Facebook is Killing Journalism and Democracy. We Should Do Something About It.

It’s high time the federal government do something about It. March 13, 2021 | 2:56 AM Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the Senate judiciary and commerce committees on April 10, 2018 on Capitol Hill over social media data breach, in Washington, DC, USA. Photo by Olivier Douliery/Abaca/Sipa USA(Sipa via AP Images). If the political world feels increasingly off kilter, there’s a probably a good reason. Numerous forces are combining to rollick not only the United States but the entire world. These include increasing inequality, rising housing costs, wage declines and job destabilization as a result of technological changes, public policy and globalization–and, of course, the COVID pandemic and the looming specter of the climate crisis. But a huge part of the malaise involves angry political polarization, particularly asymmetric polarization by white supremacists in America and Europe, and ethnonationalists more broadly around the world. Decline in trust in institutions runs hand in hand with a newly fractured media landscape, in which legitimate media companies and journalists struggle to survive financially but disinformation thrives. Those destabilizing forces in turn make it difficult for democratic institutions to take serious action on inequality, economic reforms and climate. At the heart of much of…
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