MARC STEINER: Welcome to The Real News Network. Im Marc Steiner. Good to have you all with us today.

Facebook Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has been grilled by the House Financial Services Committee pretty intensely.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Under your policy, using census data as well, could I pay to target predominantly black zip codes and advertise them the incorrect election date?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: When we roll out the census suppression policy, we will take that content down.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: So you will There is some threshold where you will fact-check political advertisements. Is that what youre telling me?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: Well, Congresswoman, yes, for specific things like that where theres imminent risk of harm, but also-

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Could I run ads targeting Republicans in primaries saying that they voted for the Green New Deal?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: Sorry, can you repeat that?

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Would I be able to run advertisements on Facebook targeting Republicans in primaries saying that they voted for the Green New Deal? I mean, if youre not fact-checking political advertisements, Im just trying to understand the bounds here. Whats fair game?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: Congresswoman, I dont know the answer to that off the top of my head. I think probably.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: So you dont know if Ill be able to do that.

MARK ZUCKERBERG: I think probably.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: One more question. In your ongoing dinner parties with far right figures, some of who advanced the conspiracy theory that white supremacy is a hoax, did you discuss so-called social media bias against conservatives? And do you believe there is a bias?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: Congresswoman, sorry, I dont remember everything that was in the question

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Thats all right. Ill move on.

MARC STEINER: That, of course, was Congresswoman AOC, out there pushing him with some really interesting questions. Shes very tenacious, its clear. Were not talking about that today though. The questions from the committee though, ranged from allowing and limiting what Facebook defined as hate speech, to data privacy and their sale of personal information, to the lack of diversity at Facebook itself, discrimination, some people argue, against people of color, another issue that needs to be explored, and why they allow lies to be told by political figures, yet monitor others. And now theyre working with the Murdoch world, in the news world, to create a new newsfeed. What will that mean?

Well, were about to talk with Timothy Karr, who is Senior Director of the Free Press, and whos been covering this, and their papers been covering it pretty intensely. And Timothy, welcome. Good to have you with us here on The Real News.

TIMOTHY KARR: Happy to be with you.

MARC STEINER: So let me begin this way. Let me begin with a quote from the Senior Policy Counsel at the Free Press, Gaurav Laroia. So he wrote: Facebooks newsworthy exemption and ad policies are broken if the company is allowing its platform to be the vector for misinformation in the lead-up to the 2020 election. The company has learned nothing from 2016, when it allowed malicious foreign actors to use the platform to influence the U.S. election. By profiting off politicians selling false statements to the public, Facebook is complicit in the erosion of our civic health, discourse, and democracy. The company should show some courage and stand up for the truth at least in its advertising policies.So lets unpack that.

TIMOTHY KARR: Sure.

MARC STEINER: Because you, in the stuff you all have been doing, you really hit this hard in your reporting. So lets talk a bit about what all that means.

TIMOTHY KARR: Sure. Well, I think central to that concern is this idea, and weve seen it all week, that Facebook is a champion of free speech, by allowing politicians to lie without recourse, is in some way a champion of free expression. Mark Zuckerberg gave a very lengthy speech at Georgetown. Hes been making the rounds at Washington D.C. repeating a lot of these themes. And one of the things that he does say is that whats most important for Facebook is that it gives everyone a voice.

But consider that this voice is not equal. Its sort of like the George Orwell quote where some people are more equal than others. In this case, politicians are given free rein to lie, to say things that are dangerous, in some cases, and dishonest, while Facebooks own community standards doesnt allow its regular users to make the same lies. So clearly, this isnt about the principles of free expression as much as it is about the politics of Washington.

And theres an interesting backdrop to all of this, is that, while Mark Zuckerberg is on this free expression tour, a lot of politicians on both the left and the right are talking about antitrust. Theyre talking about taking measures to break up Facebook. So my interpretation of this giving away or giving free rein to Donald Trump in this instance, to lie in political ads its really about currying favor with certain politicians to see that they dont pursue the other option, which is, out of anger, to push for more antitrust.

And antitrust, and Zuckerberg, himself, said a number of weeks ago that it posed an existential threat to the organization. So while theyre making a public face about championing free expression, I think, in the back rooms and the corridors of these meetings, hes really most concerned about antitrust action.

MARC STEINER: So let me talk a bit about this. I want to lead up to antitrust, because I think its a fascinating topic that has not really been gone into in depth, in terms of what it really means for the 21st century and what it would mean for this new industry that dominates our economy and our country; and the world, actually.

But one of the things you alluded to here is, when places like Facebook become the commons, become the place where people have dialogue, or become the place where people express their opinions, and its controlled by one place that can easily say no to this person that they define as hate speech, or yes to this because it gives them money, because they want to build during this political campaign, they did in 2016, apparently are doing it again in 2020. And that to me seems to be the clearest danger, especially through those of us who work in the press all the time to try to build a way to have a free expression in this country. I think therein lies a huge danger.

TIMOTHY KARR: Yeah. The problem is that Facebook and a lot of the other online platforms dont like to think of themselves as publishers. They dont want to have any liability for the third party content that goes across their network. And so, theyre in this situation where, on the one hand, theyre working with news organizations and theyre trying to make sure that content on their site isnt false or misleading, but at the other hand, they dont want to have anything to do with it. Because they know, when you have more than 2.5 billion users who, according to Zuckerberg, before Congress, are posting, he said 100 billion pieces of content a day, it is virtually impossible for a network of that scale to effectively monitor and to police the type of content that goes across its network.

So they either have this laissez-faire approach, which is like, We should let everything go, or they attempt to do something else, in this case, hire 30,000 content moderators, improve your artificial intelligence so it can flag this stuff. In either case, its very problematic. On the one hand, you certainly dont want a social network that has that much power to allow any sort of speech. There are concerns about child sexual abuse being spread via social media. Its used to sell drugs. Theres racism. Theres a whole range of bad things that have been happening via social media. So you need some controls against that.

But at the same time, do we really want Facebook and these other social networks deciding what is appropriate content and what is not appropriate content? As weve seen in the case of political ads from Donald Trump that tell lies, theyre deciding that that is appropriate. And there are a lot of questions about that. Representative Ocasio-Cortez brought that up very effectively in saying that, How do you decide whats appropriate and whats not? I mean, when does it go too far? Wheres your line? And I dont think Mark Zuckerberg gave a very good answer to that. In fact, I dont think he answered it at all.

MARC STEINER: Because maybe he cant answer it, the way they do things. I mean, when you talk about, when they had this switch in their rules and you talk about having an independent third party doing fact-checking, I mean, what does that mean? And then admitting they couldnt do it with and theyre not doing it in the way they should when it comes to putting up political ads. And I mean, that raises a lot of issues. And the 30,000 monitors monitoring everything else, who are these people? I mean, how much are they paid? Whats their profession?

TIMOTHY KARR: Right.

MARC STEINER: This is not like you have a newspaper or a public radio station and you have fact-checkers to make sure [inaudible 00:09:04] your people say things that are correct. This is something much deeper and more complex than that because of the nature of that institution.

TIMOTHY KARR: Yeah. And I think there could be an antitrust argument made there, because when you have 2.5 billion members, you have 100 billion, according to Mark Zuckerberg, 100 billion pieces of content being posted, uploaded on your various social networks in a day, you really are too big. Youre really too big to govern.

But the other issue here is the economics of Facebook. The economics of a lot of these online platforms are built on this idea that they harvest our data and then they target content to us that will most likely elicit a response. Originally, that concept, what some people called surveillance capitalism, was built around this idea of getting information on their users, so you can appropriately target ads to sell things to their users.

But its also being abused, as we learned from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to target misinformation, to target misinformation to discourage people from voting, to spread lies about political opponents. And its raised to a level where this economic model has become unethical. It is being abused in ways that pose fundamental threats to our functioning democracy. And Facebook is not willing to change that model. You would have to basically rip up the whole organization from the roots.And so, one of the things that weve been advocating for at Free Press is: beyond Facebook, what does social media look like in a world where this kind of surveillance capitalism where people arent being treated as data points that can be sold to the highest bidder? Can we build a social media, a social network, that doesnt rely on that kind of predatory business model?

MARC STEINER: So that raises kind of the question here, before we run out of time, the whole question of monopolies and antitrust, and what that means in this 21st century, in this kind of industry. As we talked about before we started the conversation, this is not the steel mills and banks in the earlier 20th century, were talking about a much different kind of economic model that has a huge pervasive effect on society. And so, when we wrestle with the question of what that means, I mean, I think that thats something, weve only begun to touch the very surface. Its beyond what either Senator Warren or others would say, Simply break them up. What does that mean even, in this context?

TIMOTHY KARR: Well, I mean, youre looking at an industry that earns hundreds of billions of dollars every year. And most of it is through this targeted online advertising. And we think that the antidote to misinformation, the antidote to all of the negative impacts of networks like Facebook, is good, hard-hitting, independent journalism. And one of the proposals that we put forth at Free Press involves taxing online advertising to create whats called a public interest media endowment. In the United States, for example, a 2% tax on the online advertising industry, which is dominated by Facebook and Google, would generate an annual fund of $2 billion that could then support the kind of local independent journalism that, again, acts as the antidote to the type of misinformation thats being spread across these networks.

MARC STEINER: Thats a really interesting proposal. And I think that maybe the next time we have a chance to talk together, we should really probe that one in depth and talk about what these new models are for the 21st century that we have to kind of wrestle with. Because we do have to create something, a), if were going to have a democracy, b), if were going to thrive as a society. We have to come up with new ideas that fit the time were in and not just hearken to the back, that we can learn from.But it is fascinating stuff. And Timothy Karr, I really appreciate your work, and appreciate what the Free Press does, and appreciate you taking your time with us today. Look forward to more.

TIMOTHY KARR: Thank you.

MARC STEINER: And Im Marc Steiner here at The Real News Network. Please go online, let us know what you think about the controversy around Facebook, what you think about all the issues around antitrust. Wed love to hear it as we develop this series of conversations. And Im Marc Steiner here for The Real News Network. Take care.

DHARNA NOOR: Hey, yall, my name is Dharna Noor and Im a climate crisis reporter here at The Real News Network. This is a crucial moment for humanity and for the planet. So if you like what we do, please, please support us by subscribing at the link below. Thank you.

Originally posted here:
Facebook's Threat to Democracy Could Motivate Redefinition of Anti-Trust Laws - The Real News Network