Ross: Why Zuckerberg has a good point about Facebook’s political ads

At the Mark Zuckerberg hearing in Washington, D.C., Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez challenged Facebook’s decision not to fact-check campaign ads.

Ross: It’s up to us to battle social media manipulation

“Could I pay to target predominantly black zip codes and advertise to them the incorrect election date?” she posited.

Which of course, is voter suppression.

“No congresswoman you couldn’t,” Zuckerberg answered.

So Facebook won’t allow that. But what about this?

“Would I be able to run advertisements on Facebook targeting Republicans in primaries saying that they voted for the Green New Deal,” she continued. “I mean if you’re not fact-checking political advertisements I’m just trying to understand the bounds here.”

Zuckerberg answered that while lying is bad, in most cases, he doesn’t think it’s Facebook’s job to sanitize an unscrupulous politician.

And I think he had a good point.

The ongoing struggle for civility across Twitter

You can’t censor lies in a free country. For one thing it’s not practical. If we broadcasters had to bleep out lies, some press conferences would sound like Morse code.

So suppose AOC did run an ad falsely thanking a Republican for supporting her Green New Deal. A Republican could run an ad thanking her for supporting Trump’s Wall!

If it turns out, God-forbid, that a majority of the American electorate is that gullible, we deserve whoever gets elected. We will either learn from it, or end up in a safe zone patrolled by Russia.

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