Since Donald Trump regained the presidency on November 5, a parade of Silicon Valley luminaries engaged in an inappropriate groveling fest, causing pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lagosnow removal multi-million contributions to his inaugural fund and meddling in editorial ” publications they own in an apparent attempt to gain favor with the fresh leader. Yesterday, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “hold my beer.”
According to Zuckerberg, the main impetus for change is the desire to strengthen “freedom of expression.” He said Meta’s social networks had become too radical in restricting user speech, so the essence of the changes – which included ending Meta’s long-standing partnership with third-party fact-checking organizations and withdrawing from efforts to curb the spread of hate speech – was to allow for freedom to ring out, even if it means “we’ll catch fewer bad things.”
But everything is in Zuckerberg’s nomenclature. He described his company’s (not entirely successful) efforts to avoid promoting toxic content as “censorship.” It has now made a bad faith characterization of its employees’ work, which the political right has used as a cudgel to force Facebook to allow ultra-conservatives to promote things like targeted harassment and intentional disinformation. In fact, Meta has every right to control its content however it wants – “censorship” is something governments do, and private companies simply exercise their right to free speech by deciding what content is appropriate for their users and advertisers.
Zuckerberg has indicated for the first time that he may not mind the term wa humorous letter wrote to Republican Congressman Jim Jordan last August, saying the Biden administration wanted Meta to “censor” some content related to the Covid-19 pandemic. (The content remained, effectively showing that Facebook was given the power to shape free speech in the U.S., not the government.) But in his Instagram post yesterday, Zuckerberg gave the term a bear hug, using it as a synonym for the entire practice of content moderation itself. “We intend to dramatically reduce the level of censorship on our platforms,” he promised. An alternative reading may be: we are releasing Doberman Pinschers!
In the same letter to Jordan, the former left-wing CEO vowed to no longer support either political party. “My goal is to remain neutral and not play a role one way or another – or even appear to play a role,” he wrote. Now that Trump has been elected, everything has been thrown out. “It feels like we’ve entered a fresh era,” he said in yesterday’s video. Apparently this is an era where private companies are changing their policies to align with the party in power. Just last week, Zuckerberg replaced the departing Nick Clegg, the company’s former global affairs president, with Joel Kaplan, a former GOP operative and clerk for the overdue Justice Anthony Scalia, who once insisted Facebook will ignore disinformation during the 2016 election. Zuckerberg also contacted the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship Dana Whitea staunch Trump supporter to serve on Meta’s board.
Another indication that there is a MAGA element to these changes is Zuckerberg’s announcement to move Meta’s trust and safety and content moderation teams from California to Texas. Once again, he was vocal about the political reasons for the geographic relocation: “I think it will facilitate us build confidence in doing this work in places where there is less concern about bias on our teams.” Hello, Mark? This move simply anchors Meta content arbiters in a location with potential reach miscellaneous bias. It’s also a striking statement that Zuckerberg himself might consider California – Trump’s kryptonite – a less savory place to work than deep red Texas.