KOWTOWING TO POWER
Marc Zuckerberg has sent a cynical letter to Rep. James Jordan Republican – Ohio, admitting that Meta and Facebook and Whatsapp and Instagram have served willingly as the censoring arm of the Democrat White House during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is not news, because those who exchanged messages on platforms – Twitter before Elon Musk included – were all victims of censorship shutting down questions and debates about the origin, contamination pattern and lethality of the virus.
It was obvious from the onset that the virus had a geographical origin in China as patient zero was located there and there were more people contaminated there originally than anywhere else and when there was contamination abroad it was connected to people that have been to China, particularly that region of Wuhan, formerly famous for their circus and now infamously known for the virus that killed millions of people.
Admitting now, after – most – normalcy is restored that they actually kowtowed to the White House to censor and ban information that was actually true is the receipt of the lack of moral integrity, for it does not come with a notice to the people who were punished by Meta during the censorship. Meta boss, Zuckerberg only sends a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan and wants to escape the contrition to pledge apologies to the users he punished.
The other problem was the Laptop From Hell. This laptop was left in a repair shop and when the news of corruption in the Biden family came out, including emails, photos and the local copy of iPhone messages were out, Meta and other media outlets claimed it was a Russian Disinformation. Meta punished users for sharing this content. There were 50 intelligence officers with security clearance that signed a letter stating that it was Russian Disinformation. These 50 not so intelligent people have now a receipt of how gullible they are when confronted with a disinformation campaign. Would you hire them to be in charge of your security?
But the Department of Justice have considered the content of the Laptop from Hell accurate information and actually used it in criminal proceedings against Hunter Biden. This news was censored by orchestrated efforts from the Democratic Party White House.
The reasons for Meta to choose to kowtow to the Democrat White House are the same reasons why Elon Musk from X – Twitter – did not kowtow after buying the company. There is a choice to be made: either respect the perennial value of the First Amendment or respect the elusive power of the Democrat Party White House who would push for these platforms to be out of the protection of Section 230 or the communications decency act.
Some people on the defense of Meta will say Musk freeloaded on Zuckerberg, who kept the platforms immune from the content the users publish on the platform, but nonetheless, Zuckerberg punished and even banned users for telling the truth.
This is very different than punishing those who tell the truth and prop the lies of the government.
The role of information is to shed light on obscure facts. That is why we use the verb “clarification” in these cases. Sometimes a bad information is spread for years on end and we all believe in the lies. One can remember the Katyn Massacre in World War II. For decades the Soviet Union declared that the murderers of the Polish officers in Katyn were the German Nazis. This was sometimes put into question, due to some contradictory timelines and witnesses.
In 1990 the truth was admitted by the former Soviet Union – now Russians – who owned the massacre and confessed their cover up. This was possible because the Yeltsyn government opened the books for researchers and then, after putting together the information, it was clear that the war crime was committed by the Soviet Russia.
Contemporary evidences from 1939 to registrations of bulldozers shipment and vodka rations sent to Katyn corroborated the history and showed how these Polish Officers were murdered en masse and put into collective graves.
It does not change the atrocities of the Nazis nor is the first atrocity of the Soviet Union, but it must be clarified in honor of the Polish military that were murdered in cold blood.
Some governments uses its powers to distribute budget to some advertisers and although some vehicles still claims that they have a Chinese Wall between the news business and the marketing business of the company, it is known that the government, when corrupt, will corrupt some of the most vulnerable under its reach and will give then some non fiduciary advantage, like invitation to events and exclusive interviews with powerful government officials that were beyond the reach of these reporters. Some will use the revolving door, going from press secretary of the White House direct to a seat in a large media network.
All companies are vulnerable to this, not only news companies. But the problem is of decency. There was punishment for a string of corruption scandals in the aerospace business from the Lockheed scandal, to the Boeing failure in self certification and so on, but these companies were under scrutiny of the news media. Very few news media outlets is going after the scandals of the mainstream media.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Walter Duranty the recipient of the Pulitzer prize for journalism published lies about the Soviet Union, praising the progress, the harmony and the quality of life achieved by the revolutionaries. This proved to be a lie but the board of the prize refuses to admit the intention to deceive. This say more about the Pulitzer prize value than the lies of Duranty. For those who do not know the biography of Joseph Pulitzer, he made his fortune of sensationalistic yellow journalism – a tabloid journalism of stretches of imagination, exaggerations and the like. Very appropriate prize for Duranty.
The reasons why people succumb to the powerful is not important.
What is important is why people challenge the powerful. Eric Blair, known by his pen name George Orwell had no qualms of describing the actual living conditions of the working people in “The Road to Wigan Pier” and to denounce the contradictions of the left in “Animal Farm”, where the characters of the ruling pigs represented the leadership of the Communist Party after conquering power.
George Orwell did it to help us through the dark and get to the facts. The same was done by Arthur Koestler in “Darkness at Noon”, where he describes the fate of an apparatchik fallen into disgrace in a totalitarian regime. Finally, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the writher of “Gulag Archipelago” a book so important that even changed the narrative of socialism as a paradise on earth and moved the communists towards post-modernistic tactics.
Sometimes the powerful overplay their hands. Recently Bob Iger, the boss of Disney threatened Elon Musk, 100% owner of private owned X – Twitter – with not advertising in X anymore. Musk’s response was in public and in presence of Iger : “GFY”. “You are blackmailing me with money?” “GFY”. Musk has enough money to keep X afloat without Disney advertisement money. Moreover, X is a private company with sole ownership of Musk. He doesn’t have to answer to shareholders or other investors, only to his conscience.
Zuckerberg chose the easy way, kowtowing to the Democratic Party White House and now that the chances of having a Democratic Party White House is 50%, he is hedging his bet on denouncing a censorship that we all knew, we all suffered below it and that has no meaning anymore, because X – Twitter – is a better platform.
Meta is a listed company and Zuckerberg has a statutory obligation to preserve and grow the capital of the investors. His error is in the past, when confronting difficult choices he choose to kowtow.
We all believe that when watching films or reading books we will be on the side of the good guys, the honorable guys. Those who will fight against tyranny and oppression of the weak. This is hard. This entails sacrifices and risks. One must have the courage to do so.