Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Turn Meta [Back] into a Pogrom Machine
According to WSJ, Meta has agreed to pay $25 million to lose the frivolous lawsuit Trump launched after Facebook exercised its prerogative under the First Amendment not to platform Trump’s insurrection anymore in 2021.
Meta Platforms has agreed to pay roughly $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit that President Trump brought against the company and its CEO after the social-media platform suspended his accounts following the attack on the U.S. Capitol that year, according to people familiar with the agreement.
Of that, $22 million will go toward a fund for Trump’s presidential library, with the rest going to legal fees and the other plaintiffs who signed on to the case. Meta won’t admit wrongdoing, the people said. Trump signed the settlement agreement Wednesday in the Oval Office.
A Meta spokesman confirmed the settlement.
[snip]
Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended in 2021 because of posts he made around Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob stormed the Capitol building. In the days leading up to the attack and on Jan. 6, he repeatedly used the platforms to make false claims that he won the 2020 election and alleged widespread election fraud that was denied by the administration’s top election-security experts and attorneys.
Zuckerberg, at the time, said the risks of the president’s using the social-media platforms during that period “are simply too great” and then paused the president’s accounts for two weeks. The pause was subsequently lengthened.
Most people — including Elizabeth Warren, in the WSJ story — are focusing on how this is effectively a bribe, a $22 million donation (on top of the earlier $1 million one) trading for regulatory favors. It is. Trump continues to engage in unprecedented corruption in plain sight.
But it is more than that. The concession of the settlement implies that Facebook should not have banned Trump for using their platform to incite an insurrection, though it admits no wrong-doing.
I have repeatedly argued that if Twitter, along with Facebook, had not shut down Trump’s account after January 6, there was a good chance that Joe Biden would never have been inaugurated.
Mark Zuckerberg’s capitulation makes it far less likely Meta will do the same thing — take action against Trump’s account to prevent him from stoking ongoing violence — again. It makes it virtually certain that Meta will not police inciteful content involving Trump without buy-in from the top, from Zuck.
And that, along with Meta’s earlier capitulations to Stephen Miller to rejigger its algorithms to allow transphobic and other dehumanizing speech — which experts predicted would lead to the kind of violence Facebook fostered in Myanmar — means that when Trump next uses these platforms to incite violence, he’s far less likely to be shut down.
Heck, John Roberts has even provided guidelines to Trump on how to ensure such incitement will be an official act and therefore immune from any future prosecution. Trump simply needs to involve his top aides — someone like Stephen Miller — in crafting a post, and Trump will be able to say that John Roberts told him that Trump never goes to prison for it.
Stephen Miller has, for some time, been laser focused on re-weaponizing social media. He is suspected to be the one who pitched Musk on bringing “the boss himself, if you’re up for that!” back onto Xitter.
Then, last summer, Miller attempted to intervene in Trump’s document case when Jack Smith asked Aileen Cannon to prevent Trump from falsely claiming the FBI tried to assassinate him because it issued routine use of force guidelines for the search of Mar-a-Lago. Miller argued that Trump’s false claims on social media about the FBI — earlier ones of which had already led to a violent attack on the FBI — were not incitement and constituted important speech for the election.
The only possible constitutional exception to free speech the government has identified is incitement. But it cannot rely on that exception to justify infringing President Trump’s rights. President Trump has not engaged in speech that “prepare[s] a group for violent action [or] steel[s] it to such action.” Brandenburg, 395 U.S. at 448. It cannot be said that by merely criticizing—or, even as some may argue, mischaracterizing—the government’s actions and intentions in executing a search warrant at his residence, President Trump is advocating for violence or lawlessness, let alone inciting imminent action. The government’s own exhibits prove the point. See generally ECF Nos. 592-1, 592-2. 592-3, 592-5. The government presents no evidence that President Trump advocated a violent attack or other lawless action against the Department of Justice, the FBI, President Biden, this Court, any witness, or any other person. Much less has the government proved a call to arms or any request, demand, instruction, or implication that supporters should violate any law.
And all this is happening after Trump pulled the security detail from several people — most notably Anthony Fauci and Mark Milley — who’ve long been targeted, the latter by Iranian terrorists as well as Trump’s people. Indeed, one of the attacks Smith focused on in his successful DC bid for a gag was Trump’s attack suggesting Milley should be executed.
This is not just about eliciting a bribe for regulatory favors. It is not just about winning an argument about actions taken four years ago to halt an insurrection in process.
The entire lawsuit is about an ongoing chilling effect. And Zuck’s capitulation is a capitulation to that chill, a soft commitment that the next time Trump uses social media to launch his mob against vulnerable targets like trans people or legal Haitian immigrants, against co-equal branches of government in Congress or the courts, or against his select targets like Milley, Meta will do nothing to slow the mob.
For years, Stephen Miller has been perfecting the use of social media to sow fascism. And he just cowed one of the richest men in the world to make it a more effective tool for fascism.
A Trump presidential library is almost a contradiction in terms.
Zuckerberg has always been like this.
When asked how he obtained information for his just launched social network, he replied
I wonder which Mar-a-Lago bathroom Trump will designate as a library to store all his records. It won’t need to be a big one since the only book in there will be a copy of the Trump Bible. And that will be for sale.
Mein Kampf will be next to his golden bible.
Trump doesn’t read books. He likes seeing his name in print, and he likes selling books with his name on/in ’em, but he’s got no use for Mein Kampf.
Now Stephen Miller—that I could believe.
This 1990 Vanity Fair article suggests that it wasn’t Mein Kampf but Hitler’s speeches that Trump loved:
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1990/9/after-the-gold-rush
For Trump it’s all about control and Hitler showed him how to do that: the big lie.
Predictably enough, he’s already blaming the Boston crash on DEI.
$22 million for a Trump presidential library?
There are coloring books for a fiver on Amazon. Chuck in a few packs of crayons and you’d still have change from a 10.
And having paid for protection once, Zuck is now even more of a target for repeated payments.
“Nice social media site you’ve got here. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it.”
“Before we act on what you’ve requested, we’d like you to do us a favor, though.”
Two things I’ll be watching, to see how folks outside the C suite at Meta react: (1) changes to user behavior – will folks start to leave Facebook, as they did from Twitter when Musk became too much, and (2) changes to the stock price of Meta, as investors see this as the beginning of an ongoing financial drain. Either of those would be painful to Zuck, but both would be devastating.
On Meta’s earnings call yesterday afternoon, a BofA analyst asked what changes Meta has seen in their users and advertisers since they got rid of fact-checking.
The fact that BofA asked the question, complete with the comment about US politics, tells me — and Meta — that Wall Street is watching.
Edited to add: CNBC’s story on the earnings call has this as the headline: “Mark Zuckerberg starts Meta earnings call by praising Trump administration” and their story opens like this:
Oh how nice. CEO and CFO gave non-responses on subscriber numbers as “usage and advertiser adoption.” CFO points to current ad spending — except ad spending is a lagging indicator as it follows subscriber numbers.
The one nit I have with the question they avoided is that it should have been a bit more specific. Facebook in some countries was obligated to keep fact checking in place; I would have asked if there was a loss of subscribers in all countries or just in countries where fact checking was pulled, as ad spending will drop as users peel away.
Or is Meta expecting monetization of Threads to make up for any drops in revenue as users leave Facebook.
Zuckerberg might to look at what x/twitter did after musk bought it. Value of x has plummeted 80% since then.
I already went through one years-long self-imposed exile of Facebook around 2010, when I learned that most of my purported friends from what used to be considered marginally progressive Upstate New York had turned into Republicans and gun fellators. For my mental health, I’m about to embark on another.
Zuck hasn’t turned the apple cart over like Musk did, so maybe my part in the not-participating is for naught.
I deleted my fb months ago after fifteen years.
Regarding (1) above, although I never have been a significant user of Facebook or Instagram, in response to Zuck’s recent capitulations, I’ve deleted my Facebook account, have limited my Instagram use to about 2 minutes/day (mostly to check DMs), and deleted all Meta apps from my phone, accessing them only from my computer browser and only sparingly. Although I know full abstinence would send a stronger message, I feel like what I’ve done deprives them of app-download numbers and engagement–things that are critical to a data-collecting, ad-selling business and thus relevant to (2) above.
Many others have surely already moved in this direction, but I’m trying to be a lot more conscious of how I interact with the broligarchs’ machinery so I can minimize it as much as possible. I know my actions have a small effect on these businesses, but the potential for aggregate effects is real. Not only can this potentially affect these businesses’ bottom lines, it also deprives Trump, albeit indirectly, of the attention (i.e., clicks, engagement, etc.) he so desperately seeks for himself and his actions.
In this transitory time for me, it makes me all the more grateful for intrepid reporters like Marcy and the space she (and others–you know who you are) have built here. Although it is a disquieting time in America, I am heartened to know that I can reliably find solid and critical information on Emptywheel. Thank you to all who make it possible!!
So does this put the ABC payout in a new light?
(all these budding librarians…sheesh)
The ABC payout always looked like a bribe. Disney, ABC’s parent, wants to shed ABC and it didn’t need ABC to become a target of Trumpery devaluing the network as an asset.
Had ALL news networks gone hard on Trump during 2020 and earlier, Trump likely would have lost but apparently networks are completely compromised or braindead when it comes to analyzing for long-term shareholder value. CNN is fucked, for example, because it went into the tank for Trump and stayed there, and has now shed massive numbers of viewers.
This. Rayne, the corporate media created “Trump” The Brand in the first place. Since 2015, and especially since his candidacy provided clickbait in 2016, they have perceived him as a winner–for them. This is not exactly a secret. It has been to their advantage to sanewash the factual insanity and bothsides the unforgivable, the media campaign that rendered Biden “old” and Trump “vigorous.”
Off the record they will tell you, these access reporters, that they see what you do, that they’re not blind or stupid; they just have an obligation…Unfortunately that obligation is not to the truth. It is to Jeff Bezos. Or, in the case of the NYT, to the foreseeable future of their subscriber base. And with the networks? It’s pretty obvious. And obviously unpretty.
I question I keep returning to is – do the richest people in the world really need Trump? The top billionaires have access to wealth and resources the world has never seen. I can’t help but wonder who comes out on top if they go head-to-head with Trump. I don’t think it’s a forgone conclusion that Trump would win. Mega-billionaires and their tech resources vs. a corrupt government run by incompetent fools and an easily-manipulated, easily bribed narcissist. Years ago, France tried a massive tax on the ultra-wealthy, who promptly picked up and left the country, causing France to drop the tax. Targeting the ultra-rich is not necessarily easy to do. Elon may be coming around to this point of view, as he has apparently manipulated Trump pretty effectively so far. If more of them decide they don’t need to fear him, that would make for interesting times. Of course one possible outcome of that is the corporate state played out in so many science fiction stories. Again, I don’t know the answer to this question, but I don’t think it’s a forgone conclusion.
Trump and musk are joined at the hip. I think musk is exerting control. This is the oligarchy.
The email sent put offering buyout of all federal employees is very close to the one musk sent out to Twitter employees, which was the start of the decline of Twitter and loss of 80% of its value.
As Arendt said, the “banality of evil” when she described Eichmann as an average, dull person, just looking for a professional promotion, motivated by something similar to the Prosperity theory of rightwing theology.
Down Pat
Mitch got the pitch down Pat,
straight to and from their autocrat,
When Murkowski came to bat,
she pretended it wasn’t all that.
The coaches are all in on the scam,
Bad faith hits another grand slam,
They don’t care we know it’s a sham,
They say aloud they don’t give a damn.
The base’s loaded for another steal,
A grand bargain with a sunk deal,
Even the grifters called it surreal,
sitting next to the Presidential Seal.
Cheating just to walk a hall
that allegedly is owned by all,
The GOP’s written on the wall:
“We gladly cause our republic to fall.”
Turkish candy and Russian delights
mean more to them than our rights,
Republicans hide behind dirty fights:
Last to leave, turn off the lights.
1/31/20
Arendt wrote a 3-part series in The New Yorker on the Eichmann trial. The first part is free:
The other two parts are behind a paywall. The three parts were turned into the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, which is free here:
The phrase “banality of evil” appears only twice, near the end.
She writes that she expected to see a monster, but realized he was not one.
Which is not to say that there aren’t monsters.
Tip of the Speer
The landfill and the trash bin
had a meeting in the dark,
They came across a jar of gin
as junkyard dogs began to bark.
The cost of opportunity
was not wasted on these two,
They knew that in their unity
they’d cook up some foul woo woo.
They found a moldy blueprint
an architect had tossed,
smudged roughly with a shoe print
where a body politic had crossed.
Just as Goebbels’ propaganda
was the tip for Albert Speer,
this trash now had command of
a message that is clear:
Put the con in confidence,
Place the con in fraud,
Guarantee a providence
and repeat it, then applaud.
Lead them down a garden path,
Promise them the moon,
Then sling a slimy mud bath,
And sing another tune.
It’s time to do the Dersh Walk,
So, give yourself a pinch,
Don’t let truth cause you to balk
because lying is a cinch.
2/3/20