Singer-songwriter David Berman, best known for his band Silver Jews, is also an engaging poet. In his poem “New York, New York,” he cheekily imagines a new New York being built.
Since spending more than a little amount of time in the last few years on Twitter, I’ve come to see it as another internet. Or, at the very least, another Facebook.
I mention this because it’s recently come to light that President Obama, not long after the 2016 election, warned FB founder Mark Zuckerberg --- to his face --- that Russians were using his social network to seriously disrupt our electoral process.
Zuckerberg initially dismissed this claim out of hand as ridiculous but ten months later, after massive amounts of bad publicity, he’s sent the names of all the companies who trolled for Trump on to Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.
Mark, you fucked up. Big time. Whatever money those Russian-backed ads generated for you, you didn’t need it. (Small digression --- always being photographed in t-shirts doesn’t mean you’re a regular guy. Being worth untold billions disallows that option.)
Anyway, this is just to say on behalf of like-minded FB users that we don’t need you. In a heartbeat, we can effortlessly move our online lives over to Twitter and only look at FB in our cyber rear-view mirrors.
Lots of people a lot younger than me have already left your social network because too many of their Moms are on it. At places like Instagram and --- better still --- Snapchat, they’ve found a viable alternative.
Elections, as the familiar line goes, have consequences. So does interfering with them. As you did.
P.S. Being richer than Barack Obama is not the same as being smarter than him. As the kids say, mic drop.
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-ties-more-than-5000-political-ads-to-bogus-russian-accounts/
