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Listening to Clinton, I was struck by how remarkably similar her account was to something Zuckerberg had once told me. Facts, Zuckerberg had suggested, are best derived from foraging many opinions, ideally from the billions of humans who use his publishing platform, so that each individual might cherry-pick what to believe. (Cherry-pick is my word, not his.) If journalisms mantra is Seek truth and report it, Facebooks might be Seek opinions and react to them. Its not about saying, Heres one view; heres the other side, Zuckerberg had said when Id asked him to reconcile the apparent contradiction between fact and opinion. You should decide where you want to be.

Hillary Clinton: American democracy is in crisis

I wrote at the time that Zuckerbergs interpretation was unsatisfying for one thing, and Trumpian for another. When I asked Clinton today whether she too sees a Trumpian quality in Zuckerbergs reasoning, she nodded. Its Trumpian, she said. Its authoritarian. (Facebook did not immediately provide a response to my request for comment from Zuckerberg.)

Clintons allusions to Zuckerberg as a world leader are fitting. I feel like youre negotiating with a foreign power sometimes, she said, referencing conversations shes had at the highest levels with Facebook. Hes immensely powerful, she told me. This is a global company that has huge influence in ways that were only beginning to understand.

Facebook is, in a sense, the worlds first technocratic nation-statea real-time experiment in connecting humans at massive and unprecedented scale, with a population of users that eclipses any actual nation, nearly as big as China and India combined. Its also an institution with gigantic levers at its disposal to affect the lives of its user-citizens. Facebook knows this. It has played with manipulating peoples emotions. It has trumpeted its ability to affect the outcome of an election. Theres good reason to believe, Clinton said, that Facebook is not just going to reelect Trump, but intend[s] to reelect Trump. We know for sure, at least, that Zuckerberg doesnt want Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to be the president. In leaked audio of an internal Facebook meeting that emerged last fall, he referenced Warrens interest in regulating Facebook and said he would go to the mat and fight her.

Clinton seems to find the whole thing deeply unnerving. Zuckerberg has been somehow persuaded, she said, that its to his and Facebooks advantage not to cross Trump. Thats what I believe. And it just gives me a pit in my stomach.

Facebook often defends its equivocations about the truth by claiming that it must protect the free speech of its users. They have, in my view, contorted themselves into making arguments about freedom of speech and censorship, Clinton said, which they are hanging on to because its in their commercial interests. Of course, the right to free speech is about protecting citizens from government overreachand does not concern a persons use of corporate publishing platforms. Incidentally, Trump has similarly co-opted the meaning of free speech and truth for his own political and personal gain. If it makes Trump look good, its true; if it does not, then its fake news. Perhaps the logical extension of all this is as follows: Whats good for Trump is good for Facebook, and vice versa.

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Hillary Clinton: Mark Zuckerberg Has Authoritarian Views on Misinformation - The Atlantic