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Rula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Mark Zuckerberg once had to assert that “Not a lizard” During a live online Q&A session. This was neither the first nor the last time people suggested that the pale, slightly robotic founder of Facebook was an alien. You have to love the Internet.
These days, though, the Meta Prime has a whole new aesthetic: less Lizard Man, more standard billionaire technologist. Gone are the humble gray T-shirts, fitted tightly over a slim frame; Instead, oversized T-shirts were worn over an oversized body, topped off with a gold chain and a $900,000 watch. the The Julius Caesar haircut was replaced with a relaxed, Californian mop, and Zuckerberg's complexion went from deathly pale to dark (Americans insist this is an adjective).
I might also suggest that if you were standing in the same room as Zuck, you would notice that he was wearing a new scent – perhaps a somewhat musky scent. Along with his new look comes some new opinions, and they seem to have been heavily influenced by a certain fellow West Coast billionaire.
“It's time to go back to our roots on freedom of expression,” Zuckerberg said. Video statement It was published on Meta on Tuesday. In it, he explained that the company will eliminate the teams of professional fact-checkers it currently employs and replace them with a crowdsourced “community feedback” system, as Elon Musk did Trump to pressure governments around the world.”
“Governments and legacy media have pushed for more and more censorship,” Zuck said (note the use of the term “legacy media,” which is one of the terms Favorite musk). “But we now have the opportunity to reclaim freedom of expression, and I’m excited to seize it.”
I should start by saying that I have some major issues with the whole concept of fact-checking in the context of social media, which I've expressed publicly several times. When a Bloomberg columnist asked for examples of fact-checkers showing political bias, Meta sent three articles, including Column I wrote in 2021where you said that fact-checking is often used as censorship. I have it too Positively written About community feedback, though this system also has limitations.
Although the spread of misinformation and disinformation online concerns me greatly, it is pretty much impossible for facts to be truly objectively verified since all humans have biases. Choices must be made about which claims to verify and which claims to wave. So the idea that an entire social network could be “validated” has always been a fantasy. There are few financial incentives for platforms to do this (unless they are worried about being fined by regulators).
The problem I have with all of this is not the core of what's going on in the meta. I even consider moving content moderation teams from the Bay Area to Austin, Texas — a Democratic city in a very Republican state — to “help remove concerns that biased employees are over-censoring content,” Zuckerberg wrote on Threads. It's a pretty reasonable idea. But his wording reveals his true motivations: It's not about principles, it's about optics and pleasing the soon-to-be resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
My problem with Zuckerberg is his weakness and opportunism. Ask yourself this: Is there any chance Zuckerberg will make all these changes at Meta — he also appointed Trump ally Dana White to the board, and replacing Nick Clegg with prominent Republican Joel Kaplan as head of global affairs – if Kamala Harris wins in November?
Even Trump himself doesn't think so. Last year, he warned that Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if the Meta boss tried to “conspiracy against him.” When asked on Tuesday whether Zuckerberg was “directly responding to threats that (Trump) has made against him in the past” with this complete fact-checking shift, the president-elect responded: “Maybe.”
Zuckerberg may well talk about that he will no longer capitulate to government demands, but he is still capitulating to just different demands. In many ways, all of this means that Zuckerberg is less dangerous than Musk. It is clear in what direction the influence was exerted when President Meta went to have dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. It goes where the wind blows.
And I would feel more comfortable if the man in charge of the platforms used by two-fifths of the world's population could show some moral courage and leadership. He may have succeeded in transforming his image, but at least the lizards have a backbone.
