Latest / Best of Business / Peter Griffin: BusinessDesk tech columnist explains why more Facebook and Instagram accounts are auto-following Trump

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Peter Griffin: BusinessDesk tech columnist explains why more Facebook and Instagram accounts are auto-following Trump · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
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  Speaker 2: Right. Some users of Facebook and Instagram are complaining that
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  Speaker 2: their accounts have randomly started following Donald Trump. Some accounts
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  Speaker 2: have started following Millennia and others, Vice President j d Vance,
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  Speaker 2: singers Demi Lavato, Levato, excuse me, Demmie Levato, and Gracie
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  Speaker 2: Adams have posted complaints about this and complained that Meta
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  Speaker 2: won't let them unfollow them. In fact, they turn off
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  Speaker 2: the whole thing. They turn off, they go right, they
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  Speaker 2: get rid of the entire social media platform. They go
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  Speaker 2: back on and look at that, it's back there again.
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  Speaker 2: So how the hell is this happening? Peter Griffin is
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  Speaker 2: our tech commentator and joins us.
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  Speaker 3: Now, Hello, good evening, Andrew.
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  Speaker 2: So why, well.
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  Speaker 3: Look, it's not that suddenly the Trump administration has forced
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  Speaker 3: everyone to follow the president and the vice president. What's
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  Speaker 3: happened is that a lot of people on Facebook were
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  Speaker 3: obviously following the Facebook accounts off Joe Biden, Kamala Harris
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  Speaker 3: and others. They've been handed over to the new administration.
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  Speaker 3: So that looks as though suddenly people are following the
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  Speaker 3: president and new posted coming from that administration, But it's
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  Speaker 3: a change of people, not a change of the office.
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  Speaker 3: What is interesting is that then people have gone, ooh,
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  Speaker 3: I don't want to be following Trump. They've tried to
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  Speaker 3: unfollow him, and something's gone wrong there. So that seems
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  Speaker 3: to be a technical issue, perhaps because so many people
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  Speaker 3: have tried to unfollow some of these accounts at the
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  Speaker 3: same time, but it shouldn't take any longer than a
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  Speaker 3: couple of hours for that to resolve.
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  Speaker 2: Could the technical issue be that Mark Zuckerberg is currying
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  Speaker 2: favor with Donald Trump?
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  Speaker 3: Look, I doubt it that would That would really be
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  Speaker 3: going too far. But what we have seen obviously this
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  Speaker 3: week is the bending off the knee off the tech
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  Speaker 3: billionaires to Trump, and Zuckerberg in particular has been the
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  Speaker 3: first to really start changing policies at his company to
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  Speaker 3: suit the new administration. So it's a nice conspiracy theory,
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  Speaker 3: but I'd put it down to technical gremlins, okay.
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  Speaker 2: And so just to repeat, if you've followed potus, or
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  Speaker 2: if you follow the first lady and they all had
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  Speaker 2: their own Facebook accounts, of course that've changed. Therefore you
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  Speaker 2: end out following uh Donald Millennia and JD.
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  Speaker 3: Vance.
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  Speaker 2: What is Meta saying about all of this, about why
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  Speaker 2: the people are struggling to unfollow them.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, as far as I know, they've said that it
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  Speaker 3: should be an automatic process. If not, try it, try
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  Speaker 3: it again. So look, they do this all the time.
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  Speaker 3: They've got, you know, all this cloud infrastructure around the world,
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  Speaker 3: all this great technology, but often, you know, their platform
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  Speaker 3: just breaks. So I think it'll be a matter of
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  Speaker 3: that they'll be scrambling to fix it. But the bigger
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  Speaker 3: issue I think with Meta at the moment is the
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  Speaker 3: announcement they made a couple of weeks ago that they're
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  Speaker 3: doing away with fact checking on the platform, first in
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  Speaker 3: the US, then they will stop doing that internationally. They
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  Speaker 3: used to partner with in some cases news organizations to
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  Speaker 3: check some of the real viral hoaxes and the real
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  Speaker 3: nasty misinformation on their platform. So they're giving up on that.
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  Speaker 3: They're replacing that with what's called community notes, which Elon
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  Speaker 3: must uses on Twitter, which is effectively saying, we'll just
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  Speaker 3: let the community decide what is true and what's not.
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  Speaker 3: And the reality is that's a lot cheaper to do,
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  Speaker 3: and it really is philosophically for Zuckerberg from day one
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  Speaker 3: when he set up Facebook back in two thousand and four,
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  Speaker 3: he did not want to be the arbiter of truth
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  Speaker 3: on that platform. He wanted it to be a platform
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  Speaker 3: where anyone could say what they want. So he philosophically
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  Speaker 3: believes and freedom of speech, you know, in an absolutist
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  Speaker 3: sort of way. I'm not really cognizant of the fact
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  Speaker 3: that he's got four or five billion people on this
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  Speaker 3: platform and misinformation does a lot of haigh I'm spreading
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  Speaker 3: on that platform.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Well we all know that. But you know, ah,
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  Speaker 2: the battle of virtue, so did our Look there's another issue.
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  Speaker 2: People have been saying that the hashtag hashtag democrat was
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  Speaker 2: also being blocked on Instagram this week. Is that true
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  Speaker 2: and what is that about?
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  Speaker 3: Well, you know, again, that would be I would put
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  Speaker 3: down to a technical issue rather than a deliberate. Look,
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  Speaker 3: if Zuckerberg is saying, hey, it's free reign on freedom
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  Speaker 3: of speech, now, you know, hashtag democrat is not going
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  Speaker 3: to be a particular issue. So I would suggest, you know,
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  Speaker 3: when you have a change of administration like this, A
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  Speaker 3: lot of people were going on too social media, spiking
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  Speaker 3: the traffic and they're having problems related to that, rather
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  Speaker 3: than you know, Zuckerberg sitting in his office in Silicon
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  Speaker 3: Valley going, I'm going to stick it to the Democrats
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  Speaker 3: now that Trump's in charge. I just don't think there's
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  Speaker 3: enough different evidence to stack that up again. I just
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  Speaker 3: put it down to technical problems.
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  Speaker 2: Peter Griffin always loving to talk to you, and I
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  Speaker 2: thank you for your time Today News.
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