Honoring the legacy of Jimmy Carter
Steven Weisman, senior editorial advisor at the Peterson Institute, joins “MediaBuzz” to discuss the life and legacy of the 39th president.
Mark Zuckerberg, who often bends to the political winds, is getting out of the fact-checking business.
It’s part of a broader effort by Meta’s chief executive to curry favor with Donald Trump after a long and tense relationship.
Following previous outcry, Zucker made a splashy announcement that Facebook would be hiring fact-checkers to combat misinformation on the globally popular site. It’s a clear sign that Facebook is becoming more of a news organization and less one that passively publishes user opinions (and dog photos).
But it didn’t work. In fact, this has led to more suppression and censorship of information. Why should anyone trust an unknown group of fact-checkers working for an increasingly unpopular tech giant?
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and President-elect Donald Trump stand side by side. (Getty Images)
Now, Zuckerberg has decided to end the project, announcing his decision in a video to emphasize its significance:
“The problem with complex systems is that they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor only one percent of their posts. That’s millions of people. We’ve reached a point where we have too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent election also made people It feels like a cultural turning point where speech is again prioritized.
Let me jump here. Zuckerberg bluntly admitted that he was following the conventional wisdom that he was following a “cultural tipping point” – of course, the biggest tipping point would be Trump’s re-election. Skeptics described 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 errors, simplifying our policies, and restoring free speech on our platform…
“We’re going to do away with the fact-checking process” and replace it with community notes that have already been used on X.
“We sincerely try to address these issues without becoming the arbiter of the facts. But fact-checkers are so politically biased that they destroy more trust than they build, especially in the United States.”
On October 20, 2024, SpaceX and Tesla founder Musk spoke at a town hall with Republican candidate U.S. Senator Dave McCormick at the Roxon Theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Michael Svensson/Getty Images)
It was Zuckerberg and former Twitter management who banned Trump after the Capitol riots. This has led to a lot of Trump-style attacks on Facebook, and the president-elect told me that he had reversed his stance on banning TikTok because it would help Facebook, which he believed was in greater danger.
Trump said last summer that Zuckerberg conspired against him in 2020 and that if he did it again, “he would spend the rest of his life in prison.”
The president-elect boiled it down to this in a post: “Zach Buck, don’t do this!”
Here’s more from Z: “We will simplify our content policies and remove a range of restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender that are disconnected from mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive is increasingly Too many places are being used to silence opinions and exclude people who think differently, and it has gone too far.
Indeed. I agree with this. In 2020, social media, led by Twitter, suppressed a New York Post report on Hunter Biden’s laptop, dismissing it as Russian disinformation, even though a year and a half later, establishment media suddenly declared that hey, laptop The reports are accurate.
Donald Trump’s tough words – Buy Greenland! Take back the Panama Canal!
Let’s face it: people like Zuckerberg and Elon Musk (now embroiled in a war of words with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over his alleged cover-up of a gang rape of a young girl while Starmer was chief prosecutor) Have huge influence. They are the new gatekeepers. As so-called traditional media become less relevant—as we’ve seen a mass exodus of top talent from Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post and more recently the rise of podcasts—they control much of the public conversation. Yes, they are a private company and can do whatever they want.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer listens to a speech by British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves during the Labor Party conference in Liverpool, England, Monday, September 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Jon Super)
At yesterday’s marathon press conference, a reporter asked Trump about Zuckerberg: “Do you think he was directly responding to the threats and promises you made to him in the past?”
“Maybe. Yeah, maybe,” Trump said, twisting the knife slightly.
Meanwhile, the CEO took a series of steps to join forces with the new administration after having to trek to Mar-a-Lago for dinner. It doesn’t hurt that Meta is throwing a million dollars at Trump’s inauguration.
Zucker appointed prominent Republican lawyer Joel Kaplan as global affairs chief, replacing the former British deputy prime minister. Kaplan said on “Fox & Friends” yesterday:
“We have a real opportunity now. We have a new administration and a new president who are strong defenders of free speech, and this is going to have an impact. One of the things we’ve experienced is that when you have a president of the United States, one who pushes for censorship system of government, which just provides an opportunity for other governments around the world that don’t even have First Amendment protections to really put pressure on American companies.
We will work with President Trump. knew?
In addition, Zuckerberg also added Dana White, CEO of United Fighting Championships, to Meta’s board of directors. White is a longtime Trump ally, so MAGA now has a voice within the company.
In other words, follow the plan.
Footnote: During a news conference in which Trump seemed angry about the recent court battles and plans to sentence him, the incoming president indicated – or, in journalistic terms, “didn’t rule out” – targeting two of his latest targets. “Military coercion.”
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“Well, for national security purposes, we need Greenland,” he said. Americans lost many lives building the Panama Canal. “Maybe you have to do something.”
He will not use force against either side. But his answer caused an uproar, as he knew it would.
