So I, like many of you, have been pretty appalled by Mark Zuckerberg’s stance towards President Trump’s hate filled, violence inducing commentary.
I say his ‘stance’, but the reality is he doesn’t have one, preferring to claim he is an advocate of free speech.
While there’s many reasons we know this is rubbish – from Facebook selling people’s data, to trying to win favour with governments to counter the next wrong doing that is just waiting to be discovered, to trying to get back into China and countless more – the example that always sticks with me was one I wrote about a while back.
Basically, it’s this.
Not that long ago, that photo of that woman breast-feeding her baby was flagged on my Facebook page as potentially causing offence.
A photo.
Of a woman.
Breast-feeding her baby.
One of the most natural acts of humanity you can get.
Now I appreciate it was less Zuck and more his AI that flagged this, but if it can [wrongly] identify imagery, surely it can also identify factually incorrect claims and/or words that incite violence.
Or it could if Zuck wanted it too.
For me, the fact this photo was censored highlights Zuck’s double standards, reinforced by the speed he criticised Twitter for doing possibly the best thing they’ve ever done and the amount of [senior] people in Facebook who have broken rank to say Zuckerberg is wrong
It won’t make a jot of difference.
Because Zuck is about Zuck.
And for all his claims of being torn, he is actively choosing to remain ignorant.
For money and ego … and absolutely not for freedom of any speech.
#BlackLivesMatter #SilenceIsViolence