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Facebook 2020

Liberals vs. Mark Zuckerberg

Moving the Market: Mark Zuckerberg's defiant defense of free speech last week at Georgetown University has been met with searing criticism from liberals who are castigating Facebook for refusing to be an arbiter of what political campaigns can and cannot say in online advertising.

• The big picture: The fight, which stems from Facebook's refusal to ban a misleading Trump campaign ad, has further divided Facebook and the Democrats and sets the stage for an ugly 2020 campaign season, wherein Zuckerberg will serve as a constant target for progressives.

The latest: The Joe Biden campaign has twice called upon Facebook to ban misleading ads against their candidate. Late last week, a Biden spokesperson said the company's "deeply flawed" free speech policy gave candidates "blanket permission" to "mislead American voters."

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren has also accused Facebook of "actively helping Trump spread lies and misinformation," and ran a deliberately false campaign on Facebook to demonstrate her point.

View from the center-right, via the Wall Street Journal editorial board: "It’s a sign of our illiberal times that progressives [are Zuckerberg's] biggest critics. ... It’s remarkable that [they're] taking umbrage at a conventional statement of free-speech values they would have embraced a decade ago."

• View from the center-left, via The New Yorker's Andrew Marantz: "Everyone apart from Kim Jong Un agrees [that free speech is good]; the question is whether free speech is the only good worth pursuing, and whether it leads inexorably to truth and progress."

Bloomberg/Getty

Trump 2020 owns the ad game

Talk of the Trail: President Donald Trump's campaign is dominating the online advertising game, while Democrats "are struggling to internalize the lessons of the 2016 race and adapt to a political landscape shaped by social media," NYT's Matthew Rosenberg and Kevin Roose report.

• "The Trump campaign is plastering ads all over Facebook, YouTube and the millions of sites served by Google, hitting on... incendiary themes... that play best on platforms where algorithms favor outrage and political campaigns are free to disregard facts."

• Democrats "are largely running... brand-loyalty campaigns, trying to sway moderates and offend as few people as possible, despite mounting research that suggests persuasion ads have little to no impact on voters in a general election."

The big picture: "Democratic digital operatives say the problem is a party dominated by an aging professional political class that is too timid in the face of a fiercely partisan Republican machine... [and] hung up on the kind of broad-based advertising that played well in the television age but fares poorly on social media."

🌴 Today in L.A. 🌴

WSJ Tech Live kicks off today in Laguna Beach with appearances by Facebook chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer, ViacomCBS chair Shari Redstone, Electronic Arts chief Andrew Wilson and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

• The Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit gets underway tonight with a welcome party in Beverly Hills hosted by the magazine's editor-in-chief, Radhika Jones.

Win McNamee/Getty

AT&T vs. Elliott

Randall Stephenson plays ball

Moving Manhattan: AT&T chief Randall Stephenson is in talks with Paul Singer's Elliott Management "to resolve the activist investor’s campaign for change at the phone and media giant," WSJ's Corrie Driebusch, Drew FitzGerald and Dana Cimilluca report.

• "The two sides have held a series of wide-ranging discussions since Elliott disclosed a stake in AT&T five weeks ago and publicly urged the company to make changes aimed at igniting its lackluster share performance."

• "AT&T and Elliott could reach an agreement as soon as this month, though the talks could also fall apart."

• "The two sides are discussing a number of possible moves by AT&T, including a strategic review of assets that could be sold or spun off and a push to improve margins. AT&T could also agree to make changes to its board with input from Elliott."

What's next: "AT&T recently delayed the release of its quarterly earnings, initially scheduled for next week. ... [AT&T] is now expected to discuss its latest results on Oct. 28, a day before it will unveil its HBO Max streaming service."

• Bonus: WSJ's Lauren Silva Laughlin and Dan Gallagher argue that "AT&T might be able to swat away a few of Elliott’s more dramatic ideas if it just settles on a few of its lesser asks now."

Market Links

• Tim Cook meets with China's top regulator (SCMP)

• Adam Silver faces new pressure from Beijing (CNBC)

• Zhang Yiming takes over your local high school (NYT)

• Hans Vestberg seeks a Huffington Post buyer (FT)

• David Thomson seeks a new Reuters chief (FT)

CBS Photo Archive/Getty

Late-night turns to the news

Talk of TV Land: "With impeachment in the air and the 2020 presidential campaign underway, the [late-night] shows that do best are the ones that don’t shy away from politics — and the guests who deliver big ratings are political figures and news commentators," NYT's John Koblin reports.

• "'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert' on CBS, the most-viewed late-night host since 2017, had one of its biggest episodes of the year recently, when the first guest was the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow."

• "4.6 million people watched the 'Late Show' episode in which Ms. Maddow and Mr. Colbert talked about President Trump, Ukraine and the impeachment inquiry, according to Nielsen."

• "In a late-night environment that favors news, the CNN anchor Jake Tapper has become a sought-after booking."

The big picture: "Chris Licht, a former CBS News producer who became the executive producer of Mr. Colbert’s show in 2016, said late-night viewers these days wanted shows that helped them make sense of a world in turmoil. 'They don’t want escapism,' he said."

📸 What's next: Social capital. WSJ's Suzanne Kapner and Sharon Terlep dive into the lucrative world of online influencers, and find that their influence with advertisers may be on the decline.

See you tomorrow.