Big Tech Weekly e2

FACEBOOK AND THEIR NEW WAYS OF STOPPING DISINFORMATION AND VIOLENCE REGARDING THE US ELECTION JUST DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION

Facebook is officially banning political ads on all of its platforms (Instagram, Twitter included) until after the election. In order to really understand this, you have to know that young people are mostly getting their news from platforms like Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. These companies can use their corporate power to influence your vote. Facebook, however, does not seem to be doing this at all. Facebook, by banning political ads and putting alerts on posts that say incorrect or violent things about the election or other things in general and preventing sharing of possibly harmful tweets.

Whether Facebook’s decision was a reaction to the possible subpoena we brought to attention last week as a way to prove they are not actively interfering in the election by locking the New York Post’s account or was a general decision to help stop interference in the election from voters, the decision was surprising to many, blocking political ads on a platform worth over a trillion dollars. Facebook is most likely reacting and stopping rumors of election interference. Two Big Tech companies (Google and Facebook) are giving information for instructions to secure your vote. Facebook’s, Google’s. Both companies are actually both struggling with legal issues at the current moment, so there may be a connection between the voting instructions and the subpoena and lawsuit. Many of President Trump’s tweets are very controversial, covering COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, his own supporters, his polling, supreme court, and many other controversial topics. For many people, his tweets seem hateful or rude. On some tweets, Twitter has put a warning saying that it had false information in it or violated one of their policies. But Twitter on every warning has said that it has determined that it may be in the public’s best interest for the tweet to remain accessible. A quick analysis of why this is: Twitter is most likely aware that blocking a certain tweet, especially a controversial one, would spark a huge debate about whether it should have been blocked and would probably make Twitter look bad for blocking a tweet from the president. For years the president has been using Twitter to directly communicate with the public. He tweets about 5 - 10 times a day which is a huge amount considering how busy he is as the president of the United States of America. His Instagram and Facebook posts are way less frequent than his Twitter posts. No alerts have been posted on any of Democratic Candidate Joe Biden’s tweets although Joe Biden does tweet a lot daily as well.

An update from last week:

The CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, and Google testified on Wednesday, October 28th before the US Commerce committee. Ted Cruz, almost screaming at the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, while he stayed very calm. All CEOs seemed to do very well and stayed calm throughout most of the hearing. It wasn’t so easy on the senators though. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai) said that he didn’t know what his colleagues were doing and that he had never seen a hearing so close to an election.

Just 4 days away from it today, we can all realize how close this hearing and the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation process happened to the election. Some wonder if senators (who are paid with American taxes) should be using their time to press a nomination and Big Tech hearing as opposed to focusing on being re-elected with an election coming up or focusing on passing another relief package to help Americans during a pandemic.