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Facebook Employees Ask Mark Zuckerberg If They Should Try To Stop a Donald Trump Presidency (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Mark Zuckerberg didn't shy from condemning several of Trump's views at his company's developer conference earlier this week. Things are getting tenser now. Gizmodo's Michael Nunez is reporting about a political discussion inside Facebook wherein employees appear to be asking Zuckerberg whether the company should try to "help prevent President Trump in 2017." Every week, Facebook employees vote in an internal poll on what they want to ask Zuckerberg in an upcoming Q&A session. A question from the March 4 poll was: "What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?"An excerpt from the report which talks about Facebook's position :But what's exceedingly important about this question being raised -- and Zuckerberg's answer, if there is one -- is how Facebook now treats the powerful place it holds in the world. It's unprecedented. More than 1.04 billion people use Facebook. It's where we get our news, share our political views, and interact with politicians. It's also where those politicians are spending a greater share of their budgets. And Facebook has no legal responsibility to give an unfiltered view of what's happening on their network.
Yes, they do have a legal responsibility. It's one thing to say they have no responsibility for what people post, although they do in their terms in regards to hate speech and the like.
But the officers and Directors of Facebook have a legal responsibility to protect and maximize the value of their shareholders. If Facebook were to take an active stance in filtering content to attempt to alter the political landscape, they risk alienating a rather large userbase those political ideas. The fact is that enough users support Trump that if Facebook attempted to skew the results, they risk alienating that userbase and losing them, which in turn affects Facebook's value and revenue that their officers and Directors are legally required to protect.
And even if it did work, and Trump was defeated and Clinton or Sanders got elected, both the Republicans and the Democrats would unify and pass a law stopping that from ever happening again. Neither party wants a bunch of millenial nitwits having that kind of political clout; that kind of manipulation would be regulated into oblivion with full bi-partisan support.
Attempting to sway a political discussion risks a blowback that could result in a shareholder lawsuit and throwing out the Board and Officers, and is a really stupid idea for a company. Despite the ideology of Facebook employees which most likely skew one particular direction, this would be a very bad idea for Facebook. Their prupose is to provide a social media service to users and in turn sell those users' viewing minutes to advertisers, not to attempt to sway political opinion.
Facebook is not a forum, it's an ad delivery system.
So I rarely post anything and mostly browse through photos, events, and articles posted by my friends...because I only care about myself?
It's a tool. It is a way to connect with others. You can use it in a shitty way, or you can use it in a positive way. The only downside I see is that it gives the shitty people a lot more reach. Those people were shitty and obnoxious before they had facebook accounts...it was just that you only saw it if you were in the same room as them. Now you can see their dumb thoughts in comment sections across the globe!
Bottles.
Well both of those actually are perfect examples of racism. But beyond that:
*His company has been sued by the Justice department on multiple ocassions for not renting to minorities, the first time in 1973
*His comments calling illegal immigrants rapists. Even if you want them out of here, the number of them that are violent criminals is a vanishingly small percent. "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. They're not sending you, they're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems with us. Theyâ(TM)re bringing drugs. Theyâ(TM)re bringing crime. Theyâ(TM)re rapists."
*His constant references to "the blacks", "the muslims", "the hispanics".
And yes, the anti-muslim hate is racist. Its discriminatory to a large diverse group of people- that's what racism is. Not to mention that when Americans think of muslims they do associate it with an ethnic group- Arabs.
*He's a birther, which is just a dog whistle for not wanting a black man in the white house.
*He refused to denounce the KKK. I can't blame a man for who decides to endorse him, but when directly asked he refused to denounce them.
*Other quotes by Trump:
"âoeThe only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yamakas every day.â
âoeLaziness is a trait in the blacks. ... Black guys counting my money! I hate it.â (this is hearsay, but given that
*I'd list out the various sexist quotes by Trump to match, but I'm not sure slashdot has enough storage.
This is what I can find off the top of my head and with the top link in google, I'm not even digging. If you honestly think Trump isn't racist you have your head in the ground.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I think you may be hung up on the term "racist". If you talk about the things Trump says that people object to think "bigoted" rather than "racist". Bigoted encompasses racism, sexism, religious discrimination, etc.
Trump did denounce the KKK. He just didn't know what people were talking about at first. A bigger question is why Hillary and Obama associated with former KKK leader Robert Byrd.
I've seen plenty of suspicions with regards to Ted Cruz's status (born in Canada). The birther sentiment isn't limited to race.
Halting immigration from countries with known terror problems is perfectly reasonable. Jimmy Carter did it during the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis. Trump wanted a temporary halt until our immigration system is fixed.
Almost everything you've listed lacks context. I don't know about the Justice Department thing. The only thing I could find was that he didn't want to rent to welfare recipients (disproportionately ethnic minorities) who might end up trashing the places.
Halting immigration from countries with known terror problems is perfectly reasonable
He didn't say that. He said halting immigration from Muslims, regardless of country of origin.