‘If There Ever Was a Reason to Leave Facebook …’

By Geoff Page

If ever there was a reason to leave Facebook in droves, the scene on January 6 in Washington, D.C., would be it.  The LOSER would never have been elected were it not for Facebook.

In mid-November 2018, I wrote a piece in The OB Rag explaining why I deleted my Facebook account. I quoted the following paragraph from an article by Evan Osnos in the New Yorker. And before anyone turns their nose up at the New Yorker look at the piece titled “Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Facebook Before It Breaks Democracy?” It is an exhaustive, detailed article.

The quote is from the LOSER’s campaign staff.

“During the campaign, Trump used Facebook to raise two hundred and eighty million dollars. Just days before the election, his team paid for a voter-suppression effort on the platform. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, it targeted three Democratic constituencies—“idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans”—sending them videos precisely tailored to discourage them from turning out for Clinton. Theresa Hong, the Trump campaign’s digital-content director, later told an interviewer, “Without Facebook we wouldn’t have won.”

Let those last six words sink in folks, from the LOSER’s own staff. Then, let this sink in.

“Facebook offered to “embed” employees, for free, in Presidential campaign offices to help them use the platform effectively. Clinton’s campaign said no. Trump’s said yes, and Facebook employees helped his campaign craft messages.”

Why would a social media platform be doing a thing like that?  There are companies all over now that specialize in digital content managing social media.  This is their business and they know how to do it well.   By doing what Facebook did, offering the services for free, something that businesses cannot do, Facebook ensured it would get first shot.  And, even if they had to bid, who would you hire, an individual company or the company the created, owns, and operates Facebook?  The advantage would have been insurmountable.

If the LOSER really was as rich as he claimed to be, why did Facebook offer this expertise for free? Clinton said no probably because they had trusted companies they worked with and trusted.  The LOSER probably said yes as soon as he heard the word “free.”

That should be enough for anyone to delete their Facebook account.  If not, the article went on to describe what happened during the campaign.

“Although Trump’s language was openly hostile to ethnic minorities, inside Facebook his behavior felt, to some executives, like just part of the distant cesspool of Washington. Americans always seemed to be choosing between a hated Republican and a hated Democrat, and Trump’s descriptions of Mexicans as rapists was simply an extension of that.”

Let that sink in too. Facebook equated language from a Presidential candidate with that of the trolls that abound on social media. They helped him post language that they thought was “openly hostile to ethnic minorities.” For a fucking dollar.

I refer back to the title of the article ““Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Facebook Before It Breaks Democracy?”  Apparently not. So fire Facebook people, because they don’t give a shit about you, they caused what may be irreparable damage to this country, and so they can’t do it again.