Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Insight, foresight, hindsight
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Alex Stamos is the former chief security officer at Facebook, and still their chief excuse officer. Washington Post We must also remember that in the summer of 2016, every major media outlet rewarded the hackers of the Russian Main Intelligence DirectorateAbbreviated Pundit Round-up: Insight, foresight, hindsight
Alex Stamos is the former chief security officer at Facebook, and still their chief excuse officer. Washington Post We must also remember that in the summer of 2016, every major media outlet rewarded the hackers of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) with thousands of collective stories drawn from the stolen emails of prominent Democrats. The sad truth is that blocking Russian propaganda would have required Facebook to ban stories from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and cable news — not to mention this very paper. Since the election of Donald Trump, print and television news organizations have staffed up and provided a critical service to Americans, but they have never adequately grappled with their culpability in empowering Russia’s election interference. In a sense this is absolutely true. It wasn’t just the Trump campaign that jumped onto WikiLeaks material and waved it in front of rallies — both newspapers and news channels leapt to publish information even though they knew that material had been stolen. This wasn’t the Pentagon Papers. It wasn’t secret CIA black sites engaged in torture. This was the internal email of private citizens and organizations engaged in no crime, whose positions—both personal and political—were deeply wounded by the way this material was published, sensationalized, and scoured for headlines. The media doing so knew the material was stolen. Knew the version of the information they were getting was incomplete. Knew they were being fed selective materials expressly for the purpose of generating controversy and division within the Democratic Party. And they ran with it big time. On the other hand, this whole piece from Stamos is a juvenile attempt to dodge responsibility for not just empowering the distribution of stolen material, but providing a platform for propaganda efforts of all types. That included knowingly assisting efforts to distribute information they knew to be false, ignoring warnings about the source of the propaganda efforts, and providing those efforts with sophisticated tools to maximize the damage to the electorate. There are no heroes in this piece. Both Facebook and more traditional media knowingly participated in the dissemination of propaganda, even when they were aware that they were doing as part of an effort deliberately designed to cause harm to the democratic process. Yes, those activities are protected by the First Amendment. But not everything that is legal is just, or moral, and it certainly wasn’t harmless. That both types of media can shrug and hide behind “the public’s right to know” fails to hide the truth: Both subverted the electoral process in exchange for profit. Still, Stamos’ lengthy “we only jumped off the same bridge as everyone else” editorial is far, far short of a confession to everything Facebook did—before and after—the election, that caused harm to the process. In this finger-pointing exercise. several more fingers should be pointed back at the author. Read more