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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his decision to reduce Meta’s regulatory policies on Friday appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Zuckerberg was heavily criticized for the decision, including from employees within his company.
“It probably depends on who you ask,” Zuckerberg said when asked how the Meta update has been received.
The big changes Meta announced this week it was that it was ending its standalone program and replacing it with a community notes program like X has done. This means that Facebook, Instagram, and Threads will rely heavily on the community to report fake news. The company also said it will increase its automatic filters. This means that fewer bad posts on Meta platforms will be automatically downloaded, and fewer good posts will be downloaded incorrectly. And Meta did not announce this, but It says it’s pulling out of its biggest DEI effort.
In a candid, nearly three-hour conversation, Zuckerberg explained why he was transitioning his social network, as he called it, back to its roots of open communication.
“You only start one of these companies if you believe people are talking,” said Meta’s CEO. “The whole purpose of social media is to give people the opportunity to share what they want. It goes back to our original purpose of empowering people to share and make the world more open and connected.”
It is impossible to ignore the timing of these elections. Zuckerberg announced the changes just days before Donald Trump’s inauguration. A former president-elect he said the CEO of Meta conspired against him in the 2020 electionand reportedly threatened Zuckerberg with prison if he did it again.
As for Trump, Zuckerberg said he is optimistic about the incoming president because he “wants America to succeed.” The CEO saw the need to have a government that protects American technology companies abroad, he seemed to point out. A meta-analysis has been conducted by the European Union.
However, Zuckerberg said the timing of this change was a coincidence, and that there is no good time to make such a big change. In fact, Meta’s CEO said these changes have been a long time coming.
Zuckerberg said: “I was worried from the beginning that I would be the decider of what is true in the world. “It’s crazy to have billions of people using your service.”
Over the past decade, Meta’s CEO says people have begun to push for reviews on its platforms. He also mentioned two events that reached a climax: the 2016 US presidential election and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Zuckerberg said the Biden administration forced them to tell the truth. Meta’s CEO said some of the vaccine-related concerns that Meta had dismissed at the time should not be dismissed as false.
The CEO of Meta told Rogan that X and Twitter “did better than us” on the topic of curating content, and realizing how its platforms can handle community writing. In particular, several advertisers have abandoned X in recent years because of its content control rulesExodus to X is now challenging it in court like a competition.
Rogan and Zuckerberg broke down content to cover a wide range of topics on Friday, including jiu-jitsu, AI, and the radical shift in American culture.
The CEO of Meta said he sees a sea change happening, where people trust the authorities and implement less media. In their place, TV producers and podcasters, like Rogan himself, are gaining traction and trust.
These ideas are reflected in Meta’s recent changes to news on its platforms, which the company briefly described. he stopped promoting news or politics together. However, Zuckerberg signed this week to do so change this policy back to its advertising algorithms.
At one point, Zuckerberg observed how Western society, especially American companies, had become “crippled” and “unsettled”. He defended the importance of male presence in the country and its businesses.
Several times throughout the podcast, Zuckerberg said that he had stopped publishing the news a lot in the last 10 years, and that he took responsibility for things beyond his control. This is not the first time that Zuckerberg has said that Meta will have a limited role because everything bad on his platform is going forward. However, he seemed more honest and bold about the topic than ever in Friday’s chat.
“We just got to a point where there were things you couldn’t say (on our platforms) that were mainstream,” Zuckerberg said, referring to Meta’s ban on offensive speech.
Meta CEO Pete Hegseth has pointed out Trump’s defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, repeatedly he said that women should not be allowed to fight. Zuckerberg said that under Meta’s previous rules governing content, these comments were not allowed because they excluded a protected group of people. Under Meta’s new policies, these comments will be positive, Zuckerberg said.
“If it’s okay to say it under Congress, you can argue about it on social media,” he said.
On Dana White, the CEO of Meta said that he added the president of the UFC to his board of directors because of his business leadership, and to have many people who have a “strong backbone” in his company.
“We have a lot of governments and people around the world putting a lot of pressure on our company and we need strong people to advise us on how to do this,” Zuckerberg said on White.
