S5 E23: Facebook, Trump & Christine Blasey Ford: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

16 Sep 2024 (2 months ago)

Hurricane Florence and the Wettest Rainfall

Donald Trump described the rainfall from Hurricane Florence as "one of the wettest we've ever seen from the standpoint of water". (56s)

Christine Blasey Ford accused Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's Supreme Court nominee, of pinning her down, groping her, and attempting to remove her clothing at a high school party. (1m36s)
Ed Whan, a lawyer and friend of Kavanaugh, publicly suggested on Twitter that Ford had mistaken Kavanaugh for a classmate, using Google Maps and Zillow to identify the classmate. (5m24s)
President Trump implied that Christine Blasey Ford's parents did not believe her sexual assault allegations. (6m24s)
Anita Hill believes that a Supreme Court nominee would not make it to the hearing stage today if they had similar allegations against them as Clarence Thomas did. (7m17s)

Mark Zuckerburg explained Facebook's company motto, "move fast and break things", as meaning that they want to move faster than other companies, even if it means making mistakes and having to fix them later. (11m11s)

Facebook users in Myanmar received celebratory animations with balloons after posting messages hoping people would survive. (12m13s)
In 2013, only 1% of Myanmar's citizens had internet access, but now 18 million people use Facebook, partly due to its pre-installation on mobile phones and data plans not charging for Facebook usage. (13m31s)
People in Myanmar rely heavily on Facebook for news, but some are receiving inaccurate information, such as the Rohingya people being terrorists who want to occupy land. (18m18s)

Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk, used Facebook to spread hate speech against Muslims, including false accusations against a Muslim business owner, leading to riots in Mandalay in 2014. (16m36s)
Facebook has community standards that prohibit certain content, including hate speech, and uses artificial intelligence and human moderators to enforce these rules. (19m15s)
Facebook's efforts to moderate content in Myanmar were insufficient, with issues such as AI incompatibility with Burmese fonts, a lack of Burmese language support in community standards and reporting systems, and a shortage of Burmese-speaking content reviewers. (21m31s)
Despite Mark Zuckerberg's promises, hate speech is still widespread on Facebook, particularly targeting the Rohingya and other Muslims in Myanmar. (24m21s)
Facebook's Community Standards were mistranslated into Burmese, stating that they take their role "seriously by abusing our services" instead of "keeping abuse of our service seriously." (25m13s)
Facebook is characterized as a "feted swamp of mistruths and outright lies interspersed with the occasional reminder of a dead pet." (25m56s)