Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in our opinion, has tried to play the middle. On the one hand, Facebook does plenty of censorship, including their “temporary” but ongoing suspension of former President Donald Trump that could potentially become permanent based on their recent ruling.
Facebook, owned by parent company META, also has other issues, including poor treatment of users who want to advertise on their platform but can’t get a human for the most basic of customer service when there is a simple problem. This has been our personal experience as well as that of others and isn’t even a political opinion.
Many users complain that they are wrongfully censored for something they may have said that wasn’t necessarily a violation, because of Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence and opaque review process. So although Facebook’s “censorship” hasn’t been nearly as bad as Twitter’s in the eyes of many on the right, they aren’t exactly a bastion of free speech either.
Elon Musk, who is planning on taking over Twitter to enhance free speech, has taken potshots at Facebook recently as well.
Although Zuckerberg has been somewhat quiet on the Musk Twitter takeover being planned, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is speaking out, surprisingly in support of Musk. Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder, is also supporting Musk and has (somewhat) admitted some of his past mistakes.
This puts Zuckerberg in a position of people wondering what he thinks, especially since even Musk’s nemesis Bill Gates has opined albeit half-heartedly.
From Yahoo Finance in part, Hoffman said:
“So there’s some things I’ve talked about [with him], which I can’t say here,” the noted venture capitalist and “The Startup of You” author said on a new episode of Yahoo Finance Presents (video above). “One of the things he already has tweeted about — and Twitter being a good means for doing this — is bringing more validation of human identity onto the platform. And I think that is actually a good thing. And I think that vision as part of what he’s thinking about on Twitter is clearly a very good idea.”
With talk of a potential repricing of the Twitter deal and the stock market in shambles, it’s had to say how fast this will all go down and what Twitter and the broader social media world will look like. The upcoming elections for mid-terms this year certainly are likely to make things even more interesting.
