MSNBC Host Katy Tur challenged Facebook VP of Global Affairs & Comms Nick Clegg about pulling down Trump’s messages that misinform.
Once again Katy Tur did not disappoint
Katy Tur did what she does best, challenge those in power without fear. She did so when she challenged Michael Bennet on Medicare for All. Today she did it with Nick Clegg, Facebook’s VP of Global Affairs & Comms.
Katy Tur went directly to Trump’s messages lying about the election where Facebook simply placed a message softly refuting Trump’s lie. She asked the VP why not take it down given that his platform is used to enhance & spread Trump’s lies.
Clegg tried to make it into a free speech issue or an unresolved issue, Katy would not let him. She pointed out that it is clear that Trump followers do not believe in fact-checkers and as such fact-checking messages are pointless.
Near the end in a very British style, Clegg was condescending to Katy Tur’s viewers. She did not let him get away with it. She was just as sly with her response as she validated her viewers.
Facebook is a known haven for skinheads, neonazis, KKK, antivaxxers, tinfoil hat crowds and pretty much every flakey fringe group on the face of the planet.
Should Facebook prohibit bullshit, they’d lose many “less productive” users, due to a loss of the echo chambers.
Alas, there is indeed a very real risk that more and more fringe followers become radicalized and literally, the nation goes up on flames, the Facebook executive staff cannot escape, the primary data centers burn and Facebook joins the dinosaurs and our nation in extinction. That’s not hyperbole, it’s been reflected – repeatedly in intelligence analyses. I strongly suggest that Facebook is not a government, it is a private corporations and regulation of corporate speech has a very long case law basis.
Because, Facebook and every other antisocial media corporation in this nation can enforce rules of behavior, just as you and I can prohibit a house guest from taking a shit on our coffee table, as freedom of expression is by nature restricted within the property boundaries of the property owner/tenant. When private organizations and individuals fail in suppressing behavior and speech that can promote unrest and a breach of the peace, law can and has been written, enforced and supported by case law. After all, if IBM HQ decided to have a machine gun party in their downtown campus, discharging of a firearm and noise ordinances would be enforced.
Just as, if the aforementioned guest left that prohibited steamer on my coffee table, I can order them off of the property, in many states at force of arms or have law enforcement remove them and the coffee table that’s now around their neck.
Who’d want that coffee table after, anyway?