Greg's Corner

NYT: Facebook sinks to new lows in trying to protect its rep

Once again, I was trying not to post about Facebook for the rest of the week. While we’re no fans of Facebook’s unchecked power around the world, our criticism of Facebook is not personal. Also, I didn’t want our readers and customers to get burned out on a constant barrage of Facebook news. However, yesterday, the New York Times published a blistering expose on Facebook that is probably the most damning criticism of Facebook to date. While the Times article focuses most of its attention on Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and how she allegedly tried to downplay the various crises Facebook has endured since the 2016 Presidential Election, I want to focus on some specific tactics Facebook allegedly used to try to silence its critics.

Media outlets that follow a specific political leaning have long accused Facebook of being against whatever their political ideology might be. The right says that Facebook censors conservative posts while the left accuses Facebook of being a cauldron of right-wing hate speech. The Times report shows that Facebook is neither left or right-leaning. Facebook only leanings are toward Facebook and is willing to use either side of the political spectrum to protect themselves. For example, according to The Times, Facebook employed a right-wing media group to run a smear campaign against George Soros. Mr. Soros is a left-leaning philanthropist who has been a very vocal critic of Facebook and has been the target of many right-wing conspiracy theories. Conversely, Facebook has called upon the aid of the Anti-Defamation League to accuse one of its critics of being anti-Semitic in their criticism of Facebook. A liberal advocacy group called Freedom From Facebook, which I posted about here, depicted Facebook in a protest picture as a two-headed octopus with its tentacles encircling the globe. The heads of the octopus were those of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. The ADF accused Freedom From Facebook for the image being anti-Semitic stating that “Depicting Jews as an octopus encircling the globe is a classic anti-Semitic trope.” However, similar images were used in political cartoons back in the days of oil and steel monopolies. With this latest look into Facebook’s protectionist tactics, the comparison to companies like Standard Oil could not be more apropos.

If the Times report is to be believed, and by all accounts, I think it should, it shows just how far Facebook is willing to go to try to discredit its critics. While I’m not a fan of the level of venom used in their article, I think Slate put it best by saying that Facebook isn’t a special company anymore, it’s now just a regular sleazy company engaged in normal sleazy lobbying and corporate propaganda. As far as Facebook is concerned there is only Facebook. Anything else is the enemy and there’s no tactic too low they’ll stoop to in order to protect their brand.