President Trump & Republican Propaganda: How Social Media is Trying to Mitigate the Damage
Mark Zuckerberg told President Trump that some of his 'rhetoric was problematic'
- Mark Zuckerberg said he has personally discussed with President Donald Trump the use of his "problematic" rhetoric.
- "I have had certain discussions with him in the past where I've told him that I thought some of the rhetoric was problematic," the Facebook CEO said in an appearance on CBS News.
- Zuckerberg announced a series of new policies that will be implemented on the social media platform to help safeguard the integrity of the 2020 election.
- "This will definitely apply to the president," he said
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Thursday that he has called out President Donald Trump's use of "problematic" rhetoric.
"I have had certain discussions with him in the past and where I've told him that I thought some of the rhetoric was problematic," Zuckerberg said in an interview with CBS News.
But the pair have not spoken about the president's more recent social media posts in which he undermined mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic, claiming that it is rife with fraud.
"If I did talk to him, you know, be clear about how — just the importance of making sure that people have confidence in the election," Zuckerberg told CBS. "I certainly think that anyone who's saying that the election is going to be fraudulent, I think that that's problematic. And I think additional context needs to be added to that."
Zuckerberg announced sweeping new policies on Thursday that will go into effect on Facebook ahead of Nov. 3 to help safeguard the election process. After the 2016 election, the social media behemoth faced backlash for not taking enough steps to stop foreign entities from using Facebook to spread misinformation among voters. Some critics even deemed the site a threat to democracy.
This year, Zuckerberg struck a decidedly different tone, writing on Facebook: "This election is not going to be business as usual. We all have a responsibility to protect our democracy. I believe our democracy is strong enough to withstand this challenge and deliver a free and fair election."
To this end, Facebook is employing a number of measures, including removing false claims about voting, adding "authoritative information" on how to vote, blocking foreign operatives attempts to interfere, and freezing new political ads in the week leading up to Election Day.
"This will definitely apply to the president," Zuckerberg told CBS News. "Once this policy goes into place, and it will apply to everyone equally."
Shortly after the announcement, the Trump campaign accused Zuckerberg of trying to muzzle the president.
"In the last seven days of the most important election in our history, President Trump will be banned from defending himself on the largest platform in America," Samantha Zager, the Trump campaign's deputy national press secretary, said. "When millions of voters will be making their decisions, the President will be silenced by the Silicon Valley Mafia, who will at the same time allow corporate media to run their biased ads to swing voters in key states."
- Read more:
- Twitter flags Trump's tweets encouraging people to vote twice for 'violating our Civic Integrity Policy'
- Trump campaign pushes back on Facebook's new election policies: 'The President will be silenced by the Silicon Valley Mafia'
- Facebook will ban new political ads a week before the election
- Facebook will pay tens of thousands of users to quit the app ahead of the election so it can study the platform's impact on politics
Twitter bans pro-Trump meme maker for copyright violations
A conservative social media user whose far-right memes have been praised and reposted by President Donald Trump has been kicked off Twitter for repeated copyright violations.
Logan Cook, a Kansas man who posts under the name Carpe Donktum, was permanently banned from the platform Tuesday night, days after he posted a video criticizing CNN that used doctored footage from the news channel.
The clip, which Trump retweeted last week, used footage from a CNN story from last year about the friendship of two toddlers, one Black, and one white. Cook doctored the clip, set it to ominous music, and inserted a fake misspelled CNN caption reading “Terrified toddler runs from racist baby,” then a clip from the original video before showing the message “America is not the problem. Fake news is the problem.”
Twitter later placed a “manipulated media” warning label on the clip. It was originally posted last year but received significantly more attention after Trump’s retweet.
Cook, who also posts his work to other platforms and websites, said in an interview that his posts are satirical and are therefore exempt from copyright rules. He said he believes Twitter was simply looking for a reason to boot him.
“They didn’t like my politics, they found an excuse to get rid of me,” he said.
Cook’s account has been temporarily suspended multiple times in the past for violations of Twitter’s copyright rules. He was also suspended for eight days last year for posting a video depicting Trump as a cowboy attacking CNN journalist Jim Acosta.
Twitter rules prohibit Cook from creating a new account to replace the old one, which had more than 270,000 followers at the time of the suspension.
Trump often retweeted Cook, who had emerged as a prominent creator of right-wing memes that uses humor, often dark, to condemn journalists and those who have criticized the president. Trump called Cook a “genius” during a meeting last year at the White House.
Trump has himself run afoul of Twitter’s rules. In March the platform placed the “manipulated media” warning on a video of Joe Biden shared by Trump.
Last month, Trump lashed out at the company after it added fact-check warnings to two of his tweets on mail-in voting. Following that back-and-forth, the president vowed to add new regulations to rein in social media companies — an idea dismissed by constitutional law experts as legally difficult.
By David Klepper, June 24, 2020, Associated Press
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