It seems that the tech giant, "Facebook", has been in the eye of the storm all the time, since the Cambridge Analytica scandal that made the way for former US President Donald Trump to the White House, hardly a month passes without hearing about a new problem that the platform has championed. The world's largest social.

Recently, The Wall Street Journal published some podcast articles about internal memos it obtained from a Facebook employee who appears to be outraged by its CEO Mark Zuckerberg's policy.

He not only handed it over to the press, but also handed it over to the US Congress and the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which is the regulator of the stock market, which makes the ball now in the court of lawmakers and the judiciary, and this is not an easy thing in the United States.

Although the issues raised by the leaks are important and dangerous, and show how Zuckerberg and his administration are aware of the impact of his toxic platform on large groups of users, the most important thing in them was the mention of the “white list” or the “X” list in the memos, and how this list was formed.

When reading the material published in the Wall Street Journal, it becomes clear without a doubt that we are facing an empire that is trying to a great extent to control the world and its leaders.

Last Supper

There is a French proverb that says, "One gives an egg to a cow."

In 2019, that distant year before the coronavirus pandemic and more than a year before the 2020 presidential election, there was news of a dinner in October between Facebook founder Zuckerberg and then-President of the United States Donald Trump.

Zuckerberg was in Washington, DC, for a congressional hearing on his digital currency, Libra.

While in town he accepted an invitation from Trump to dinner at the White House.

Thiel told a "closer" of a supposed "understanding" between Zuckerberg and Kushner that Facebook will continue to avoid validating Trump's political rhetoric (Reuters)

A Facebook statement at the time described the meal as completely "regular".

“As is customary for a CEO of a major American company, Mark accepted an invitation to dinner with the President and First Lady in the White House,” a Facebook spokesperson told NBC News in 2019, without providing any further details about the company. What was discussed.

But according to a new book, "The Contrarian," released last Tuesday by reporter Max Shafkin, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel - a staunch Trump supporter - sheds some light on what Trump and Zuckerberg discussed during their regular 2019 dinner. .

Thiel was present at the 2019 dinner alongside Trump, Zuckerberg and Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law.

According to an excerpt from the book, published in NY magazine, Thiel told a "closer" of a supposed "understanding" between Zuckerberg and Kushner that Facebook would continue to avoid validating political rhetoric.

The so-called deal, Chavkin reported, would allow Trump - as well as other politicians - to continue saying whatever they want on the social network without validating their words.

As long as Facebook continues to avoid validating political rhetoric, Trump will avoid any "harsh regulations" targeting Facebook, according to the book.

The "White List" or the "Intermediates" List?

The details of the last dinner with Trump, which appeared recently, coincided with the emergence of leaks from the Wall Street Journal, which was one of the most prominent revelations of the existence of the so-called white list that contains a group of accounts of celebrities, organizations and sites that the leaks say are protected from censorship over what they publish on Facebook.

The leaks did not mention names from the list, but they mentioned some situations, including the incident of the Brazilian footballer Neymar, who the leaks said was allowed to violate the rules of publishing on the platform when the Paris Saint-Germain striker resorted to Facebook and “Instagram” (Instagram), where he has 161 million followers, defending himself when a woman accused him of rape in 2019.

The strange thing is that the Wall Street Journal investigation states that the document in his hands is a warning to the platform’s management that the policy of whitelisting can damage the company’s reputation and through which it can put the company in front of countless legal battles.

The newspaper reported that when she asked the Facebook spokesperson about the fact that such a list existed, he told her that it does exist and that they are aware of the problems it causes and that they are on the way to solving these problems, but the question he did not answer: Why should there even be an exemption list?

To analyze the situation to answer this question, we must refer to the beginnings of Facebook.

At the beginning of the platform's emergence and spread, there were not many laws regulating the content posted on the Internet, except for images of nudity and obvious insults and harassment, there was nothing forbidden on Facebook.

But since the platform began to become global, it has gradually begun to put laws on offensive content and according to the laws imposed by each country, and with the development, the censorship mechanism in Facebook has become more stringent in some topics, which caused embarrassment for the company in front of many users.

In the logic of trade and business growth, you cannot suspend the work of a famous personality on your platform followed by millions of users just because he mentioned a word that censorship does not allow, or warning him, this will mean greatly that this character will go with his followers to another platform where you find freedom of expression.

Hence the idea of ​​the importance of protecting these accounts from the censorship imposed on the rest of the people, and thus this list has grown and enlarged, as the documents state that it contains millions of accounts of celebrities, politicians, businessmen and athletes around the world.

Zuckerberg accepted an invitation from Trump to have dinner at the White House while he was in Washington to attend a congressional hearing on his digital currency "Libra" (Anatolia Agency)

Who was adding these?

And based on what?

The report states that any Facebook employee could include names in this list, as there were no specific laws such as the number of followers to recommend an account, but rather left it to the discretion of the employees, hence the problem of the "white list".

According to leaked documents from the Wall Street Journal, one titled "The White List Problem" states that a group of employees told the company that the list was getting bigger and there were many complaints accusing the company of favoritism, and that this would expose the company to accountability.

But the administration in Facebook, and perhaps after legal advice, came up with a strange solution, which is to change its name to “x check”, which gives the impression that the accounts in this list have a strict review of the content, but the reality is that the name change is only to camouflage if the list is leaked Or asked in the investigation while practices remained the same, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Zuckerberg.. and indulgences

We return to the incident of the last dinner between Zuckerberg and Trump, who was undoubtedly known about this list. The report stated that Trump and his son Donald Jr. were among the personalities that were on the leaked list, this dinner during which it was talked about giving the “deed” freedom to the American president to speak through The platform as he wishes before the US presidential elections in 2020, and it was withdrawn from it and the account was suspended after losing the American elections, and a decision was issued by the Facebook Oversight Board to suspend the account of the former president and suspend it for two years on charges of misconduct on the platform.

This incident shows how Zuckerberg’s power reached him by asking him the president of the most powerful country in the world to give him the right to speak on the podium freely and invite him to dinner and barter him, and how Zuckerberg then closed the door in Trump’s face after losing the election and having no point in pursuing the aforementioned agreement in the book.

The incident clearly shows how this platform will be the greatest threat to democracy in the world unless it is contained, as it shows that there is a major virtual country that controls the world, with a population of more than 2.5 billion users, and that a “president” or perhaps a “pope” - if we want A better description of Zuckerberg is that his power over his followers is not governed by geography - this country can control what other heads of state say.