Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has decided that as owner of the social networking sites Facebook and Instagram, he is tired of being responsible for their accuracy.
Instead, Zuckerberg announced Tuesday, he’s dropping his companies’ fact-checkers in favor of “Community Notes,” a program where users volunteer to oversee content as well as offer their own opinions about matters. And if enough fact-checkers agree with a proposed “different perspective,” then it’s affixed to the original post.
Sometimes that works to the advantage of truth, but oftentimes not.
Because of the “squeaky wheel” algorithmic design of Meta’s software, the more opinions posted about a certain topic, the bigger its presence, whether based on fact or not.
Zuckerberg calls this a move toward “free speech,” confusing it with truthfulness.
Zuckerberg said his decision to loosen the reins is a return to his “roots.”
Closer to the truth is that Zuckerberg, like Jeff Bezos of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, are trying to get on the good side of President-elect Donald Trump even if it means sacrificing their companies’ reputations.
It’s working.
Leading up to last fall’s election, the Post’s editorial board nixed the paper’s endorsement of Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris, and most recently pulled an editorial cartoon by Anne Telnaes that depicted media and tech titans, including Bezos and Zuckerberg, kneeling before President-elect Donald Trump. Telnaes, who has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her insightful work, subsequently resigned.
As for Zuckerberg, he admitted Trump’s winning the 2024 election weighed in on his decision, saying, “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.”
Along with allowing a more “free flow” of information, Zuckerberg is donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund and has appointed Trump supporter Dana White, a professional boxing CEO, to his board of directors.
Zuckerberg now asserts that his initial goal of hiring third-party fact-checkers to filter out false claims by bad actors, including conspiracy theories concerning election security, immigrants and vaccines, were overkill.
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.”
With the guardrails down, Zuckerberg acknowledges there’s a “trade-off.”
“It means that we’re going to catch less bad stuff,” he said, resulting in more hate speech and falsehoods being posted.
