then, it would have to have been other black tribes, yes it was, and they did so for profit/money.
So blacks were sold out by their own people, altho, they were from different
enemy tribes, but that wounded soul and spirit of such a betrayal is buried deep in the very bones of all black people, it is present and passed down through the generations and will continue to do so , because blacks will not seek the truth of their own History , some are aware of this but chose to ignore it, because it’s so much easier to just blame the white man for everything, right, the only problem you have with that is, you can not heal until something is truly acknowledged and dealt with…it occurs to me that this is one reason there is so much black on black crime and killings. Think about it, look it up for yourself.

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