(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Facebook Thinks America Needs to See Trump's Dumb Disinfo (Because Facebook Sucks) [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-10 Just some unrelated images of Facebook employees realizing Facebook sucks (See last link in dairy for context, original source is: https://gizmodo.com/facebook-papers-meta-climate-change-denial-1848956720) Recently, Meta decided to undo the one good decision it's ever made, and yesterday it let Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram. (As a reminder, Meta is the name Facebook chose for its rebrand to try and escape its connection with the rise of Donald Trump , its role in organizing the Jan 6 insurrection that broke a two-century streak of the peaceful transfer of power, and its role in genocide and giving kids eating disorders .) Now, cynics say that Trump never really used Facebook anyway, and this is mostly just a bid to remain relevant and make some money off Trump's campaign . The cynics are almost certainly right, but according to Meta, the supposedly high-minded decision is based on the premise that Americans “should be able to hear from a former President of the United States, and a declared candidate for that office again.” Do Americans really need Trump on Facebook for that, though? Probably not. After all, Trump's got his own social media platform now, and he never really used Facebook himself anyway. What's more, there's no need to let Trump back on social media to know what he has to say. While you could examine any number of issues to prove that Trump uses social media specifically to spread hate and disinformation that violates platforms' Terms of Service or Community Standards, we'll use his record on climate change as an example. After all, Facebook set up a Climate Science Center , tells people that it cares about combating misinformation , and gives token amounts of money to fact-checkers to look like it's taking action, while also failing to actually enforce these policies and exempting a ton of disinformation , including Trump's, from fact-checking. But let's take a look and see what the American people are missing by not having Trump on Meta's platforms. On Facebook, Trump promoted Marc Morano's second climate denial film (because it praised him) and lied about the Paris Agreement . On Twitter, the platform he actually used personally and not just as a campaign fundraising vehicle, Trump posted much more on climate, mostly to point to low local temperatures and ask what happened to global warming every time it was cold. The first time Trump appears to have made this 'joke' was in 2011 , and then in 2013 he used it again 6 different times . He was back at it in 2015 , again in 2017 and 2018 , and in 2019 he used it on at least three occasions . That's not all he said on climate, though. In addition to being responsible for popularizing the " winter weather trope " that uses the existence of cold to falsely cast doubt on climate change , Trump also set the standard for climate denial with his 2012 tweet that "global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." Then, in 2014 Trump used " hoax " or " HOAXSTERS " at least four times in reference to climate change. Never one to rest on his laurels, Trump lowered the bar even further with his final three climate tweets in 2019, before getting banned. Trump quoted a denier claiming that " there is no climate crisis " and tried and failed to troll Greta Thunberg. Is denying climate change and attacking political rivals really the sort of thing Facebook thinks Americans need to see more of? Apparently so! This makes sense when you remember that great WIRED story by Benjamin Wofford that explained how Facebook is basically run by Joel Kaplan. Kaplan was " a key part " in the "Brooks Bros Riot" that secured the 2000 election for Republicans, and he was rewarded for his efforts with a position in the George W. Bush administration, which he then used to prevent the EPA from acting on climate . Meta is letting a violent climate denier back on Facebook and Instagram because Meta is run by a climate denier with no qualms about the strategic use of violence to secure political victory. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/10/2152227/-Facebook-Thinks-America-Needs-to-See-Trump-s-Dumb-Disinfo-Because-Facebook-Sucks Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/