The Two Faces of Facebook
1st October 2015
Mark Steyn turns over a rock.
This tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons is a glum day for free speech. But that’s no reason for some “social media” billionaire not to make it worse. During her visit to New York for the grand UN dictators’ ball, Angela Merkel was overheard rebuking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for permitting people to post “anti-immigrant” sentiments on social media:
On the sidelines of a United Nations luncheon on Saturday, Merkel was caught on a hot mic pressing Zuckerberg about social media posts about the wave of Syrian refugees entering Germany, the publication reported.
The Facebook CEO was overheard responding that “we need to do some work” on curtailing anti-immigrant posts about the refugee crisis. “Are you working on this?” Merkel asked in English, to which Zuckerberg replied in the affirmative before the transmission was disrupted.
The very small cartel that run “social media” worldwide are increasingly hostile to free speech outside of a limited and largely trivial number of subjects. Ours will be the first civilization to slide off the cliff while watching cat videos.