Facebook Dividing Congress, Refusing to Apologize for Mistakes: Wall Street Journal

Facebook has done everything since “whistleblower” Frances Haugen’s revelations except apologize. Facebook changed its name and denied major problems. According to some reports, it even sold multiple narratives to political figures from various ends of the spectrum.

The Wall Street Journal, which originally broke the “Facebook Files” revelations from leftist “whistleblower” Frances Haugen, claimed in a new piece that Facebook had intentionally depicted Haugen as a leftist activist to rouse Republicans. The JournalFacebook also stated that it had shown Republicans to Democrats that they were too focused on restrictions in social media on the recent acquittal of Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse. The Journal asserted that Facebook’s goal was to divide lawmakers “along partisan lines” at a time when Republican and Democrat lawmakers alike are looking to take down Big Tech. Facebook doesn’t seem to feel that it has to be held accountable.

“Their biggest fear has been conservatives and liberals coming together to break up their so-called family of apps, and it could very well be coming very soon,” The Journal quoted ForAmerica President David Bozell. “It’s not every day that [Republican] Mike Lee, [Democrat]Amy Klobuchar [Republican] Ken Buck get together and break bread on these things—on anything.”

Facebook’s name change, denials, and manipulating were part of a strategy by the tech giant in the wake of the release of Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Files” series, which revealed a multitude of missteps Facebook made in handling user-posted content in the run-up to the 2020 election. 

Facebook has now restricted “internal access settings for research discussions on topics” to those directly involved in the topics, according to The Journal. Ex-executives have claimed that Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, instructed his staff not to apologize. Zuckerberg never testified in Congress and instead sent subordinates. “When our work is being mischaracterized, we’re not going to apologize,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone reportedly said. “We’re going to defend our record.” This emphasizes what free speech advocates have said for a long time: Facebook has too much power already, and it is so convinced of its power that it believes it should not be held accountable.

Although free speech advocates are in tight spots, they may not be able to get out of it. On the one hand is Facebook, so full of hubris that it believes it can solve its problems by changing its name and stirring up divisions in Congress. On the other hand is Congress, where several of the most vocal anti-Big Tech senators now, including Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), want to “solve” problems by increasing censorship. Supporters of free speech can only pray that in the next year, a more objective and better solution can be found to threats from Big Tech companies such as Meta.

Conservatives under attack. Your senators should be contacted to demand protection of conservative speech. Tech companies should provide their users with the same freedom of speech as the First Amendment, as interpreted by U.S. Supreme Court. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s Use the contact formPlease help us make Big Tech more accountable.

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