META MAGA
Since Facebook's TOS is so inconsistent, then I doubt Zuck's explanation isn't consistent either
Mark Zuckerberg says the Biden administration pressured META to “censor” information about COVID on Facebook and Instagram, and he regrets bowing down to government power and that he wouldn’t do the same thing today.
He made this “confession” in a letter to Jim Gym Jordan, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. This is purely political since Zuck sent this letter to the Chairman of shitting out lies from the Republican-controlled House.
The Biden administration's request that social media platforms not allow misinformation to be shared isn’t a secret, and Zuckerface's description is misleading. They didn’t force him.
Personally, as the cartoonist who’s been slapped, banned, blocked, suspended, wedgies, swirlied, and placed on super secret probation more than any other cartoonist in this nation (I stand by that. Fight me), I don’t want to hear it from Zuck. He’s crying that he was pressured to remove lies about the pandemic on his platform while his company shoots down everything I post that criticizes false information. Hell, Facebook and Instagram remove my cartoons that criticize Nazis.
Recently, I replied to a comment in a discussion about history and said something pertaining to when the Nazis invaded Poland, and for that, Facebook restricted my payouts from my monetization. I went from about $200 a month from Facebook to $19.00 because I wrote the word “Nazi.”
A few years ago, after building an audience of around 15,000, Meta disabled my Instagram account because of a cartoon on anti-LGBTQ policies of the nation of Brunei and Chick-fil-A. I still don’t know who complained, the Sultan of Brunei or Chick-fil-A. Then, Meta said it was a mistake on their part and they’d restore my Instagram, but they never did. And that’s why I had to rebuild with claytoonz2.0 on Instagram. .
It’s not just META that stomps on me. I’ve had posts removed from LinkedIn, videos removed from YouTube, and my 30-second videos removed from TikTok. Why, just today, I had the video for my Taco Bell cartoon removed from TikTok for spreading false information about elections. TikTok couldn’t recognize it was a joke that harvested ballots were hidden inside Chalupas.
Zuck wrote in his letter, “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.”
He’s whining that they “pressured” him to censor content about COVID-19. I doubt it was real pressure. The government asking him not to allow misinformation to run rampant seems responsible to me. I mean, Trump never asked him to stop spreading misinformation.
And, it’s not like Biden ordered him to remove his embarrassing hydrofoiling/country roads video.
But they never should have had to ask Zuckerberg to remove misinformation about a pandemic. He should have already been doing it. Today, Zuckerberg, just like Elon Musk with Twitter, allows misinformation to be published on his platforms, especially if it’s paid for.
I am constantly seeing ads for free Gibson Les Pauls. Trust me on this…nobody is giving away free Les Pauls or any guitars for that matter. If you report those ads, Facebook will just remove them from your timeline.
There are also bullshit memes I suspect are from the Russian Troll Farm made for people who are not critical thinkers. Did you see a post about Simone Biles donating $4 million to Kamal Harris’ campaign? That was fake and it makes me cry when liberals fall for this shit. Did you see the one about Kid Rock breaking attendance records for a concert in Central Park? There wasn’t a concert. Did you see the one about Jason Aldean refusing Taylor Swift’s request to go on tour with him? People actually believed she made the request. Did you see the one about Tim Allen and Mel Gibson starting a new no-woke TV network? Did you see the one about Andy Reid kicking players off his team for kneeling during the national anthem? There’s one of Michael Jordan saying Olympic athletes should lose their medals for kneeling and it’s accompanied by a photo of players kneeling from the San Francisco 49ers. These lies are never removed by Meta.
I just pulled all those examples from memory. I wondered how far would I have to scroll FB right now to find a new one. I just tried and the second post was about Shaquille O’Neal kicking George Clooney out of his restaurant for being woke. It’s true that once upon a time, Papa John was very anti-woke and run by a racist, but I’m not sure of the company’s policies now.
I just can’t see George Clooney walking into a Papa John and suddenly, Shaq pops up from behind the counter screaming, “No crazy bread for you, you sonofabitch. You fucked up Batman!” Yeah, maybe I could see that, but in Clooney’s defense, he made up for it with O’ Brother Where Art Though? (My hair!)
And did you see the meme about the Oasis reunion and concertgoers waiting in a queue for hours only to discover that when the wait was over, ticket prices had increased by hundreds of dollars? Wait, that one’s true. Fuck you, TicketMaster. What makes that one worse is when the concert finally arrives, ticket buyers will be forced to sit through two hours of Oasis.
You’d be better off forgetting the concert and staying home to listen to the records…by the Beatles since that’s who Oasis has ripped off for every song. But I digress.
Zuckerberg also regrets that he “temporarily” demoted a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop after a warning from the FBI that Russia was preparing a disinformation campaign against the Bidens.
That’s your fault, Zuck. The FBI NEVER said the laptop story was from Russia. They warned about disinformation from Russia, but they weren’t specific about the disinformation. You knew that story was from The New York Post, NOT Russia. Russia released other disinformation which I’m sure you didn’t censor.
Also, we still don’t know what the actual scandal is about Hunter owning a laptop. Was it full of Oasis songs? There’s nothing on the laptop that implicates President Joe Biden in a crime unless he was borrowing it to use Napster to illegally download Oasis songs. Then, I would finally believe he does have dementia. I digress…again.
I’m sure Facebook removed more cartoons criticizing Putin and Russia than they removed false information from Putin’s troll farm.
Also, none of this is censorship. I’m going to tell Zuckerberg the same thing I’m constantly replying to Elon Musk. Nobody has a constitutional right to post on social media. These platforms are NOT government-owned. If these goons remove your post, they did not violate your freedom of speech. My main complaint is that they never remove my content for the reasons they claim. They always claim a cartoon was removed for hate speech when I’m criticizing hate groups. It seems to me that they’re protecting hate groups.
Also, spreading lies, like “illegals” flooding the country to vote for Kamala Harris, is not free speech. Using a social media platform to coordinate white nationalist MAGA terrorists to attack the Capitol is not free speech. Posting images of Hunter Biden’s ding-dong is NOT free speech. And Republicans, why do you wanna see it so bad anyway?
Zuckerberg’s phrasing of this experience makes me believe he’s becoming nearly as bad as Elon Musk, who not only allows false information to run wild on X/Twitter, but shares it himself.
Or maybe Fuckerberg is as bad as Donald Trump since I received a lifetime ban from Truth Social. Seriously…I got me one of those and I’m quite proud of it. I only wish they would have told me which cartoon finally got to them.
Music note: I did NOT listen to Oasis while drawing this cartoon.
Drawn in 30 seconds:
Drawn with a voiceover:
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Excellent cartoon and the blog entry spells it out very well. To me, your writing about your cartoons and their rationale(s) is the extra value we get for paying attention (and subscribing). Most of the examples of weird FB shit had just been poorly filed away in my memory. You create a framework for understanding it from "50 thousand feet" as they used to say, and links together my memories of the stuff I've seen over months and years.
Great job Clay. I have been off FB, etc. for over a week. Fuck Zuckerberg, Elon, et al.