Meta (i.e. Facebook) has just announced that it will stop any fact-checking it used to do on Facebook posts.
Well, that's convenient. CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes no secret of the fact that this move is precipitated by the election of one, Donald Trump, to the US presidency. He referred to Trump's election as "a cultural tipping point towards prioritizing, once again, speech".
Well, speech has always been a priority, as far as I know, as has free speech (which is presumably what he actually means). But the tipping pointing in question is really accurate free speech, true speech. Trump, of course, does not like fact-checking because his approach to politics relies on lies, and lots of them. Zuckerberg also calls the move getting "back to our roots around free expression", whatever that might mean.
Mr. Zuckerberg, it seems, is quite content to sway whichever way the political winds blow, truth be damned. He says that the current Meta system of fact-checking moderators (brought in in 2016 to try to stem the tsunami of untruths let loose before and after Trump's last election) is prone to too many mistakes and biases. So, his solution is not to improve it, but to get rid of it completely, replacing it with an X-style system of "community notes", where individuals can point out factual errors (in their opinion) but the original post stays, however erroneous. Because that's free speech, don't you know? And look how well it's working on X...
Zuckerberg was never the most upstanding or ethical of individuals - his pursuit of money was always top of mind - but this move shows his true colours, currently red. It's just one more alarming portent of just how bad a second Trump administration can get, for the USA and for the world.
To further curry favour with Trump, Zuckerberg has specifically ruled that Meta users will be allowed to call LGBTQ people "mentally ill", a move that has sparked a backlash within the organization, and widespread condemnation without. Still, some people will be happy, and those are the people that Zuckerberg cares about (at the moment anyway).
This is all part and parcel of the more general American corporate trend away from DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) in hiring and employment practices, that has really gathered steam since Trump's election. It's almost like all these major companies were just going along with all that woke nonsense for a while, and now see that the wind is blowing from another quarter and are more than happy to get back to money-making with all those ethical hurdles removed.
Meta, Amazon, Walmart, McDonalds, and many of the major banks and financial institutions have all walked back their DEI commitments recently, in what is one of the most blatant and unabashed corporate about-faces I can ever remember. They accompany their moves with some likely-sounding (but devoid of actual meaning) bafflegab, like "shifting legal and policy landscape", "winding down outdated programs and materials", "mitigate bias for all, no matter your background", etc. But you can almost see them grinning and rubbing their hands in the background.
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