{"id":177069,"date":"2020-01-07T19:41:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T00:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/01\/07\/if-you-choose-not-to-decide-you-still-have-made-a-choice\/"},"modified":"2020-01-07T19:41:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T00:41:00","slug":"if-you-choose-not-to-decide-you-still-have-made-a-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/01\/07\/if-you-choose-not-to-decide-you-still-have-made-a-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Choose Not To Decide, You Still Have Made a Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"180\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/V7bbdIU95zM\" width=\"320\"><\/iframe><br \/><i>Rush Nails This<\/i><\/div>\n<p>Andrew Bosworth, who heads Facebook\u2019s VR &amp; AR division <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/01\/07\/technology\/facebook-trump-2020.html\">is suggesting that Zuckerberg&#8217;ss bastard child should do nothing about Trump and his lies<\/a>, particularly as they pertain to political ads.<\/p>\n<p>This is a conscious decision to support Trump, because the more he lies, the more clicks they get:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Since the 2016 election, when Russian trolls and a tsunami of misinformation turned social media into a partisan battlefield, Facebook has wrestled with the role it played in President Trump\u2019s victory. <\/p>\n<p>Now, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/01\/07\/technology\/facebook-andrew-bosworth-memo.html\">a memo<\/a> obtained by The New York Times, a longtime Facebook executive has told employees that the company had a moral duty not to tilt the scales against Mr. Trump as he seeks re-election.<\/p>\n<p>On Dec. 30, Andrew Bosworth, the head of Facebook\u2019s virtual and augmented reality division, wrote on his internal Facebook page that, as a liberal, he found himself wanting to use the social network\u2019s powerful platform against Mr. Trump. But citing the \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d franchise and the philosopher John Rawls, Mr. Bosworth said that doing so would eventually backfire.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>In a meandering 2,500-word post, titled \u201cThoughts for 2020,\u201d Mr. Bosworth weighed in on issues including political polarization, Russian interference and the news media\u2019s treatment of Facebook. He gave a frank assessment of Facebook\u2019s shortcomings in recent years, saying that the company had been \u201clate\u201d to address the issues of data security, misinformation and foreign interference. And he accused the left of overreach, saying that when it came to calling people Nazis, \u201cI think my fellow liberals are a bit too, well, liberal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Bosworth also waded into the debate over the health effects of social media, rejecting what he called \u201cwildly offensive\u201d comparisons of Facebook to addictive substances like nicotine. He instead compared Facebook to sugar, and said users were responsible for moderating their own intake.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I want to eat sugar and die an early death that is a valid position,\u201d Mr. Bosworth wrote. \u201cMy grandfather took such a stance towards bacon and I admired him for it. And social media is likely much less fatal than bacon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The post by Mr. Bosworth, a <b><span style=\"font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;\">former head of Facebook\u2019s advertising team<\/span><\/b>, provides an unusually candid glimpse of the debates raging within Facebook about the platform\u2019s responsibilities as it heads into the 2020 election.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<i>emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n<p>Translation, f%$# truth, I have stock options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rush Nails This Andrew Bosworth, who heads Facebook\u2019s VR &amp; AR division is suggesting that Zuckerberg&#8217;ss bastard child should do nothing about Trump and his lies, particularly as they pertain to political ads. This is a conscious decision to support Trump, because the more he lies, the more clicks they get: Since the 2016 election, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,364,387,374,598],"class_list":["post-177069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-hypocrisy","tag-politics","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177069"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}