96 Comments

When you live in fear of fact checkers, that says more than any policy you can introduce.

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Exactly. And if fact-checkers have become "too political" that's a strong indicator of one side lying with every word, all the damn time!

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Remember JV Vance getting his shorts in a knot about being fact checked in one of the debates? And no shame in publicly whining about it!

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Zuckerberg is bending the knee to kiss the whatever of Trump, he is making bazillions more in profits while being less accountable, and he is hurting our youth. Studies have shown that Facebook and Instagram cause depression and self harm. This is especially true for young girls who think the filtered and AI generated images are real. This is a shameful stain on our culture and the tech oligarchs are showing themselves to be a disease!

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The power and money are fully in the hands of those who only care about power and money, which from my eyes is the result of a 50 years of Republican manipulation and gaslighting of enough middle class strivers and resentful downtrodden to vote them into control and undo this long difficult experiment in Democracy. The whole “What’s the Matter with Kansas” idea taken to its completion.

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Brilliant reporting from Judd Legum, as always.

Any suggestions on alternative online platforms for local groups to share information?

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People seem to really like Bluesky—I haven’t taken that plunge yet myself though.

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Thanks. Yes, I'm on there. But it doesn't function like FB does for group postings (unless I'm using it wrong, which is quite possible). Slack works OK, but wondering if there's something else that group's are using.

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1dEdited

I belong to a former Yahoo group that now uses something called groups.io--seems to work well but I think there might be a small cost involved for larger groups, basic is free though: https://groups.io/

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Try it, you’ll like it!

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Zuckerberg is the ultimate degradation of humanity.

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That's actually Elmo, but Zuck and Bezos run a close 2nd/3rd.

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I had factored in Zuck’s profound cowardice, because everyone knows how Muskrat has caused millions of people to leave twitterX and tanked the company. Zuck couldn’t even defend his own company.

Humanity was not meant to be cowardly; we could not have evolved were that the case.

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The fascism train is chugging along. All the billionaire Oligarchs are aboard. Zuckerberg is a member of The Federalist Society.

All the spew and sputter about annexing countries and taking over territories are masking the biggies. Just wait til the Project 2025 team arrives at the station

As my WWII veteran Daddy said,

"Baby, you haven't seen the bombers yet, but rest assured they're coming."

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I did not know that he belongs to the Federalist Society. I would have refused to engage with advertising on FB, as I intend to do now, as soon as that information had become known. Leonard Leo is a dangerous conservative kingmaker.

I've heard he has more recently set his sights on taking over Hollywood with right wing messages dominating movies and tv shows as his new endgame. Why not, I guess. He's done stacking the Supreme Court and Trump has consolidated power. Leo's on to his next pet project.

ProPublica did an excellent piece on Leo not too long ago. Recommended reading on how we got here.

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Yes I read it and he is awful. Propublica does a great job

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We have seen the “bombers” but we sadly didn’t recognize them and the bloody war rages on as we complicity march to our death camps.

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I disagree Debbie we have voted Democratic we have donated to the causes. We have not been complicit in our own deaths. We’ve recognized the fear and hatred. What else can we do? I’m not giving into it. I’m just saying that we have recognized it and done that which we can do which in our circumstances, since we don’t have billions of dollars like musk and Zuckerberg, is to just hope and pray that someone like them have some form of integrity and recognize truth. IMO

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You are right and thank you for helping me to see I am wrong when I use complicity to describe our status. We haven’t been complicit and we have(I too) donated hundreds of dollars in $5.00 contributions ( my personal review of expenditures for contributions to the fight for our democracy over the past 8 years was literally in the low thousands, included phone calls, knocking on doors, post cards, protests, and rallies.) i just can’t believe or accept that we lost. Nothing worked and I don’t handle defeat well and I don’t know what else to do. I can no longer afford the contributions as I’m now retired, I live in a region where I’m afraid to be an open Democrat but I will never give up….

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It is challenging for me. FB is the platform to stay in touch with my childhood friends. It was amazing to reunite with people who are now part of my life. So dropping FB is going to be hard but doable. The real issue which i am surprised not many people talk about it is the use of WhatsApp. This app owned by META is one of the most powerful tools they have. I communicate with 90% of my friends (outside the US) via the app. My extended family and best friends abroad and i use the app for all different things, talking, video, and buying anything via business accounts. The chat groups are probably the craziest thing i have seen. Conspiracy after conspiracy from South America, or India or any emerging country to the United States and viceversa. I have argued with my more political friends that no one can understand the latino vote without understanding the influence of whatsApp and the family/friends chat groups. I never had twitter and always feel why decent people continue to be on such platform. Now i get it because ultimately is an addiction to instant information and a “place” for a lot of lonely people.

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I didn’t know that META also owned What’s App. Everyone with overseas friends uses it! This whole thing feels like I’m in a cave and it’s collapsing on top of me. Slowly crushing the ability to move and ultimately the life out of me.

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Same here. WhatsApp is the only sane way to be in touch with family overseas. I hate FB. I logged off in 2014 and never went back.

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I'm about to jump off the FB ship. Seems like I will be in good company.

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1dEdited

You will be! MAGA!!! Hahahaha. We would be a whole lot greater without all these reactionary billionaires who obviously have never heard of "The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs" much less read it!

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I was going to leave FB but too many people I love are there with content I can't access from them otherwise. My only meager solution is to never again engage with any advertising whatsoever or any hateful posts where things are getting heated. Best I can do.

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Yes, Meta goes Mega. And, Zuckerberg reveals that he is thoroughly intimidated by the sheer evil bullying power of Trump. Only truly brave and intelligent leaders can impress our younger generations with a moral compass that leaves Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg and other creepy cowards in their own dust heap.

Zuckerberg obviously emulates Musk's totally deceitful position about free speech--because Musk has power over Trump. He has no idea why Musk has this power other than Trump's quavering love of great wealth. He doesn't know why Putin and Musk know that Trump OWES them for their ability to manipulate the presidential election.

Bottom line: "Meta's fact-checking program was designed by the company, not journalists. It was intended to insulate the company from responsibility for misinformation that spread on the platform." 1984 has manifested, and what we need most is TRUTH in all forms. Thank you Judd and team!

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I feel like signing up for Facebook again just so I can cancel a second time.

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Hahahahahaha! When did you "kick the habit?"

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A few years ago. At the time, I remember, among other things, being tired of arguing with my Republican aunt. 😆

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I found myself absolutely FURIOUS with people I didn't know and would never meet. Made me think myself "gee, I bet there is all kind of other shit you could be doing, right?"

Didn't even know about the algorhythms yet. Not at that time.

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I kicked it in 2019, was an early user in 2008. About six months ago I got back on to monitor my “village’s” (unincorporated county) plans for road changes and links to the county to submit comments. But holy hell it changed so much. In 2014 I determined that Zuckerberg had ruined the world, but stayed for a few friends and my record group. My kid’s 30th birthday is tomorrow and I’d like to see that. And then I’m gone. Still active on IG, but knowing people can say my gay son has a mental illness is a hard pill to swallow across the platforms.

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I'm sorry that there are so many cruel people out there who cannot say to themselves "MYOB" and leave "nonconforming" folks alone!

I don't blame you at all RDB1172. FB can be toxic when abused!

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HAHAHA! Do we have the same Republican aunt? To keep the peace, she & I have generally agreed not to discuss politics.

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This is the definition of facsism. Total control of all media and “news.”

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Anybody on Meta or X is a fool.

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Can't say that you're wrong on that!

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IMHO:

The downfall of civilization started the day the transistor was invented: big old tubes supported TV, radio, record players; computers were unreliable and the size of Madison Square Garden. We read books, played musical instruments poorly together, and talked with each other. We read newspapers and photographed with film (OK, I love my digital camera, but you couldn't deep-fake film). No social media, cell phones or pagers. No computer games, and pinball machines were 100% mechanical.

And no AI.

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Meta, like Google, is staring at their breakup into multiple parts by the Justice Department, so it's little surprise that Zuckerberg gave away his integrity with this speech. He wants to hold on to FB, Instagram and WhatsApp as long as he can. It may work for now, but he's sold his soul. Trump will turn on him as soon as it's convenient to do so.

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Come on Zuckerberg never had any integrity. Didn’t he steal the company to begin with?

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You think Trump’s DOJ will breakup Meta? Haaa, haaa, haaa.

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Part of what Zuck said in his oh-so-sincere explanation (sarcasm intended) was that Trump would now help him with those other pesky countries trying to enforce their own laws. This is a global crisis.

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"His" soul? He has sold nothing but the U.S. and its citizens into a corporate dictatorship.

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Meta, by whatever name, was well aware of what it was doing. It knew that controversial content & other content that evokes emotional reactions equals clicks. Clicks = cash. They adjusted their factchecking and algorithms to get more clicks. As Judd’s reporting says, factchecking for them was deliberately undermined. It was more of a fig leaf. Now to please the Orange Menace, Zuckerberg has publicly dropped the pretense. To underline that he plucked Dana White from the Orange Menace’s orbit to be a Meta board member.

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Sickening and nauseating. Haven’t been on fb much since 2016 and now it's time to deactivate that and the ig account. I will miss all the cat videos on ig. Glad I never joined Threads.

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Good luck with that. I joined up when they first came out and recognized that it was something I really didn’t want to be a part of so even though I’ve never posted anything and made an attempt to not be a part of it I still will get a periodic Reminder to update my Facebook account. just saying it seems once they get your sign-up information it never actually gets deleted it. in my opinion

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As his platform now allows it...let me describe Zuckerberg as a big steaming pile of sh*t.

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Got rid of Instagram last night. Getting rid of Facebook after many years on the platform.

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