Since Donald Trump After retaking the presidency on November 5th, a parade of Silicon Valley celebrities turned into an ugly and macabre revelry. Pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lagoshoveling snow million dollar donation She contributed to his foundation fund and interfered with the magazine’s editorial department. Publications they own This is a clear attempt to gain support from the new leadership. Yesterday, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “Hold your beer.”
In the five-minute Instagram video, he shows off his new curly hairstyle and $900,000 Global Forsey watchMr. Zuckerberg announced a series of sweeping policy changes that could open the floodgates to misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, Threads, and Instagram. His rationale parrots arguments long made by right-wing lawmakers, commentators, and Trump himself. And Zuckerberg didn’t shy away from the timing, making it clear that the new political system was a factor in his thinking, saying, “The recent election feels like a cultural tipping point towards re-prioritizing speech.” “I can do it,” he said in the video.
Zuckerberg said the main driver of change is a desire for greater “freedom of expression.” He said Meta’s social network had become too extreme in restricting user speech, ending Meta’s years-long partnership with third-party fact-checking organizations and halting efforts to curb the spread of hate speech. He said the gist of the changes, including the withdrawal, was the gist of the changes. It’s about ringing freedom, even if it means “catching fewer bad ones.”
But the secret lies in Zuckerberg’s nomenclature. He described his company’s (not entirely successful) efforts to avoid promoting harmful content as “censorship.” He is now employing the same malicious characterizations of employee work that the political right has done, and using them as weapons to attack Facebook with targeted harassment and intentions by ultra-conservatives. forcing the government to allow the promotion of false information. The fact is that Meta has every right to police its content in any way it wants. “Censorship” is a government practice, and private companies are simply exercising their own free speech rights by determining what content is appropriate for users and advertisers.
Zuckerberg first suggested the term might be OK. A heartwarming letter In a letter to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan last August, he said he wanted the Biden administration to “censor” some content related to the coronavirus pandemic. (The content remains, showing that in fact Facebook, not the government, is empowered to shape free expression in the United States.) In a post on the gram, he gave the word a bearhug, using it as a synonym for the entire practice. Content moderation itself. “We’re going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platform,” he promised. Another way to read it might be, “Let’s get rid of the Doberman!”
In the same letter to Jordan, the former leftist CEO vowed to no longer take sides with either political party. “My goal is to be neutral and not to play any role, or even the appearance of playing a role,” he wrote. Now that Trump is elected, that’s all out the window. “I feel like we’re in a new era right now,” he said in a video yesterday. It appears that we are now in an era where private companies are changing the rules in order to align themselves with the ruling party. Last week alone, Mr. Zuckerberg replaced his retiring former international affairs president, Nick Clegg, with Joel Kaplan, a former Republican operative who clerked for the late Justice Anthony Scalia. prompted once Facebook ignored misinformation during the 2016 election. Zuckerberg was also named chairman of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Dana WhiteThe ardent Trump supporter will join Meta’s board of directors.
Another sign that there is a MAGA element to these changes is Zuckerberg’s announcement that he is moving Meta’s trust and safety and content moderation teams from California to Texas. He reiterated that the reason for the geographic move was political, saying, “I think it helps build trust to do this work in a place where there’s less concern about team bias.” Hello, Mark? This move only locks Meta’s content arbiter in a potentially dangerous location. different bias. It’s also a notable remark that suggests Zuckerberg himself may consider President Trump’s kryptonite, California, to be a worse place to work than deep-red Texas.
