Facebook is the most powerful social media company in the world.
It can be a useful tool to reconnect with old friends but it also has a much more diabolical side where the company sells your personal information to the highest bidder and perpetuates fake news with zero consequences.
And one surging Democratic candidate has close ties to its Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and could spell favoritism towards him in the 2020.
2020 is right around the corner and Facebook still hasn’t solved the fake news crisis the American people experienced from both sides of the political aisle during the 2016 election process.
Just recently, there was a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that was spread through sharing on Facebook that appeared to make her seem drunk because the video was doctored to slow down her speech. To be fair, these videos are spread from both sides. It’s not just right-leaning propagandists trying to paint Pelosi as a drunk.
But instead of apologizing and taking the video down, a representative from Facebook declared they weren’t a news organization. They could keep the video up if they wanted to presumably on the grounds of the First Amendment and satire.
It just goes to show you how dangerous misinformation can be and how some of the American people are manipulated by it.
Enter surging Democratic candidate “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg.
Pete Buttigieg is the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana where the University of Notre Dame is and has stormed onto the international stage given his credentials and his articulate nature.
Mayor Pete is a gay married Rhodes Scholar who has served in the Navy Reserve and speaks seven different languages.
He’s also a graduate of Harvard University. And do you know who else was at Harvard while Mayor Pete was there? None other than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Although Mayor Pete was two years older than Zuckerberg, they were apparently friends of friends and Pete recently admitted to talking to Zuckerberg earlier this year.
In fact, Mayor Pete was the 287th person to sign up for Facebook in 2004, which fifteen years later now has 2.4 billion users.
Democratic candidate and Sen. Elizabeth Warren has recently endorsed the idea of breaking up the big tech giants because they’ve gotten too large – in the most anti-Capitalist way possible – which would also impose fines, block new mergers or splitting them up.
Buttigieg doesn’t seem to be forthcoming with how feels about this issue. It seems like he doesn’t want to offend his friend but has said some of the similar rhetoric Sen. Warren has used. It’s ambiguous where he lands on this issue.
But here’s why he’s probably uncomfortable answering the question.
Mercury News reported, “In the first three months of 2019, Buttigieg received at least $27,250 in donations from employees of Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon, the fifth-highest total among the Democrats running for president. Hughes also gave him $2,700 (while donating to several other 2020 Democrats as well). Meanwhile, his campaign has spent about $181,000 on Facebook ads, less than a fifth of the amount spent by Sens. Kamala Harris or Warren.”
The latter is likely due to the fact that both Sens. Harris and Warren have raked in more money for their campaigns. Typically a candidate spends a certain percentage of their total finances on social media.
And here’s where it gets more suspect.
According to the same Mercury News article, “When Zuckerberg embarked on a cross-country trip to see more of the U.S. in 2017 — attracting rumors about his own presidential ambitions — he stopped by South Bend to meet with Buttigieg, connected by a mutual Harvard friend. The mayor drove the tech mogul on a tour of the city, as Zuckerberg streamed live video from his cell phone on the dashboard of Buttigieg’s car.”
This was a whole two years before “Mayor Pete” announced his bid for the Democratic nominee for president.
Is it possible Mark Zuckerberg will help his friend out given that he’ll likely keep the big tech companies intact?