Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) wants to break up Facebook, and in the meantime, she wants Facebook to shut down free speech the speech of those of whom she disapproves—especially political ads posted to Facebook (for a fee charged by Facebook) by Republicans and Conservatives. Zuckerberg’s response?
Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and communications Nick Clegg wrote that the company does not believe its role is to “prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny.”
Warren is, of course, angrified that a mere business won’t submit to her bidding, and so she tried to expose Facebook’s arrogance:
She taunted the company by submitting a false ad of her own claiming that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had endorsed Mr. Trump “to see if it’d be approved.” It was.
Of course it was. It was a political ad, by Warren’s design. It also was not a false ad; it told the truth. The truth wasn’t that Zuckerberg had become a Trump supporter; that was obvious parody. No, the thing that made the ad a true one was Warren’s own statement, early on in her parody, that her claim regarding the new Zuckerberg-Trump palsiness was itself false, its purpose being to show Facebook’s penchant for running false political advertisements solely to take money to promote lies.
(Given Warren’s own penchant for lying for her personal gain, that last is especially parodical.)
It’s too bad that Facebook’s position here is contaminated by its penchant for censoring conservative speech that isn’t part of overt political ads.