Seriously. We can relax now.

"[We must help] Americans use their voice where it matters most - by voting."

“To achieve this, we’re creating a new Voting Information Center with authoritative information, including how and when to vote, as well as details about voter registration, voting by mail and information about early voting."

A noble plan for sure. But whose plan? Who said this:

1. the US Government?
2. the US Supreme Court?
3. any of the 8 USA Voting Rights Organizations to know before USA 2020?

None of the above. The quotes above are straight from H.M. Mark Zuckerberg' last State of the Facebook, inspired as usual by his own Great and Unmatched Wisdom to launch a historic Facebook campaign that will “boost voter registration, turnout and voices”.

To put that decree in context..

…help yourself to these other notes of mine on the same issue, which of course affect every country, not just the US, please DO (re-) read, in any order:

• What is worst than Russians using social networks to influence your elections?
• Facebook and Google forcing countries to trust them
• That time that Facebook declared (again) that it is a Sovereign State
• Facebook, the neutral protector of elections
• Facebook’s EU elections War Room, Full of Elephants

The real problem is not Facebook, of course.

Every citizen of every democracy shares the responsibility to protect voting. The real problem here is that it is true that Facebook alone has a “responsibility to protect the integrity of the vote itself” big enough to make a real difference, maybe bigger than that of a government. For the record, I fully agree with Zuckerberg when he writes “Voting is voice. It’s the single most powerful expression of democracy”: in fact, inside Facebook you cannot vote on Facebook. Sorry, I digress.

The real problem is the economy and laws that let one single private, for-profit company to have this much power. If Zuckerberg is right when he writes that Facebook has protected voters “against interference in more than 200 elections around the world”, that is exactly what the problem is. There is only one who watches all the watchmen, and is the least accountable watchman of all.

And no, in case you were thinking of “breaking up Facebook”, forget it. Such a measure would not solve anything. It would be half impossible, half useless. Start from here, and follow the links in that post to know why. And don’t forget that even something as simple as removing instantness from social networks may do wonders to reduce the impact of fake news, hate speech and similar problems.