TIME FOR FACEBOOK TO FACE THE MUSIC

Summary: It has become disturbingly clear in the last couple of weeks that Facebook, the social media behemoth, has functioned as a knowing, a willing, deliberate participant in Russia’s effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 elections. It’s also become clear, after a much longer accumulation of evidence, that Facebook, as an institution, or at least a lot of Facebook’s management personnel, have been actively seeking to further the campaigns of Bernard Sanders and his twin, Donald Trump. Facebook has become a dank cesspit of Hillary-hatred, and it should answer therefor.

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If you’ve ever been sent to Facebook jail, i.e., banned or blocked from Facebook because something you said offended someone in their so-called community standards department, you know that Facebook has in place a whole series of opaque, nontransparent policies by which it purports to police its site.

What we have started to see is that this pattern of policing establishes that Facebook has for a long time been totally in the tank against Hillary Clinton, a dank cesspit of Hillary-hatred.  Moreover, that same pattern of policing was also followed up by Facebook getting caught in an awkward lie about selling advertising to Russian trolling entities seeking to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Indeed, a simple Google search of “Facebook selling ad space to Russian troll farms” pulls up approximately 1,300,000 results.

This rather shocking information, disclosed to investigators just a few days ago, after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had gone on record repeatedly denying the existence of any Facebook ad deal with Russian entities, raises some fairly serious questions about the institutional loyalty of Facebook to the United States, about Zuckerberg’s trustworthiness, and about whether Facebook knew or should have known what was going on, especially in light of Adrian Chen’s June, 2015 (!) reporting on Russian troll farms in the New York Times magazine, and similar reporting in The Guardian from April of that year.

Certainly, it’s fairly clear that there was no love lost between Facebook and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Yet, Hillary was one of the best prepared candidates we've had, not just on the Democratic side, but in general.

Unfortunately, a great many people couldn’t get past the fact that Hillary Clinton was a strong woman with a strong track record of strong achievements.

The Sanders campaign, acting out of what now appears to have been a combination, let us tell the truth and shame the devil, of traditional Eastern European Jewish misogyny, coupled with the equally pernicious political misogyny of the Third International, appealed to the worst form of sexual prejudice in American society.

The misogyny of the "progressive" Sanders left, irrespective of source, created a malign chemistry which found its bitterest form when its superannuated comsymp gasbag from Burlington didn't get the Democratic nomination.  Instead of doing what Democrats used to do, which is rally to the party’s candidate after the primaries were over, the “Bernie or bust” contingent chose to fight the Party to the bitter end, like Japanese holdouts on Pacific islands after World War II.

Not only did the “Bernie or bust” militant tendency act as a fifth column for Trump, they also eagerly cohabited, as it were, with the Russian intelligence apparat, giving aid and comfort to their trolls.

In all this, Facebook was complicit. It had and maintained, and continues to have and maintain, a double standard, rigorously policing posts from Hillary supporters and censoring them at the drop of a hat, while giving complete carte Blanche to Trump and Sanders trolling.

Indeed, evidence now suggests that a substantial percentage of Trump and Sanders comments on Facebook were, and continue to be, posted by Russian or Eastern European sock puppets masquerading as Americans to inject phony news stories, or “fake news” into the American social media universe. Moreover, it now appears that Facebook may very well have known exactly what was going on.

Add to that the existence of the eager collusion, now established by clear and convincing evidence, between the Trump campaign and the Russian intelligence apparat, and it’s not hard to see why Facebook should be justifiably facing a public relations nightmare.

It’s not difficult deplore the way Facebook consistently enables Sanders and Trump. Nor is it difficult to deplore the way in which Clinton supporters, who have been calling out such trollery on Facebook have suffered institutional retaliation, by being blocked or banned from Facebook.  Such blocking and banning suggests that the Hillary supporters have hit uncomfortably close to home.

For example, a couple of friends of mine, both supporters of Hillary Clinton, were recently banned from Facebook after posting mildly uncomplimentary posts about Donald Trump and Bernard Sanders to which Facebook's so-called Community standards department took exception. This, after both of these friends had been subjected to all manner of vicious personal attacks from Trump and Sanders trolls.

This supports an inescapable conclusion that Facebook is a dank cesspit of Hillary-hate, and that their so-called community standards operation is a bunch of Trump and Sanders trolls. Facebook, in short, maintains, has maintained, and will probably continue to maintain, a policy of maximum leeway for Trump and Sanders trolling, but a zero tolerance policy toward anything that would offend the snowflake sensibilities of Trump or Sanders cultists.

Wait till the snowflakes start bawling and squalling and slinging snot. And wait until Facebook begins lashing out at the bad publicity that is justly coming its way for selling ads to known Russian intelligence operations trying to influence our elections.

Facebook has evidently violated not only federal election law, in taking foreign money to buy ads to influence the outcome of the election, but also California election law, which not only prohibits the same thing, but also makes illegal the donation of more than $99 to any political campaign without full disclosure of the identity of the contributor.

It's time Facebook faced the music. Since it is headquartered in California, it should have to answer not only to the Federal Elections Commission, but also to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, for its substantial undisclosed contributions for the Trump and Sanders campaigns. And I'll be most curious to see how it explains itself to special counsel Robert Mueller for its acceptance of ad buys it knew or should have known were unlawful.

Mark Zuckerberg should think long and hard about retaining competent DC criminal defense counsel.