Nov. 8, 2022 - Epoch Times
10:22
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| This right here is Facebook, the world's largest social media platform. | |
| However, despite meteoric growth over the last decade, well, right now, today, Facebook is facing a litany of challenges. | |
| Their stock price has crashed, taking Mark Zuckerberg's personal net worth down by about $71 billion in the process. | |
| They're poised to lay off literally thousands of employees in the coming week. | |
| Their metaverse product is being used by hardly anyone. | |
| And just last week, Meta, which is of course Facebook's parent company, was hit with the largest campaign finance violation in American history. | |
| And it's that last point that I really want to highlight, given the fact that the midterm elections are quite literally tomorrow. | |
| Now to start with, the political leanings of Facebook employees are not really a secret. | |
| For instance, if we take a look at the previous midterm election and examine the political donations that were made by Facebook employees, we will find that they overwhelmingly went to Democrats, by a margin of about 95%. | |
| Just as an aside, Twitter employees gave almost 99% of their political contributions to Democrats as well. | |
| Just keep that in mind when people say that Elon Musk will destroy the ideological diversity that exists within the company. | |
| Regardless, though, getting back to this giant campaign violation, what happened was that back in 2018, the Attorney General of Washington State filed a lawsuit against Meta. | |
| That lawsuit centered around Facebook's violation of the Fair Campaign Practices Act. | |
| Which was passed in Washington State back in 1972. | |
| Under that law, all companies that sell political advertising, companies such as newspapers, TV stations, and social media platforms, they are required to disclose the names and addresses of those who buy political ads, who those ads are actually targeting, how the ads were paid for, as well as the total number of views that those ads received. | |
| And they have to disclose this information to anyone who requests it. | |
| And the thinking behind this particular law is twofold. | |
| First of all, it allows people to analyze as well as track the spending of political campaigns in order to make sure that those funds are being used properly. | |
| And then second of all, this transparency requirement allows people to see whether media companies and or social media platforms are charging Democrats and Republicans the same amount of money for the same amount of airtime. | |
| Because without this transparency, who's to say that a media company, or perhaps in this case Facebook, is not charging Republican advertisers, let's say, three times the rate of their Democrat opponents? | |
| If the books aren't open, we would just never know. | |
| And indeed, back in 2018, it appears that the books were not open. | |
| And so what happened was that four years ago, the Attorney General settled the case with Facebook relatively quickly and levied against them a small fine of $238,000. | |
| However, this is where things, you can say, took an odd turn. | |
| Because after this 2018 settlement, Facebook released a public statement saying that they will no longer be accepting political ads within Washington state. | |
| Here is specifically what the company said, again, back in 2018. | |
| Quote,"...starting on December 28th, Facebook will not accept ads that relate to Washington state or local elected officials, candidates, elections, or ballot initiatives while we look to address these new disclosure requirements." However, it appears that is not what actually happened. | |
| And instead, Facebook continued to take on political ads while at the same time continuing to not follow the disclosure laws. | |
| And so this prompted the Washington Attorney General to once again file another lawsuit against Facebook, or rather their parent company, Meta. | |
| Here's specifically how Bob Ferguson, who is the Washington Attorney General, here's how he described the situation. | |
| He further added that these intentional violations, they came | |
| despite the fact that lawyers for Facebook are well-versed in campaign finance law and that the company they came despite the fact that lawyers for Facebook are well-versed in campaign finance law and that the company has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars for running political And so what happened is that after two years of legal back and forth, and you can only imagine the types of lawyers that Facebook has the money to hire, but anyway, they wound up losing. | |
| The judge in the case ruled against Mehta, and he is forcing them to pay the maximum fine for 822 violations. | |
| Furthermore, while the maximum penalty is technically $10,000 per violation, the judge in the case actually tripled that amount because, as he said during the court hearing, these violations were committed intentionally. | |
| Here's specifically what the judge said during a September hearing. | |
| Quote, "The only information that has to be made available is the information that Meta is already collecting. | |
| They necessarily collect it in order to be able to run the ads that they're running. | |
| So all they have to do in order to display it is essentially press a button. | |
| We have penalties for a reason. | |
| Facebook is a repeat intentional violator of the law. | |
| It's a sophisticated company. | |
| Instead of accepting responsibility and apologizing for its conduct Facebook went to court to gut our campaign finance law in order to avoid accountability. | |
| If this case doesn't warrant a maximum penalty, what does? | |
| And indeed, as I mentioned a moment ago, the maximum penalty was tripled and then levied against every single violation of the law, meaning that for the 822 violations, Meta is required to pay $30,000 each. | |
| In total, that amounts to $24.66 million. | |
| And then, outside of just this penalty, Mehta has also been ordered to reimburse the legal fees incurred by the Attorney General's office in pursuing this case, which amounts to an additional $10.5 million, meaning that when all is said and done, these campaign violations add up to $35 million, which, as the Attorney General pointed out in his statement, is the largest campaign finance violation in American history. | |
| Here's specifically what he wrote as a part of his statement after the judge ruled in the case. | |
| Quote... | |
| The court granted my request for Facebook to face the maximum $24.6 million penalty for intentionally violating Washington's campaign finance law 822 times. | |
| This is the largest campaign finance penalty ever imposed, not just in Washington, but anywhere. | |
| Interestingly, the second largest campaign finance penalty ever is $9 million, which was secured against GMA this year. | |
| Meaning that this new fine levied against Facebook is quite literally four times the previous record. | |
| And so, what this appears to be, at least to me, is emblematic of what's happening across America right now. | |
| Which is that, as an example, on the one hand, you have a company like Pfizer, who has quite literally paid the largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history. | |
| But despite that fact, you can't question their studies, you can't question their intentions, you can't question their motives, and in many cases, you quite literally have to take their new product in order to keep your job. | |
| And then, on the other hand, you now have Facebook, which has quite literally been charged It's funny how all that works, isn't it? | |
| Regardless, if you'd like to go deeper into the story, I'll throw all the core documents down into the description box below this video for you to peruse at your own leisure. | |
| And furthermore, I would actually love to know your thoughts on this case. | |
| Why do you think Facebook decided to play it this way? | |
| Because for a multi-billion dollar company like they are, the amount that they make in political ads, particularly in political ads in a small state like Washington, is a drop in the bucket, a few thousand dollars compared to the billions that they rake in everywhere else. | |
| So why would they risk it? | |
| Why would they risk the fine as well as the public embarrassment to make a few thousand dollars in political ads? | |
| Do you think there's more to their decision behind the scenes? | |
| I'd love to know your thoughts. | |
| Please leave them in the comments section below. | |
| I'll be reading them later today as well as tomorrow. | |
| And of course, as always, as you're making your way down there to the description box as well as the comments section, take a small detour to smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm. | |
| And also consider subscribing to this channel as well, that we can get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed every time we publish it. | |
| This right here is an American Walking Liberty one ounce gold coin. | |
| And typically, I order at least one of these from our sponsor, American Heart for Gold, every single month. | |
| The reason I do so is because, I mean, as you likely know, the inflation rate in this country is the highest that it's been in, what, the last 40 years now? | |
| Everything like the price of food, The price of housing, the price of gas is absolutely going through the roof. | |
| And in fact, market experts like the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, he's not only predicting a recession, but he's even using words like unprecedented economic hurricane. | |
| And so listen, I absolutely do not give you any financial advice, but I would recommend that you do what I do. | |
| Which is pick up the phone and call American Hartford Gold. | |
| Their super friendly staff can help you diversify your portfolio by either getting physical gold and physical silver delivered directly to your doorstep like I do, or deposited directly into your IRA and your 401k accounts. | |
| They make the entire process super simple. | |
| And actually, besides me, they have an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau with quite literally thousands of satisfied clients around the country. | |
| And best of all, to our viewers, to the viewers of Facts Matter, they are currently throwing in $2,500 worth of free silver on your first qualifying order. | |
| So giving them a call is an absolute no-brainer. | |
| So pick up the phone and call 866-242-2352. | |
| That's 866-242-2352. | |
| Or text Roman to 65532. | |
| The link will also be down in the description box below. | |
| And then let's head on back to the studio. | |
| And now lastly, I'd like to mention that Facts Matter is in fact available in podcast form. | |
| So if you happen to be the type of person who enjoys listening to podcasts, and you have either Apple, you have Google, or you have Spotify on your phone or on your computer, well, you can find our episodes on there as well. | |
| And frankly, it's going pretty well in terms of the podcast. | |
| I checked it recently, and we were already number 51 in the news category here in America on Apple Podcasts. | |
| That's pretty good for just running podcasts there for a few months. | |
| We're even above big names like Tim Pool, Morning Joe, and Sean Hannity. | |
| However, being number 51 is still, in my opinion, a rookie number. | |
| I'd like to be in the top 10 by at least the beginning of next year. | |
| And so if you happen to listen to podcasts, well, consider checking out and subscribing to Facts Matter on Apple, Google, as well as Spotify. | |
| And maybe you can even leave us a review, because reviews are what really matter on the podcast platforms. | |
| And let's see, maybe we can really crack the top 10 by the end of the year. | |
| I personally think it's possible. | |
| I'll throw a link to all of our podcast platforms. | |
| They'll be down there in the description box as well. | |
| And then until next time, I'm your host, Roman from The Epoch Times. |
Export Selection