Prepare to be gaslit
From Brian Stelter’s bold-heavy Reliable Sources newsletter this morning:
Mark Zuckerberg just announced sweeping changes to the social internet, all in line with the desires of President Trump and Trump voters.
Out with the fact-checkers that conservatives deride. In with more permissive rules for posting opinions that conservatives hold dear.
The recent elections “feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said in a video that was shared first with Fox News.
That’s one of the reasons why Zuckerberg said big changes are coming to Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Because Meta is such a dominant force in the industry, the changes will resonate even more widely, reshaping whole swaths of the internet in MAGA-friendly ways.
Among the announcements:
>> Meta will “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.” He didn’t elaborate.
>> “Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased, and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg asserted, so Facebook is cutting ties with third-party fact-checkers and moving toward an X-style community notes system.
>> “We’re bringing back civic content,” Zuckerberg said. “For a while the community asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed, so we stopped recommending these posts. But it feels like we’re in a new era now, and we’re starting to get feedback that people want to see this content again.”
Overall, CNN’s Clare Duffy writes, the moderation changes are “a stunning reversal in how Meta handles false and misleading claims on its platforms.” Meta’s framing – in its PR blog post – is “More Speech and Fewer Mistakes.” An alternate title could be “More Lies and More Confusion.”
There’s a strong Ministry of Truth vibe here.
Stelter notes that with Zuckerberg giving the exclusive to “Fox & Friends,” perhaps this move is an attempt to derail Trump’s threat to send Meta’s founder to prison for “the rest of his life.”
Meta’s policy chief, Joel Kaplan, tells F&F, that eliminating fact checkers “is a great opportunity for us to reset the balance in favor of free expression,” and make their platforms places where lies, smears, and propaganda may flourish, he did not add. “[W]hat we’re doing is we’re getting back to our roots and free expression.”
[Checking on my supply of Tums.]
Stelter continues:
I am struck by a commonality between Zuckerberg and Elon Musk‘s recent announcements:
Zuck said “civic content,” i.e. political news, will be more prominently featured going forward, and Meta will work “to keep the communities friendly and positive.”
Musk said last week that X’s algorithm will be tweaked “to promote more informational/entertaining content,” citing “too much negativity” that hurts the user experience.
The X change seems like an appeal to advertisers, since sponsors don’t want ads next to conspiracy theories and hate speech. But consider the timing: Musk is pushing his “new ‘everything is awesome’ algo tweak just in time for the new administration. To reduce ‘negativity.’ Fascinating,” TPM publisher Josh Marshall remarked. And Zuckerberg wants more politics back in peoples’ feeds – but he wants to keep it “friendly and positive…”
Meantime, my follower count on Bluesky continues to mount.