Nothing to see here. Last week, Facebook announced that, despite what users have indicated they want to see in their newsfeed by “liking” or “following” certain pages, Facebook will now decide for their users, which news sources they will be able see in their news feed. Now, Facebook Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Gary Briggs has announced he’s leaving to help Democrats win the upcoming mid-term and 2020 presidential elections. According to Breitbart, Briggs’ move into politics adds credence to the rumors that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may be considering a run for the U.S. presidency.

There are so many questions that Facebook should be answering in the wake of this announcement. Will Gary Briggs take critical and invaluable personal data with him to the DNC, that Facebook has collected from its users for years? Will Gary Briggs’ Facebook marketing team return the fortune in advertising dollars they’ve collected from conservative publishers they no longer deem worthy of appearing in the news feed?  After all, many conservative news publishers have paid Facebook’s marketing team handsomely to bring new interested users to their Facebook pages, which Facebook will now decide if they can still see in their news feed. After Donald Trump shocked the world and crushed Hillary in the 2016 presidential election, which Democrat executive at Facebook made the decision to limit the news sources their users would be allowed to see?

Facebook’s Gary Briggs was also vocal about the possible Russian influence on the U.S. elections.

Facebook CMO Gary Briggs said the social media company is prioritizing the issue of Russian influence on U.S. elections, while speaking at PRWeek’s annual conference on Thursday morning.

“At every level of the company, this is a major issue we’re thinking about and working towards,” Briggs said at the Swipe Right event in New York City.

Last month, Facebook turned over data collected before the 2016 presidential election, as well as 470 accounts and pages linked to Russian agents. Congress is preparing to release those ads to the public, an action Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said this week that she “absolutely supports.” –Pr Week

Facebook executive chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg is not exactly a “nuetral” player when it comes to politics. Sandberg came out for Hillary Clinton with an endorsement posted on her Facebook site – just months after the company faced scrutiny for claims of anti-conservative bias in how it curates news.

Sandberg, who wrote about her role as a top woman executive in her book ‘Lean In,’ said her support for Clinton ‘is not because she is a woman. It is because she is the most qualified candidate – and she is the leader we need.’

‘We need a leader whose policies reflect where we’re going, not where we’ve been. There is still so much to do – on equal pay, on equality in the workplace, on building a society where everyone has the chance to reach his or her potential, regardless of background, gender, race, or sexual orientation,’ she said.

In May, Facebook was under fire after a reporter in Gizmodo claimed the company’s ‘news curators’ claimed they were instructed to ‘inject’ popular stories into Facebook’s news feed, while individual curators allegedly kept hot conservative topics off the list.
‘Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending, a former curator told the site, listing such topics as former IRS official Lois Lerner, Republican Rand Paul, and other topics.

The fury over the disclosure prompted congressional inquiries, while Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg met with leading conservatives to try to tamp down the crisis.

He denied the alleged activity and wrote on Facebook, ‘It doesn’t make sense for our mission or our business to suppress political content.’

‘I know many conservatives don’t trust that our platform surfaces content without a political bias,’ he continued. ‘I wanted to hear their concerns personally and have an open conversation about how we can build trust.’

 

Briggs announced the move in a Facebook post:

https://www.facebook.com/garybriggs/posts/10154946712571106

UPDATE: After getting slammed on social media, Facebook announced that they will now allow users to decide which sources of news they recognize and trust. They have published their two- question poll that will determine the fate of many conservative news sources like ours, with millions of users who have been following our pages for years. Publishers will have no access to the responses to these polls, or any way to verify the results. After paying tens of thousands of dollars to Facebook in advertising fees for years, we’re just supposed to trust that they have everyone’s best interests in mind.  Because no one at Facebook with any decision making power would have any bias towards a particular party of ideology…right?

Here’s a screen shot of that survey posted on Buzzfeed:

 

Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.


We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.