SOCIAL
Presidential Candidate Joe Biden Calls on Facebook to Stop Lies in Political Ads


In an almost perfect illustration of adversarial politics, US Presidential Candidate Joe Biden has today called on Facebook to do more to stop misinformation in political campaigns, while also pushing the company to take action against voter suppression efforts.
Folks, we saw in 2016 what can happen when social media platforms are left unchecked and allow disinformation to run rampant. It puts the very integrity of our elections at risk.
We simply cannot let it happen again in 2020.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 11, 2020
In an open letter, Biden says that Facebook needs to:
- Promote authoritative and trustworthy sources of election information, rather than the rants of bad actors and conspiracy theorists
- Promptly remove false, viral information
- Prevent political candidates and PACs from using paid advertising to spread lies and misinformation — especially within two weeks of election day
- Apply clear rules, across all users (including the President) which prohibit threats and lies about how to participate in the election.
As per Biden:
“After foreign operatives and rightwing trolls used Facebook to hack the 2016 election, Facebook vowed “never again” and promised to take action. But with fewer than 5 months until the 2020 election, Facebook seems to be on a crash course to let the same mistakes happen again.”
This comes as US President Donald Trump pushes for reforms to the current laws in order to prevent social platforms from interfering in free speech.
Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2020
After Twitter added fact-check markers to two of his tweets, President Trump accused the platform of left-wing bias, and vowed to stop them, and all social networks, from limiting free speech. Twitter, it’s also worth noting, banned all political ads on its platform back in October – a move which also angered the Trump administration.
So now, the two main candidates are taking entirely opposing viewpoints to how social platforms should be used. Make of that what you will.
Interestingly, at the same time, Facebook has announced the return of former VP Chris Cox, who left the company last year after clashing with other Facebook executives over, among other things, how it should handle political content.
Cox also infamously noted at one stage last year that:
“I think Trump should not be our president.”
As noted by Will Oremus on Twitter, after Cox’s departure in March 2019, Facebook has increasingly turned to Republican operative Joel Kaplan for many of its decisions on political speech. Cox, seemingly, took the opposite view to Kaplan, and his return to the company could suggest that Facebook will be looking to take a different approach.
Or it may, as others have noted, be looking to better prepare itself for a Trump loss at the polls in November.
In response to Biden’s letter, Facebook has posted this statement:
“We live in a democracy, where the elected officials decide the rules around campaigns. Two weeks ago the President of the United States issued an executive order directing Federal agencies to prevent social media sites from engaging in activities like fact-checking political statements. This week, the Democratic candidate for President started a petition calling on us to do the exact opposite. Just as they have done with broadcast networks – where the US government prohibits rejecting politicians’ campaign ads – the people’s elected representatives should set the rules, and we will follow them. There is an election coming in November and we will protect political speech, even when we strongly disagree with it.”
So again, Facebook is standing firm on its rulings around political ads, putting the onus on the people, essentially, to decide what’s acceptable.
But no matter happens, it is interesting to consider the opposing viewpoints from the candidates. And while Facebook will undoubtedly play a key role in deciding the eventual winner, how, exactly, it does so is still up for debate, and could still change as Facebook re-examines its current stance.
Also, if you wanted to get some scope around the importance of social media platforms in the modern media process, this debate is a pretty amazing indicator of their position in today’s society.
SOCIAL
Musk regrets controversial post but won’t bow to advertiser ‘blackmail’

Elon Musk’s comments at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Slaven Vlasic
Elon Musk apologized Wednesday for endorsing a social media post widely seen as anti-Semitic, but accused advertisers who are turning away from his social media platform X of “blackmail” and said anyone who does so can “go fuck yourself.”
The remark before corporate executives at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference drew a shocked silence.
Earlier, Musk had apologized for what he called “literally the worst and dumbest post that I’ve ever done.”
In a comment on X, formerly Twitter, Musk on November 15 called a post “the actual truth” that said Jewish communities advocated a “dialectical hatred against whites,” which was criticized as echoing longtime conspiracy theory among White supremacists.
The statement prompted a flood of departures from X of major advertisers, including Apple, Disney, Comcast and IBM who criticized Musk for anti-semitism.
“I’m sorry for that tweet or post,” Musk said Wednesday. “It was foolish of me.”
He told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin that his post had been misinterpreted and that he had sought to clarify the remark in subsequent posts to the thread.
But Musk also said he wouldn’t be beholden to pressure from advertisers.
“If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money?” Musk said. “Go fuck yourself.”
But the billionaire acknowledged that there were business implications to the advertiser actions.
“If the company fails… it will fail because of an advertiser boycott” Musk said. “And that will be what will bankrupt the company.”
Musk, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel earlier this week, insisted in the interview that he holds no discrimination against Jews, calling himself “philo-Semitic,” or an admirer of Judaism.
During the interview, Musk wore a necklace given to him by a parent of an Israeli hostage taken in the Hamas attack on October 7. The necklace reads, “Bring Them Home.”
Musk told Sorkin that the Israel trip had been planned earlier and was not an “apology tour” related to the controversial tweet.
SOCIAL
TikTok Encourages Creators To Make Longer Videos, With Focus On Ad Revenue 11/30/2023

A new report by The Information shows the company’s recent efforts to convince
creators to put out longer videos in order to provide more room for ad placements.
According to the …
SOCIAL
X Adds Option To Embed Videos in Isolation From Posts

Next time you go to embed an X post, you may notice a new step:
Now, X will enable you to choose whether you want to embed the video element in isolation, or the whole post, as normal.
And if you do choose to embed just the video (or GIF), it’ll look like this:
Which could be a helpful way to present X-originated video on third-party websites, and add context to, say, your blog post, without the clutter of the full X framing.
But it could also reduce brand exposure for X, which is likely why Twitter didn’t enable this before, though it did once provide an “embedded video widget” which essentially served the same purpose.

Twitter gradually seemed to phase that out as the platform evolved, and there’s no specific reason that I can find as to why it removed it as an option. But either way, now, it’s back, so you have more options for using X-originated content, and putting more focus on video elements specifically.
Though I don’t know why they didn’t also take the opportunity to remove the ‘Tweet’ reference. Since the re-brand to X, the platform seems to have gone to little effort to weed out all the tweet and bird terminology, but then again, with 80% fewer staff, that’s probably understandable as well.
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