For us, The Wall Street Journal’s mind-blowing exclusive on a secret Facebook programme called “cross check” couldn’t be better timed.
This morning, the highly respected US publication exposed double standards baked into the operating systems of Mark Zuckerberg’s stablemates Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. The WSJ investigation shows there’s one set of rules for super-profitable high profile accounts of politicians and celebrities – and a different one for the other three billion users of the platforms.
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It’s a superb expose’ of a massively powerful organisation which publicly claims to be a force for good through offering equal footing to all. But has secretly embedded an alternative set of rules for elites. Have a read –Â here’s the link. And if you’re struggling to access WSJ, please have a read of our explainer at the very bottom of this newsletter (it’s there every day).
BizNews was reminded last night of how we fall outside the protected class. The YouTube recording of the interview which colleague Nadya Swart conducted with neurosurgeon turned medical legal specialist Dr Herman Edeling has been removed because it violated the rules.
Edeling, who exudes the rationality you’d expect in a medical/legal type, reckons the World Health Organisation and Public Health authorities have gotten a lot wrong during the pandemic – hardly a radical conclusion for anyone who has watched the flip-flopping.
His censorable sin, however, was to question the narrative of medical bureaucrats – a line not countenanced by Facebook’s operations. Or at least not when it is aired by someone outside the XChecked elite.
Fortunately, YouTube is not a monopoly. Nadya has also posted the recording of her interview with Dr Edeling on Vimeo – click here to view.
Also worth investing time in today, is the latest Gideon Rachman column, republished below.
For the past 15 years, Rachman has been the Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator at our UK partners, the Financial Times. He joined them after spending a decade and a half at the equally respected London publication, The Economist.
Rachman, whose remit is to deliver a single column weekly, is at his best when interpreting global trends he spends lots of time reflecting upon. His warning in the piece on implications for the rest of the world (Naspers/Prosus shareholders included) of the personality cult around China’s president-for-life Xi Jinping must be taken seriously.
Starting in the Union Buildings, where the incumbent’s latest weekly newsletter reaffirms his alliance with Beijing’s democracy crushing, capitalist attacking regime.
But also by Facebook, whose slavish subservience to the WHO continues despite evidence exposed in a comprehensive investigation by the London Sunday Times’s famed Insight team on China’s 10-year takeover of the global health watchdog.
Other reading for you today:
*Â Uranium rally might have a brief half-life
*Â Intuit agrees to buy Mailchimp for $12bnÂ
*Â Energy prices in Europe hit records after wind stops blowing
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