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March 29
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company's new moves to protect the US election. These include blocking new political advertisements a week before the election and labeling messages containing disinformation, in particular regarding the coronavirus, and messages from politicians announcing victory, before all results are tallied, Charlie Warzel writes for New York Times.

Many debate how effective these measures will be in preventing election night chaos during a pandemic. However, the question of how deeply Facebook is embedded in the fabric of democracy does not seem to be up for debate.

Zuckerberg's post on election security reminded me of an excerpt from a 2017 article by journalist Max Read. Three years ago, he received a similar pledge from Zuckerberg to ensure the integrity of the German election. He wrote that the commitment was admirable, but also a tacit acknowledgment of Facebook's immense power.

This is a statement that Facebook assumes the level of power at the same time outside the state, as a sovereign, self-regulating, supranational organization, within which the states themselves operate.

This power is enshrined in the decisions of its CEO. Here's how Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes described Zuckerberg's iron grip last year: "Mark’s influence is staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government. He controls three core communications platforms — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — that billions of people use every day. Facebook’s board works more like an advisory committee than an overseer, because Mark controls around 60 percent of voting shares. Mark alone can decide how to configure Facebook’s algorithms to determine what people see in their News Feeds, what privacy settings they can use and even which messages get delivered. He sets the rules for how to distinguish violent and incendiary speech from the merely offensive, and he can choose to shut down a competitor by acquiring, blocking or copying it."

If Mr. Hughes's description seems hyperbolic, it may be because such a consolidation of power is actually difficult to understand.

The power of Facebook is self-replicating. On Tuesday, Facebook and other platforms uncovered a covert operation by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency to sow rift ahead of the presidential election by setting up a network of fake user accounts and websites. However, this time around, the agency hired unsuspecting freelance American journalists to create the content.

There is a dark cycle of life in this news. Facebook's unprecedented growth and conquest of the digital advertising market - along with Google and others - helped accelerate the collapse of broken journalism business models. This has led to widespread consolidation, shutdown of publications and layoffs of journalists. The dominance of news and Facebook's fickle spreading algorithms have led to the rise of hyperparty pages and websites to fill in the gaps and capitalize on the platform's ability to monetize engagement, which in turn has led to an excess of viral misinformation.

Due to its general availability, Facebook has become the preferred platform for political manipulation. These attackers are now hiring and exploiting freelance journalists who have been supplanted by the collapse of the media industry that Facebook helped accelerate. Ultimately, Facebook is taking action to eliminate the attackers, reassuring the country of its commitment to democracy and strengthening its role as an advocate for free and fair elections.

Facebook wins in all directions. Its size and power create instability, which Facebook believes is by giving the company additional powers.

But this cycle is unstable. This summer has shown that the platform has been a major vector for the most destabilizing forces in American life.

Facebook employees seem to understand that the situation is hard-hitting, and internally speak out against Zuckerberg's leadership.

With just two months left before the elections, the country has focused on the integrity of the electoral process. According to Zuckerberg, they all have a responsibility to protect their democracy.

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