A quick timeline:

* Last year, Donald Trump threatened to put Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in
prison for life.

* Yesterday, Zuckerberg announced that Meta — the parent company of Facebook,
Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp — will stop fact-checking posts on all of
those platforms and allow more hateful content. (What could possibly go
wrong?)

* A short while later, Trump admitted that Meta’s decision to abandon fact
checking was “probably” motivated by his threats of imprisoning Zuckerberg.

To recap, Mark Zuckerberg — currently the third richest person on Earth, with a
net worth estimated at $210.9 billion* — is afraid to stand up to Donald Trump.

So now Facebook will join other major “social media” platforms that have
devolved into cesspools of misinformation, propaganda, harassment, hate speech,
and mob rule.

Of course, Zuckerberg is not alone among tech billionaires in capitulating to
Trump.

* Apple CEO Tim Cook just donated $1,000,000 of his own money to Trump’s inaugural committee.

* There’s Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos (the second richest person in the world). Amazon is
reportedly paying $40 million to license a documentary and limited series
about Melania Trump, who will be an executive producer on the documentary.

* There’s Elon Musk (the richest person in the world) very obviously.

* And more.

Now, it would be bad enough if this was just a story about cowardice and these
particular men.

But there is something more sinister going on here.

Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and their ilk — the broligarchy that is fast taking over
our country and the planet — are bent on getting even richer than they already
are by currying favor with Trump in the hopes of essentially eliminating or
preventing meaningful regulation of their businesses.

They stand to make untold billions from artificial intelligence, virtual
reality, space rockets, and more.

And, to do so, they are apparently ready to debase themselves before Trump and
further poison the information sources that billions of humans all around the
world rely on for news and connection.

A message to Mark Zuckerberg: [[link removed]]

Aren’t you rich enough? You are messing with the lives of literally billions of
human beings just so you can become even wealthier. Knock it off.
[[link removed]]

Click to add your name now. [[link removed]]

Thanks for taking action.

For progress,

- Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen

*That’s according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list. We’ve said it before
and we’ll say it again: If there are so many billionaires whose fortunes are
increasing so rapidly that there’s a “need” to track their wealth in real time,
our priorities as a society may be out of whack.


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