Chuck Schumer and Facebook

In a rather lengthy exposé of Facebook, this New York Times article implicates Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer.

Republicans, already concerned that the platform was censoring conservative views, accused Facebook of fueling what they claimed were meritless conspiracy charges against Mr. Trump and Russia. Democrats, long allied with Silicon Valley on issues including immigration and gay rights, now blamed Mr. Trump’s win partly on Facebook’s tolerance for fraud and disinformation.

After stalling for weeks, Facebook eventually agreed to hand over the Russian posts to Congress. Twice in October 2017, Facebook was forced to revise its public statements, finally acknowledging that close to 126 million people had seen the Russian posts.

The same month, [Democrat Senators Mark] Warner and [...] Amy Klobuchar [...] introduced legislation to compel Facebook and other internet firms to disclose who bought political ads on their sites — a significant expansion of federal regulation over tech companies.

“It’s time for Facebook to let all of us see the ads bought by Russians *and paid for in Rubles* during the last election,” Ms. Klobuchar wrote on her own Facebook page.

[...]

Mr.Schumer also has a personal connection to Facebook: His daughter Alison joined the firm out of college and is now a marketing manager in Facebook’s New York office, according to her LinkedIn profile.

In July, as Facebook’s troubles threatened to cost the company billions of dollars in market value, Mr. Schumer confronted Mr. Warner, by then Facebook’s most insistent inquisitor in Congress.

Back off, he told Mr. Warner, according to a Facebook employee briefed on Mr. Schumer’s intervention. Mr. Warner should be looking for ways to work with Facebook, Mr. Schumer advised, not harm it. Facebook lobbyists were kept abreast of Mr. Schumer’s efforts to protect the company, according to the employee.

  NYT

It looks like Chuck is going to remain the minority leader in the Senate.  Too bad.  There are better people.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11/15: Falllout:

In a statement published early today, Facebook denied that Definers was asked to produce articles on its behalf. Instead, Facebook said Definers was used to contact journalists about "important press calls" and to investigate funding behind its critics at the organization "Freedom from Facebook."

[...]

"The intention was to demonstrate that it was not simply a spontaneous grassroots campaign, as it claimed, but supported by a well-known critic of our company," the Facebook statement said. "To suggest that this was an anti-Semitic attack is reprehensible and untrue."

  Politico

I have to agree that calling everything negative printed about George Soros anti-semitic is absurd. But I'm certainly not going to defend Zuckerberg (is that not Jewish?) or Facebook.