Why Zuckerberg killed fact-checking as he continues to cozy up to Trump

Mark Zuckerberg, which often bends with the political winds, is getting out of the fact-checking business.

And this is part of a broader effort by Meta’s CEO to ingratiate himself with him donald trump after a long and difficult relationship.

After an earlier outcry, Zuck made a big show of declaring that Facebook would hire fact-checkers to combat misinformation on the globally popular site. This was a clear sign that facebook it was becoming more of a journalistic organization than a passive poster of user opinions (and dog pictures).

But it didn’t work. In fact, it led to more suppression of information and censorship. Why should anyone believe a bunch of unknown fact-checkers working for one of the increasingly unpopular tech titans?

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Now Zuckerberg is pulling the plug, announcing his decision in a video to underscore its important nature:

“The problem with complex systems is that they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor only 1 percent of posts. That’s millions of people. And we’ve reached a point where it’s too many mistakes and too much censoring . The last election also feels like a cultural turning point to re-prioritize discourse.”

Let me jump in here. Zuckerberg bluntly admits, with this line about the “cultural tipping point,” that he follows the conventional wisdom, and of course the biggest tipping point is Trump’s election to a second term. And skeptics present this as a bow to the president-elect and his team.

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“So we’re going back to our roots and focusing on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms…

“We’re going to get rid of the fact checkers” and replace them with community notes, which are already used in X. “After Trump was first elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how disinformation was a threat to democracy.

“We have tried in good faith to address these concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created. especially in the US”

It was Zuckerberg, along with former Twitter management, who banned Trump after the Capitol riot. This led to many attacks from Trump on Facebook, and the president-elect told me that he had changed his position on banning TikTok because it would help Facebook, which he saw as the biggest danger.

Trump said last summer that Zuckerberg conspired against him in 2020 and that he would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did it again.

The president-elect summed it up in a post: “ZUCKERBUCKS, DON’T!”

Here’s a little more from Z: “We’re going to simplify our content policies and remove a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive . has been used more and more to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas and it has gone too far.”

Indeed, he has. And I agree with that. In 2020, social media, led by Twitter, deleted the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop, dismissing it as Russian disinformation, although a year and a half later, the press of the establishment suddenly declared that well, the laptop report was accurate.

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Let’s face it: people like Zuckerberg and Elon Musk (now embroiled in a war of words with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over an alleged cover-up of gang-rapes of young girls when Starmer was chief prosecutor) have immense influence. They are the new goalkeepers. With so-called legacy media less relevant, as we see with the mass exodus of top talent from Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post and the recent rise of podcasts, they control much of the public dialogue. And yes, they are private companies that can do whatever they want.

At yesterday’s marathon press conference, a reporter asked Trump about Zuckerberg: “Do you think he’s responding directly to the threats you’ve made to him in the past with promises?”

“Probably. Yeah, probably,” Trump said, twisting the knife a bit.

Meanwhile, after making the obligatory trek to Mar-a-Lago for dinner, the CEO has taken a number of steps to join forces with the new administration. And it doesn’t hurt that Meta is donating a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration.

Zuck named prominent Republican lawyer Joel Kaplan as head of global affairs, replacing a former British deputy prime minister. On “Fox & Friends” yesterday, Kaplan said:

“We have a real opportunity now. We have a new administration and a new president coming in who are big supporters of free speech, and that makes a difference. One of the things we’ve experienced is that when you have a president of the United States, an administration that is pushing for censorship, it just makes it open season for other governments around the world that don’t even have First Amendment protections to really pressure American companies that we’re going to work with President Trump to carry this one forward kinds of things around the world.”

We will work with President Trump. do you understand

In addition, Zuckerberg brings Dana White, chief executive of the United Fighting Championship, to Meta’s board. White is a longtime Trump ally, so MAGA now has a voice within the company.

In other words, with the program.

Footnote: At his news conference, where Trump appeared angered by the latest court battles and plans to impeach him, the incoming president said, or “did not rule out,” in journalistic parlance, “military coercion” against two of his latest objectives

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“Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes,” he said. And Americans lost many lives building the Panama Canal. “You might have to do something.”

He will not use military force against either. But her answer stirs the pot, as he knew it would.