Slashdot Mirror
China Spreads Propaganda to U.S. on Facebook, a Platform it Bans at Home (nytimes.com)
Paul Mozur, reporting for the New York Times: China does not allow its people to gain access to Facebook, a powerful tool for disseminating information and influencing opinion. As if to demonstrate the platform's effectiveness, outside its borders China uses it to spread state-produced propaganda around the world, including the United States (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). So much do China's government and companies value Facebook that the country is Facebook's biggest advertising market in Asia, even as it is the only major country in the region that blocks the social network. A look at the Facebook pages of China Central Television, the leading state-owned broadcast network better known as CCTV, and Xinhua, China's official news agency, reveals hundreds of English-language posts intended for an English-speaking audience. Each quarter China's government, through its state media agencies, spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy Facebook ads, according to a person with knowledge of those deals, who was unauthorized to talk publicly about the company's revenue streams. China's propaganda efforts are in the spotlight with President Trump visiting the country and American lawmakers investigating foreign powers's use of technology to sway voters in the United States.
To defend yet another communist regime from valid criticism that it is actively attacking American values and damaging the political process. How did right/left get so absurdly mixed up in this country?
Remember, FEC versus Citizens United effectively allowed bribery, because money is equivalent to free speech. It is no wonder why countries are legally paying for ads to change voter turnouts.
To boot, FB is doing nothing illegal. They could be showing Daesh videos of people being barbecued and eaten alive, but there is nothing that can be done, as Daesh's money counts as free speech.