There's ample evidence Facebook helped swing the 2016 US election to Donald Trump. Since then, countries around the world, including Canada and the United Kingdom, have called on CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify about what his company is doing to curb the spread of disinformation and electioneering on the platform. Has it? Is Facebook helping protect democracy? And if it is, are those efforts actually working?
The 2018 midterm election polls show a swing towards the democrats, but of course those same polls in 2016 showed a Hillary Clinton victory. If the polls are wrong again tonight, says futurist and internet researcher Jesse Hirsh, it will be a sign that any reports of Facebook's moves to reform its platform so as not to meddle in democratic elections may have been greatly exaggerated. After the votes are counted, we'll see what Zuckerberg has to say.
GUEST: Jesse Hirsh, futurist, internet researcher