No Fact-Checking and More Hate Speech: Meta Goes Maga

Because Donald Trump won back the presidency on Nov. 5, a parade of Silicon Valley luminaries engaged in an impromptu grovel-fest, Pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lagoshovel Million dollar contribution To interfere with its opening fund, and its editorial departments their own publications In an apparent attempt to curry favor with the new leader. Yesterday, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “Grab my beer.”

In a five-minute Instagram video, rocking her new curly hair and a $900,000 Gruebal Forsey watchZuckerberg announced a series of drastic policy changes that could open the floodgates of misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, Threads and Instagram. His rationale parroted the talking points that right-wing lawmakers, pundits and Trump himself have been hammering away for years. And Zuckerberg wasn’t coy about the timing, clearly saying the new political regime was a factor in his thinking: “The recent elections seem to be a cultural tipping point toward prioritizing speech again,” he said in the video.

In Zuckerberg’s words, the main motivation for the change is the desire to encourage “free expression.” Meta’s social networks have become too extreme in restricting users’ speech, he said, so the thrust of the changes — which included ending Meta’s multi-year partnership with third-party fact-checking firms and stepping back from efforts to reduce the spread of hate speech — allowed freedom to play. , even if it means “we’re going to catch less bad stuff.”

But it is said in the naming of Zuckerberg. He described his company’s (not entirely successful) efforts to avoid promoting toxic content as “censorship.” He now embraces the same bad-faith characteristics of his employees’ work that the political right did, using Facebook as a bludgeon to force ultraconservatives to publish things like targeted harassment and deliberate misinformation. In reality, Meta has the right to regulate content however it wants—”censorship” is something that governments do, and private companies are exercising their own free speech rights by deciding what content is appropriate for their users and advertisers.

Zuckerberg initially indicated that he might be fine with the term Simpering letter He wrote to Republican Congressman Jim Jordan last August that the Biden administration wanted Meta to “censor” some content related to the Covid-19 pandemic. (The content remains, which actually explains that Facebook is empowered to free speech in the US, not the government.) But in his Instagram post yesterday, Zuckerberg embraced the term, using it as a synonym for the entire practice. Content moderation itself. “We are going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platform,” he promised. An alternative reading might be—We’re kicking out the Dobermans!

In the same letter to Jordan, the former left-leaning CEO vowed that he would no longer support any political party. “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or the other — or even seem to be playing a role,” he wrote. Now that Trump has been elected, all that is out the window. “It feels like we’re in a new era now,” he said in yesterday’s video. Apparently, this is an era where private companies change their rules to align with the party in power. Last week, Zuckerberg replaced the outgoing Nick Clegg, the company’s former president of global affairs. Joel KaplanA former GOP operative and clerk to the late Justice Anthony Scalia, who Once requested Facebook will ignore misinformation during the 2016 election. Zuckerberg also tapped the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship Dana WhiteAn ardent Trump supporter, to sit on Mater’s board.

Another indication that there is a MAGA component to these changes is Zuckerberg’s announcement that he is moving Meta’s trust and security and content moderation teams from California to Texas. Again, he voiced that the reasons for the geographic move were political: “I think it will help us build confidence to do this in a place where we have less concern about party bias.” Hello, Mark? This step simply anchors the arbiters of Meta’s content in a position with a potential different Bias It’s an obvious statement that Zuckerberg himself might consider California—Trump’s kryptonite—to be a less palatable place than deep-red Texas.