The tech boss is finally being recognized as the American villain he is, rather than the folk hero he’s tried to present himself as.

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The Daily Beast

any have understandably applauded Facebook’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the site for the next two years, but the ability of a company to decide who should be in the public square, which the social network has effectively become, raises troubling questions about the future of our tattered democracy.

The decision was announced by Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom who’s now the vice president of global affairs at the social network, but there’s no question that the final call here belonged to Facebook’s co-founder, chairman, CEO, and controlling stockholder.

Not long ago, Mark Zuckerberg was a kind of folk hero to many Americans, a nerd who made billions with an idea developed at a Harvard dorm. He was a firm believer in free speech as recently as 2019, even to the point of offending the progressive cognoscenti. All that has changed, along with the political currents.

His free speech views faded when they became a threat, rather than a boon, to his bottom line. Now, rather than being seen the way he wants to be, as an open-minded entrepreneur and even a potential presidential candidate, Zuckerberg finally stands exposed as a leading member of the new techno-aristocracy manipulating the world and shaping our society to fit their own world view, while getting ever richer in the process.

This ascendency offers little for most Americans, even as Americans have provided so much to Zuckerberg and his ilk as tech has become ever more concentrated and monopolistic, putting a lie to the heroic myth of “a guy and a garage.” Since 2019, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have added more than two and a half trillion dollars to their valuation, including record-breaking profits in 2020 as the pandemic shut down much of the in-person economy, while workers and consumers have faced stagnant incomes and purchasing power.

This is, as the left of center American Prospect put it, “predatory capitalism.”

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House republicans request emails between Zuckerberg and Fauci

 

Top Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees penned a letter to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Wednesday asking for the company to hand over communication between Zuckerberg, Facebook employees, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other health officials.

 

The request comes after emails between Fauci and Zuckerberg, obtained by Buzzfeed News, show Zuckerberg soliciting help from the nation’s top infectious disease expert to promote access to reliable health information for its users. 

Lawmakers want to know if Fauci influenced Facebook's decision to ban posts from users questioning the origins of COVID-19 claiming the virus was engineered.