October 31, 2019

"Are we really going to run an ad that claims Kamala Harris ran dog fights out of the basement of a pizza place while Elizabeth Warren destroyed evidence that climate change is a hoax and the deep state sold meth to Rashida Tlaib and Colin Kaepernick?"

The famous screenwriter Aaron Sorkin imagines the Facebook chief operating officer saying to Mark Zuckerberg. From "An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook isn’t defending free speech, it’s assaulting truth" (NYT).

The funniest part of the op-ed is all the corrections...
Correction: Oct. 31, 2019
An earlier version of this article misstated the year in which "The Social Network" was released. It was 2010, not 2011. The nature of the major lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker was misstated. It was an invasion of privacy lawsuit, not a defamation suit. In addition, information about Americans' use of Facebook as a news source was misstated. In 2018, over 40 percent of Americans said they got news from Facebook; it is not the case that half of all Americans say that Facebook is their main source of news.
I'm sure Sorkin thought he was writing true things and the NYT editors let it by. That conveniently shows why Facebook doesn't want to take responsibility for the truth of all the ads. It's too hard! And trying to do it gives the false impression that you've done what you've set out to do. That could be more anti-truth than standing back and announcing that we're not checking anything so smarten up Facebookers, because you're on your own.

39 comments:

tim in vermont said...

They want Facebook to enforce orthodoxy, not truth.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

It's weird how Schitt-y everyone on the left is.
They make up schitt in order to pedal the idea that the other side is making stuff up.

Lucien said...

Would they really allow ads that said Trump referred to neo-nazis as “fine people”, that Michael Brown was murdered, that Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset, that HRC came under sniper fire, that Anything Adam Schiff said was true, or that Juicy Smolet was attacked by racists?

TreeJoe said...

Maybe the NYT shouldn't be allowed to run political ads or even political opinion columns either.

I mean, really, where do we draw the line?

Rick said...

Zuckerberg needs to ask Sorkin if Facebook should have rejected Dem ads for Obamacare which included the claims Obamacare would save the "typical" family 2,500 / year and or would not force people to drop coverage they liked.

Small minded people apply restrictive policies to their opponents but never believe their own statements should be covered by the same standard.

stevew said...

If that is the worst of the corrections then I'll just say, whatevs. But, shame on the editors for not confirming the facts before publishing - that is one of the more important parts of their job.

Read an interesting article today on ZDnet. Titled: "Exclusive: Internet pioneer Kleinrock returns to fix what ails the internet"

Here is a brief intro: "Fifty years after sending the first internet message, scientist Leonard Kleinrock has gone back to the drawing board with a plan for how to save the internet from fake news and abusive social networks and everything else that ails it. Kleinrock spoke with ZDNet in an exclusive interview about his plans for a new blockchain based on personal reputation."

His plan is to capture and catalog public interactions and actions in order to develop a personal reputation score that can be used to combat fake news and abuse in the social media. Sounds rather like Big Brother, but motivated by truth seeking rather than power and control.

Then there is Chappelle and Obama criticizing SJWs and cancel culture. Growing push back on the tabloidization of media, social and otherwise.

Gk1 said...

Its a mugs game for an ISP or Facebook to be responsible for content on the internet. Thats a fundamentally flawed premise. Zuckerberg was a complete imbecile for attempting to provide "fact checking" or trying to be an arbiter of truth on FB.

PM said...

Of course Aaron knows the truth we're too stupid to know.

Nonapod said...

I wouldn't mind reading the actual piece, but evidently the NYT wants to know who I am and won't let me just annoynmously read it. It's sort of ironic, you have an opinion piece about how a powerful organization is allegedly its power by allowing political advertising is requiring advertizing to even read it.

eric said...

There's another update you should add to this post.

Mark Zuckerberg responded to Mr. Sorkin by quoting his fake president from one of his shows.

It's a rather clever response.

I don't know how to coy and paste it over here because I'm seeing it on Twitter as a picture.

Darrell said...

Aaron Sorkin prefers the lies he makes up.

Iman said...

Put the crackpipe down, hands in the air, Aaron Sorkin!

Mark said...

Count me among those who have NEVER gotten news from Facebook. I've never even seen news on Facebook.

Jeff Brokaw said...

“... you’re on your own”

One thing the last 10 years has taught us—with the rise of Facebook becoming a widely accepted “news disguised as opinion” aggregator—is that a large percentage of people like to put their brains on auto-pilot and have their opinions pre-formed and handed to them. The emotional engagement though, is HIGH. Maxed out.

So they don’t know why they believe anything but they damn sure believe it 1000%! Also, it’s all those other Wrongthink People that are stupid and ill-informed.

Facebook, whatever it’s benefits may be, has been a diaster for humanity on this front. Unequivocally.

mockturtle said...

These people don't require fake news to make them look bad.

Lurker21 said...

Sorkin also had Jeff Daniels misunderstand statistics in the first episode of The Newsroom. It wasn't intentional. Sorkin didn't understand. If the US is very low in the world tables of infant mortality rates, it's not a bad thing.

Sorkin likes to have his characters spout facts and statistics at the rate of machine gun fire, but he's not a great fact guy. And it may not just be the result of the drugs he was taking back then.

Lurker21 said...

"Are we really going to run an ad that claims Kamala Harris ran dog fights out of the basement of a pizza place ..."

At this point that could only help her.

For all we know, Cory Booker and T-Bone might have been doing the same thing.

Steven said...

"I'm sorry, we can't run your ad. You see, you voted for the act establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was designed to be entirely free of oversight by elected officials, even as to its budget. Accordingly, since you oppose democracy, it is a blatant lie to call yourself a 'Democrat'."

Sebastian said...

"I'm sure Sorkin thought he was writing true things and the NYT editors let it by."

Why are you sure about that?

To speak Althousian, I can't believe you think that a Hollywood prog cares about the truth of a polemic! It's sad that you think NYT editors are caring and competent enough to vet prog BS for truth rather than truthiness!

Swede said...

We had to destroy the village in order to save it.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

As wild as they let their imagination run, they can conceive of fake news coming from the left

n.n said...

Speaking truth to facts.

BarrySanders20 said...

I like the term Facebookers. It sounds like Faceboogers, which makes more sense than the original.

But I know: That snot funny.

Martin said...

"Are we really going to run an ad that claims the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with the Russian govt to fix the election?"

"Are we really going to run an ad that claims that Trump insisted that the Ukrainian President help Rudy Giuliani investigate Joe Biden's intervention in domestic Ukrainian affairs that benefited his son, Hunter, when Joe was VP, as a condition of receiving US aid?"

Gee, Sorkin, I see your point.

Michael K said...

Is Sorkin still carrying cocaine through airports ?

Mike Sylwester said...

Jesus and Satan really did arm-wrestle each other, competing for "likes", so those ads should stay on Facebook.

Mike Sylwester said...

Is Facebook really going to let Diamond and Silk post videos?

After all, they are Black women supporting Donald Trump -- and so that is a violation of community standards.

narciso said...

I was just about to ask that, well the only good thing about the newsroom was olivia munn, he really capture Zuckerberg, because they are so much alike,

tim in vermont said...

"scientist Leonard Kleinrock has gone back to the drawing board with a plan for how to save the internet from fake news and abusive social networks and everything else that ails it.”

He plans to solve all of the problems by replacing them with worse problems.

“Sounds rather like Big Brother, but motivated by truth seeking rather than power and control.”

Ha ha ha ha ha! Ever hear the joke about the guy who ends up burning in Hell because he liked the brochure?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

That conveniently shows why Facebook doesn't want to take responsibility for the truth of all the ads. It's too hard!

Mmmm... not really. Depends how gullible you are.

stevew said...

@Skylark

I know - reeks of "what could possibly go wrong"! But I like that he acknowledges the problem.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

't

Steven said...

@eric:

The bit from The American President, written by Sorkin, is:

"America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You've gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say, 'You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.' You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the land of the free."

Temujin said...

Sorkin does his best work when he has two people walking swiftly, urgently, as if they had the most important thing that they had to get done. They're always talking in a staccato of words showing just how smart they are while making allusions to universal truths. They both nod and talk and nod and talk furiously, using lines that no actual human uses in any conversation, ever.

JamesB.BKK said...

There's some weird code apparently where they have to tell you what they're up to. Thank you Aaron Sorkin, overrated made man Hollywood-DC conduit lefty fever dream political porn writer, for the info. I had no idea the deep state sold meth. I only understood that the CIA was into child kidnapping and torture and flying dope into the US via Mena Arkansas and facilitation and suppression of information thereof with assists from the FBI. Finders Keepers. https://twitter.com/FBIRecordsVault/status/1187790941215584256

JamesB.BKK said...

Also assisted by United States Attorney [Redacted], among others. See PAGE FOUR AND PAGE FIVE. Apologies for the omission.

JamesB.BKK said...

Being subject to manufactured consent that your local government cannot prevent the desecration of national symbols is a psyop.

JamesB.BKK said...

The NYT going to fiction writers for content seems a bit more in their wheelhouse lately.

Unknown said...

What happened to the My Truth crowd?

Now commies have one truth