YesSocial networks have always acted as a kind of mirror of society as a whole. Algorithms and amplifications of an always-online existence have helped accentuate the worst parts of our lives, while hiding and obscuring the best. It’s part of the reason we’re so polarized today, with two tribes shouting at each other on social media into a yawning chasm of hopelessness.
That’s what makes the statement from a big tech titan this week so troubling. Abandon hope all who enter: Less than two weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House for a second chance at the US presidency, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Threads, has made changes important in content moderation. and in doing so appears to align with the views of the incoming president.
In a bizarre video message posted to his personal Facebook page on Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the platform is getting rid of its fact-checkers. Instead? Mafia government.
Zuckerberg has said that the platform, which has more than 3 billion people Around the world, logging into their apps every day, they will adopt an Elon Musk-style community notes format to monitor what is and is not acceptable speech on their platforms. Starting in the US, the company will dramatically shift the Overton window to whoever can shout the loudest.
Meta’s executive director all but admitted that the move was politically motivated. “It’s time to return to our roots around free expression,” he said, confessing that “restrictions on issues like immigration and gender (…) are out of touch with the dominant discourse.” He admitted to making “censorship mistakes” in the past (in this case, likely referring to the past four years of suppressing political speech while a Democratic president was in office) and said he would “work with President Trump to address foreign governments going after American companies for more censorship.”
The most whistle-blowing comment was a throwaway comment that Meta would move what remained of its trust, security and content moderation teams out of liberal California and that its US content moderation would now be based in staunchly Republican Texas. . The only thing missing from the video was Zuckerberg wearing a Wizard hat and carrying a shotgun.
To be clear: All entrepreneurs take shrewd steps to adapt to the political climate. And there are few storms more violent than Hurricane Trump approaching the United States. But few people’s decisions matter more than those of Mark Zuckerberg.
The CEO of Meta has become, over the last 21 years, a central part of our society. Initially, he oversaw a website used by college students. It is now used by billions of people from all walks of life. What in the early 2000s was a quaint pursuit of online fun has become the “de facto public square”, borrowing the words of Elon Musk. Where Meta goes, the world follows (online and offline). And Meta just decided to take a sharp, dramatic turn with the handbrake to the right.
Don’t believe me. Believe the watchdogs. “Meta’s announcement today is a retreat from any sensible and safe approach to content moderation,” he said. the real Facebook supervisory boardan independent and self-proclaimed arbiter of Meta’s movements, in a statement.
The reason they say that is because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from being so polarized over the last decade or more on social media, it’s that those who are the angriest win the arguments. Outrage and lies can spread on social media and have only been controlled in part thanks to the platforms’ ability to intervene when things get out of control. (Recall that just four years ago, Meta suspended Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram for two years for inciting the violence that devastated the Capitol on January 6, 2021.)
Social networks have always had difficulty moderating speech on their platforms. The only thing they are sure of doing, however they have arrived at an argument, is to upset 50% of the population. Those platforms haven’t helped themselves by chronically underinvesting in favor of growing their business at all costs. Platforms have long said that effective moderation is a question of unsolvable scale, but it’s a problem they created with an unbridled pursuit of scale at all costs.
Certainly, controlling online speech is difficult, and certainly content moderation at the level that companies like Meta have been trying to operate has not worked. But giving this up entirely in favor of community notes is not the answer. Suggesting that this is a rational, evidence-based decision obscures the reality: it is a politically expedient move for a man who this week saw the departure of a self-described “radical” centrist, Nick Clegg, as his head of global policy at favor of one with a Republican tendency. And who also appointed Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and close Trump ally, to Meta’s board of directors.
In many ways, Zuckerberg can’t be blamed for kneeling before Donald Trump. The problem is that his decision has huge ramifications.
This is an extinction-level event for the idea of objective truth on social media: a body that was already on life support, but was hanging on in part because Meta was willing to fund independent fact-checking organizations to try to maintain some element of truthfulness, free of political prejudices. The night is day. Up is down. Goal is X. Mark Zuckerberg is Elon Musk. Buckle up for four turbulent, vitriolic, fact-free years online.