There was a time when Mark Zuckerberg did not consider the mainstream media as the enemy. He even allowed me, a card-carrying legacy media person, into his house. In April 2018, I was there to hear their plans to do the right thing. This was part of my years old embed on Facebook for writing a bookFor the last two years, Zuckerberg's company has been widely criticized for its failure to curb disinformation and hate speech. Now the young founder had a plan to address this.
part of the solution, He told me, There was more content moderation. He was going to hire many more people to investigate the posts, even if it would cost Facebook a lot of capital. It will also increase efforts to use artificial intelligence to proactively remove harmful content. “It's no longer enough to give people the tools to say what they want and then let our community flag them and try to respond after the fact,” he told me as we sat in his sunroom. “We need to get in there more and take a more active role.” He admitted that he was late to realize how harmful toxic content on Facebook was, but he is now determined to fix the problem, even if it may take years. “I think we're doing the right thing,” he told me, “it's just that we should have done it sooner.”
Seven years later, Zuckerberg no longer thinks more moderation is the right thing. In five minute reelHe regretted his actions in supporting it as a form of government sycophancy regarding Covid and other topics. They announced a move away from content moderation – no longer actively removing and downranking misinformation and hate speech – and ended a fact-checking program aimed at refuting falsehoods disseminated on their platforms. Fact checking by reliable sources will be replaced by “community notes”, a crowdsourcing approach where users provide alternative views on the veracity of posts. That technique is exactly the same one he told me in 2018 that “isn’t good enough.” While he acknowledges that his changes now will allow “more bad things”, he says it is worth it to allow more “free expression” to flourish in 2025.
The policy change was one of several steps that signaled that, whether Zuckerberg always wanted to do so or not, Meta is aligning itself with the new Trump administration. You've heard the litany, which has become a meme in itself. Meta promoted its top lobbyist, former GOP operative Joel Kaplan, to chief global affairs officer; He immediately appeared on Fox News (and only Fox News) to explain the new policies. Zuckerberg also announced that Meta would be moving the staff writing and reviewing content from California to Texas, to “help address concerns that biased staff are excessively censoring content.” He disbanded Meta's DEI program. (Where is Sheryl Sandberg, who was so proud of Meta's diversity effort. Sheryl? Sheryl?) and Meta changed some of its terms of service specifically to allow users Humiliating LGBTQ people,
Now that it's been a week since the meta changed—and my first take As for Zuckerberg's speech – I'm particularly troubled by one aspect: He seems to have undermined the basic practice of classic journalism, turning it into unreported comments from podcasters, influencers, and countless random people on his platforms. Has not been explained better than. This was indicated in his reel when he repeatedly used the term “legacy media” as a pejorative: a force that, in his view, urges censorship and suppresses free expression. This whole time I thought the opposite!
Their revised version of credibility is indicated by changes in community notes from fact-checkers. It's true that the fact-checking process wasn't working well — partly because Zuckerberg didn't defend Checkers when ill-intentioned critics accused him of bias. It is also reasonable to expect that community notes will be a useful indication that a post may be misleading. But the power of rebuttal fails when participants in the conversation reject the idea that disagreements can be resolved by solid evidence. This is a key difference between fact-checking – which Zuckerberg got rid of – and Community Notes which he is implementing. The fact-checking worldview holds that certain facts obtained through research, talking to people, and sometimes believing one's own eyes can be conclusive. The trick is to recognize those officials who have earned the public's trust by pursuing the truth. Community Notes welcomes alternative ideas—but it's up to you to decide which one is credible. There is something to the rumor that the cure for bad speech is more speech. But if verifiable facts cannot successfully refute easily refuted flapdoodles, we are stuck in a self-inflicted quagmire.
This is the world that Zuckerberg's new role model, Donald Trump, has deliberately begun to embody. 60 minutes Reporter Leslie Stahl once asked Trump Why did he insult journalists who were just doing their work? “You know why I do this?” He replied. “I do this to defame you all and put you all down so that when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.” Trump in 2021 further revealed Their intention to profit from the attack on truth. “If you say it enough and keep saying it, they will start believing you,” he said during a rally. One consequence of this is that if social media promotes a lie enough, people will believe it too. Especially if previously recognized authorities have been defamed and insulted.