Facebook has been in the crosshairs of several personalities for its alleged breach of users’ privacy and is being investigated for antitrust violations. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Tesla CEO Elon Musk haven’t held back their feelings about the use social media giant, and now another noted personality has criticised the Menlo Park-based company. Geroge Soros, investor and philanthropist, has said proposed that Facebook Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg should be removed from control of the company.
In a letter to The Financial Times, the Hungarian-American billionaire said that Zuckerberg should stop obfuscating the facts by piously arguing for government regulation. He alleged that the company has ‘some kind of mutual assistance arrangement with Donald Trump’ that would help the US President get re-elected.
‘Mr Zuckerberg appears to be engaged in some kind of mutual assistance arrangement with Donald Trump that will help him to get re-elected. Facebook does not need to wait for government regulations to stop accepting any political advertising in 2020 until after the elections on November 4. If there is any doubt whether an ad is political, it should err on the side of caution and refuse to publish. It is unlikely that Facebook will follow this course,’ Soros wrote in the letter.
We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…????
— jack ???????????? (@jack) October 30, 2019
For those who don’t know, in October last year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took a stand and announced that the company has decided to ‘stop all political advertising’ on the platform globally. ‘We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,’ he added. About two weeks ago from this development, Zuckerberg had said that the company does not fact-check political ads that are present on the platform.
He argued that it’s not right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy. ‘Political advertising is more transparent on Facebook than anywhere else — we keep all political and issue ads in an archive so everyone can scrutinize them, and no TV or print does that. We don’t fact-check political ads. We don’t do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying,’ Zuckerberg had said.
