Mark Zuckerberg: sorry, not sorry
Mark Zuckerberg is sorry he took the money, and not sorry he took the money, that led to him becoming one of the richest men on earth. In 2010, when advertisers were enriching his platform and Mark’s pockets in the run up to the 2012 election, Facebook asked the Federal Election Commission to “advise” on how to proceed and then challenged the answer.
This is at the same time that Facebook had Russian Oligarchs listed as a top investors in Mark’s platform, which helped afford him the luxury of buying high priced lawyers to support Google’s request “that political ads be exempt from disclaimer requirements, as did Aristotle International, a large provider of voter data.” What they argued was that the ads were already too small on social media and that they were more like bumper stickers that don’t require disclaimers (link).
This is a move that’s coming back to haunt both media giants as it’s now becoming known that “Robert Mercer backed a secretive group that worked with Facebook and Google to target anti-Muslim ads at swing voters.” (link)
Mark Zuckerberg has been warned several times over the years since his first inquiry into the law in 2010 about the dangers of political advertising. He was warned again in 2011. (link)
and then again in 2014 when even Fox “News” had to report that the FBI had warned Facebook and it’s users to scrub their accounts of personal information as it was being used against us by our enemies. (link)
Mark also knew about significant abuses to his platform in 2015, yet he still refused to make any meaningful changes. (link)
While Mark wanted to have an ideological debate about free speech in America and around the world, he was quick to comply with the laws pertaining to political advertising in other countries. (link)
As Mark used the money from Russian Oligarch’s to live out his personal dreams and skirt as many election laws as he could by reducing them to simple, ” bumper sticker ads” that helped boost his fortune to the next stratosphere, it seems Marks “Nice Dream” like the one portrayed by Cheech and Chong is going up in smoke as he says he’s ” sorry I took the money, I’m not sorry I took the money” over and over again since 2010. Questions remain whether “I’m sorry” is sufficient when you consider the damage he inflicted upon the world.
Virginia is a lifelong contributor to and supporter of the First Amendment.