Facebook Employees Wonder What Would Happen If Trump Used Their Platform To Dispute Election Results

After months of debate and disagreement over the handling of inflammatory or misleading posts from Donald Trump, Facebook employees want CEO Mark Zuckerberg to explain what the company would do if the leader of the free world uses the social network to undermine the results of the 2020 US presidential election.

“I do think we’re headed for a problematic scenario where Facebook is going to be used to aggressively undermine the legitimacy of the US elections, in a way that has never been possible in history,” one Facebook employee wrote in a group on Workplace, the company’s internal communication platform, earlier this week.

For the past week, this scenario has been a topic of heated discussion inside Facebook and is now a top question for its leader. Some 2,900 employees asked that Zuckerberg address it publicly during a company-wide meeting on Thursday which is slated for 11 a.m. PT.

Zuckerberg’s expected remarks come amid growing internal concerns about the company's competence in handling misinformation, and the precautions it is taking to ensure its platform isn’t used to disrupt or mislead ahead of the US presidential election. Though Facebook says it has committed more money and resources to avoid repeating its failures during the 2016 election, some employees believe it isn’t enough. President Trump has already spent months raising questions about the legitimacy of the upcoming 2020 election, spreading misinformation about mail-in ballots, and declining to say if he’d accept the possibility of losing to Democratic nominee Joe Biden in November.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-zuckerberg-what-if-trump-disputes-election-results

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But voters saw something totally different: They admire Tlaib’s firebrand style of politics. For weeks on my radio show on 910AM engaged listeners talked about how they love the fact that she’s not afraid to confront an issue. They want a fighter who won’t back down on racial justice issues like facial recognition technology, which research shows can be faulty and falsely identify Blacks as suspects in the search for criminals.

For example, while the City Council under Jones’ leadership once held what amounted to a softball Q&A session with Detroit police Chief James Craig regarding the use of facial recognition technology, Tlaib visited the department to see the Real Time Crime center for herself, which displays video footage from both traffic lights and businesses in the city. She later engaged in a very tense public debate with Craig over its use, and urged him to hire more Black analysts to work in the facial recognition department. Even though her recommendation incensed Detroit’s top cop, it was by far the strongest public pushback against the technology from an elected official in the city.

Since then a Black man, Robert Williams, who came forward in June of this year, explained how he was wrongly identified as a shoplifting suspect by the technology from a 2018 incident. The following month the case of Michael Oliver, another Detroiter, became public after he was misidentified last year as a suspect and was facing felony larceny charges that were subsequently dropped. Despite the severity of these two cases, the City Council that Jones leads has yet to convene a pair of special public hearings on the reported cases.

True to form, Tlaib, during her first term in Congress, has established herself as an elected official who would ask penetrating questions during congressional hearings, including a notable exchange with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, where she squeezed the Fed boss about helping locally distressed cities like Detroit.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2020/08/05/bankole-why-tlaib-won-and-detroits-old-black-guard-lost/3298494001/

New York State Attorney General Letitia James will make a “major national announcement” today.

The NY AG released a statement saying she’ll speak from her office at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, but offered no other details.

Some reports suggest James’ announcement will be related to New York state investigations into President Donald Trump’s businesses. The New York Times reported Wednesday that Deutsche Bank has turned over Trump’s financial records after the Manhattan District Attorney’s office issued a subpoena last year.

The Daily Beast reports the documents may show evidence of fraud, widening the probe into hush money payments made to women who said they had affairs with Trump. The president’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen testified last year that Trump inflated his net worth by about $4 billion in a loan application to Deutsche Bank for a 2014 bid on the Buffalo Bills.

https://www.syracuse.com/state/2020/08/ny-ag-letitia-james-to-make-major-announcement-after-deutsche-bank-turns-over-trump-finances.html