No joke: Baron Cohen blasts Zuckerberg over online hate
SACHA BARON Cohen attacked Mark Zuckerberg and other social media CEOs for facilitating “hate and violence” in a speech to accept the Anti-Defamation League’s International Leadership Award.
The British comedian and actor — best known for creating the Ali G and Borat characters — branded the world’s largest platforms “the greatest propaganda machine in history”.
Baron Cohen took particular aim at Mr Zuckerberg, whom he accused of publishing political advertisements without proper fact-checking.
He said: “All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.
“Think about it. Facebook, YouTube and Google, Twitter and others — they reach billions of people. The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged — stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear. If you pay them, Facebook will run any political ad you want, even if it’s a lie. And they’ll even help you micro-target those lies to their users for maximum effect.
“Under this twisted logic, if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem’.
“Facebook, start fact-checking political ads before you run them, stop microtargeted lies immediately, and when the ads are false, give back the money and don’t publish them.”
Mr Baron Cohen also dismantled a recent address Mr Zuckerberg delivered at Georgetown University, in which he said one of his main goals was to “uphold as wide a definition of freedom of expression as possible”.
Mr Baron Cohen said: “Our freedoms are not only an end in themselves, they’re also the means to another end… these rights are threatened by hate, conspiracies and lies.”