Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, welcomes regulation and legislation to mandate “advertising transparency”.
What exactly is advertising transparency? It depends on your subjective perspective. And that’s exactly the problem.
If you’re a leftist and a Democrat, like Zuckerberg, there’s no problem with regulation of so-called advertising transparency. Because it’s a vague and misleading term, regulators will favor the status quo and go against the new or the different. That’s what regulation does, after all. It does not, in most (if any) cases protect the individual from force or fraud. It merely protects the established from the new, the different or the innovative. Right-wing Internet media is an innovation which hardened socialist Democrats like Zuckerberg can definitely have done without.
Morally and legally, the only thing that matters in advertising is whether it’s true or false. If it’s false and misleading, it’s morally wrong and the buyer should beware. It’s also arguably illegal already, without any new legislation or regulation. We have plenty of laws against fraud, and properly so. If the advertising is truthful but a bit one-sided, the buyer should likewise beware, but there’s nothing illegal or criminal about it. It’s the nature of advertising, and even the most uneducated or unenlightened can figure that out.
Of course, Zuckerberg and his Big Government cronies want regulation of political advertising. We already know how that works. If you’re a conservative, libertarian or anything else outside the mainstream of the government’s typical agenda — i.e., to secure and expand the power of an all-intrusive government — then you will be more severely regulated than those who are not. Most of the establishment media on broadcast and cable is overwhelmingly one-sided, as are Hollywood and even ESPN — left, left and more left. Their point-of-view will be the “objective standard” against which the rest of us will be measured.
The issue here is with the Internet. If it weren’t for the Internet, we wouldn’t have so many non-leftist alternatives in media. In fact, it’s highly unlikely Donald Trump would even be President. That’s reason enough for leftists and Democrats like Zuckerberg to exaggerate (if not manufacture) a claim that, “Even though we’re Facebook, we’re still too big to govern ourselves, so please take over for us.” To Zuckerberg and others with his political point-of-view, it’s perfectly obvious that people on the dissenting right have nothing to gain from government regulation of the Internet, while people on the establishment left have everything to gain. They’re clinging to power, and they know power requires unquestioning media agreement, like they already get in totalitarian countries where the government overtly runs the media.
As for the recent data dump by Facebook supposedly losing information to Russia, it’s straight out of a television Homeland script. It’s designed to cast more illegitimacy and doubt on Donald Trump’s presidency, even at the expense of the republic whose preservation anti-Trumpers claim to care so much about. I’m not saying the dump did or didn’t happen. I’m simply saying it’s easy to see why leftists like Mark Zuckerberg, who want the government to have the final say over content (especially political content) on the Internet, are pushing the indefinable, non-objective concept of “advertising transparency”.
Pass a law nobody can figure out how to interpret, and you’ll secure all the power you need. Mark Zuckerberg is a smart fellow, and he knows exactly what he’s using his prestige and influence to impose on us all.
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