Zuckerberg Drama

Politics gets weirder and creepier this week, Rep Jim Jordan the Chair of the House Judiciary released of what suppose to be a Kamala “damning” letter from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg where in writing he affirmed that there was pressure from the Biden White House to suppress certain Covid-19 contents which even includes humor and satire, of which he said, he thinks the government was wrong in suppressing those information, “I also think we made some choices with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today, I feel strongly that we shouldn’t compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction” says Zuckerberg. The Meta CEO also mentioned that due to the FBI warning of Russian disinformation, they sent the Hunter Biden laptop story to their fact checkers and while waiting for the results, they demoted the New York Post article on that topic, Mark further said, “In retrospect we shouldn’t have demoted that story, we changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” As for his election contribution, he said he did that “to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had their resources needed to help people vote safely during a global pandemic.” He also added that he doesn’t have plans to make any contributions during this election cycle, “my goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another- or to even appear to be playing a role"

The GOP touted this revelation as a win for free speech, arming Trump across the campaign trail with attacks that criticized Kamala and the Biden administration on suppressing free speech through social media content moderation. But on a regular basis, every social media company receives communication from various governments particularly if there’s a cause for concern on misinformation for public security and safety of the country where that social media operates on. Also, when fact checked, what Zuckerberg revealed is not really something new, he already mentioned that in his August 25, 2002 interview with “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast show where he talks about how his decision to demote the Hunter Biden laptop story was influenced with the FBI’s advise on possible Russian misinformation. There’s a lot of questions to ask, for one thing, why did Zuckerberg sent the letter to Jordan knowing that this will fuel the GOP’s attack on Kamala, he could have just posted it on his Facebook account or do an interview with an independent non-partisan journalist so his revelation can be perceived as done non-partisan and in good faith or at least without any pressure from the GOP particularly, or could it also be because there’s an anti trust case brought by the FTC and couple of States alleging that Meta is monopolizing the industry through the acquisition of What’s app and Instagram, or is it because Mark right now is working on another major first for Meta, which is the creation of AGI or Artificial General Intelligence, believed to be a step above the current AI technologies, and having the support of key legislative players are important in building legislative structures for this new and emerging technology and development? One thing to note though, we’re on the height of the campaign season, both fields will drop bombshells to gain traction in the election cycle.

However, the Zuckerberg drama deserves more scrutiny, we have to look beyond the headlines and analyze what fueled this revelation? Kamala’s campaign revolves around Freedom and what it meant for the everyday working class family. The GOP will definitely work to dismantle the “freedom” core by attacking free speech as they believe the Zuckerberg drama will seal the deal. But, today’s voters are more smarter than they think, voters knew that Biden signed the Tiktok ban supported by the GOP, and voters also knew that Kamala’s freedom message and her politics of joy is gaining momentum, it’s convincing people to take another look at her and compare her campaign with Trump because there’s a stark big difference. Whatever Mark said at the end of the day may matter for those who are not asking the right questions but for those who knew the difference, like all day, this is another day in politics.