No Sightings and Too Much Hate Speech: Meta Goes MAGA

Since Donald Trump won the presidency on November 5, a group of analysts in Silicon Valley has been doing a dirty trick, making trips to Mar-a-Lagodigging up million dollar donation to his opening fund, and intervened in the repair departments of the publications they have trying to gain the favor of the new leader. Yesterday, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “hold my beer.”

In a five-minute Instagram video, she rocks her new curly hair and a $900,000 Gruebal Forsey watchZuckerberg announced major policy changes that would crack down on fake news and hate speech on Facebook, Threads, and Instagram. His plans have drawn right-wing lawmakers, pundits, and Trump himself for years to bash him. And Zuckerberg didn’t shy away from the moment, making it clear that the new political regime is what got him thinking: “The recent election feels like a culture of re-enforcing voice,” he said in the video.

In Zuckerberg’s words, the driving force behind the change is a desire to promote “free speech.” Social networking site Meta had grown too strict about restricting user speech, he said, so the changes — which included ending Meta’s decades-long partnership with third-party censors and abandoning efforts to limit the spread of hate speech. and allowing freedom, even if it means “we’ll catch a few bad things.”

But the word is in Zuckerberg’s nomenclature. He described his company’s (not entirely successful) efforts to avoid promoting toxic products as “research.” Now he has taken on the bad faith of his employees’ work done by the political right, which used it as a bludgeon to force Facebook to allow ultraconservatives to promote things like targeted harassment and deliberate falsehoods. In fact, Meta has every right to verify content in any way it wants – “research” is what governments do, and private companies are just using their free speech to decide what’s right for users and advertisers.

Zuckerberg initially said that he might be fine with the term in a simpering letter he wrote in August to Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, saying that Biden’s officials want Meta to “investigate” other things related to the Covid-19 pandemic. (The document remained, which clearly shows that Facebook is given the power to express freedom of speech in the US, not the government.) But in his Instagram yesterday, Zuckerberg embraced the word, using it in the same way as the whole practice. about content control. “We will significantly reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms,” ​​he promised. Another reading would be-we are releasing dobermans!

In the same letter to Jordan, the left-leaning ex-general vowed not to join any political party again. “My goal is to stay out of politics and not take sides—or appear to be taking sides,” he wrote. Now that Trump has been elected, everything is out the window. “It feels like we’re in a new era now,” he said in yesterday’s video. Obviously, it’s time for private companies to change their rules to ensure they align with the party in power. In the last week alone, Zuckerberg replaced Nick Clegg, who was the former president of the world. Joel Kaplana former GOP operative and clerk to the late Justice Anthony Scalia, who once encouraged Facebook ignores fake news in the 2016 election. Zuckerberg also took over as president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship Dana Whitean ardent supporter of Trump, to be on Meta’s board.

Another sign that there is a MAGA element to these changes is Zuckerberg’s announcement that he is moving Meta’s security and management teams from California to Texas. Again, he asserted that the reasons for the relocation were political: “I think this will help us build confidence to do this work in a place where there is not much concern about the bias of our teams.” Hello, Mark? This move only stops the Meta changes in the privileged position different favoritism. It’s also a clear statement that Zuckerberg himself would consider California — Trump’s kryptonite — a less pleasant place to work than deep red Texas.