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Project Veritas: Facebook official argues for government breaking up social media giant
The investigative journalism group Project Veritas on Monday published an exposé and a highly edited undercover video it obtained of Facebook Global Planning Lead Benny Thomas arguing for the government to break up the social media giant, with him saying, “No king in the history of the world has been the ruler of two billion people, but Mark Zuckerberg is — and he’s 36.”
In the guerrilla journalism group’s video, which contains many jump cuts and visual effects, Thomas can be heard saying: “I would break up Facebook, which means I would make less money probably — but I don’t care. Like that’s what needs to be done. Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Oculus, WhatsApp — they all need to be separate companies. It’s too much power when they’re all one together.”
Facebook did not immediately respond to this reporter’s request for comment.
MORE ON PROJECT VERITAS: Project Veritas ‘permanently suspended’ from Twitter, says company spokesperson
“No king in the history of the world has been the ruler of two billion people, but Mark Zuckerberg is — and he’s 36,” Thomas said when talking about the control that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg exerts over the company. “That’s too much for a 36-year-old. You should not have power over two billion people. I just think that’s wrong.”
“Most people don’t understand these things and most people don’t think about them,” Thomas also said, “which is why a lot of s— goes down because a lot of people aren’t paying attention.”
Going on to talk about the topic of algorithmic bias, Thomas argued, “There’s always built-in [algorithmic] bias…Guess what? Human beings wrote that code.”
MORE ON FACEBOOK: Facebook’s ‘supreme court’ is looking to expand its powers
“We’re re-looking at the algorithms, but it’s such a massive and complicated thing that it takes time to fix it,” he added. “Honestly, I think we need to bite the bullet and do it quicker, but you lose a lot of money as well if you do that.”
On top of these things, Thomas expressed that he thinks Facebook’s massive voter registration effort played a role in ensuring President Joe Biden‘s 2020 presidential election victory.
“One of the things I worked on, which made me happy, was a voter registration drive,” he explained. “These are the kinds of things — this is the good side of Facebook. This is the kind of thing that you can only do with a company that has the sheer scale and reach of Facebook. We set ourselves a goal of registering four million new people and we went over that target, we did 4.5 [million]”.
Off camera, the Project Veritas journalist exclaimed, “Wow. Registering 4.5 million voters.”
“It’s a lot,” Thomas then replied.
It should be noted that Facebook previously disclosed this number from their 2020 voter registration drive. Snapchat, which is not owned by Facebook, says that it helped over 1 million register to vote for the high-turnout election.
The journalist then brought up his own thoughts on Biden, saying, “Yeah. I’m pretty sure he [Biden] won that way,” and asked: “What do you think?”
“Exactly, I think so too,” Thomas replied.
You can follow Douglas Braff on Twitter @Douglas_P_Braff.
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar was voted off the House Foreign Affairs Committee Thursday. The action was expected, as Republican members of Congress had criticized Omar’s antisemetic and anti-American rhetoric.
After intense debating on the House floor, the resolution passed with a 218-211 vote. Democrats attempted to pull the race card, accusing Republican House members of racism for removing Omar from the committee.
Omar also accused House Republicans of racism, saying, “I am Muslim, I am an immigrant, and interestingly, from Africa…Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted? Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy, or that they see me as a powerful voice that needs to be silenced?”
“There is this idea that you are a suspect if you are an immigrant or if you are from certain parts of the world or certain skin tone or a muslim.” Omar said during the heated debate. A fiery Alexandria Ocasia Cortez also chimed in shouting, “This is an attack on women of color!”
Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, from New York, said she had personally witnessed Omar spew anti-American rhetoric. Malliotakis said, “I have been in that committee room where, the representative, equates Israel and the United States to Hamas and the Taliban. Absolutely unacceptable for a member of that committee.”
A four-page resolution was written for the justification of removing Omar from the house Foreign Affairs Committee. The resolution states that in 2019, Omar suggested that Jewish people were buying U.S. political support when she posted on Twitter, “it’s all about the Benjamins, baby.”
Omar also commented on the September 11th attacks saying, “some people did something.” This type of comment is unacceptable for any representative who is sitting on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lawmakers said.
In the resolution it states that members of this committee should all be held to an “equal standard of conduct due to the international sensitivities and national security concerns under the jurisdiction of this committee.”
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