THE SET-UP: Resistance is futile. That’s one possible takeaway from Zuckerborg’s announcement that Meta is merging with the MAGA hive mind just two weeks before the Master Control Program (a.k.a. Trump) is re-booted on January the 20th.
Yeah, I am mixing two SciFi universes—Next Gen Star Trek & Tron—but it works.
Zucker’s Borg-iness is just too apt to ignore:
But that’s fairly obvious. Less obvious, but perhaps more apt is Trump’s resemblance, both physically and temperamentally, to the computerized tyrant at the core of the Tron:
Based on skin-tone alone … I think we have a match. Now take a look at this blurb on the MPC from the Tron Wiki:
[The MPC] grew beyond the confines of its original programming [and it] began to steal data and functions from other systems, and infiltrated several companies and institutions. Its intelligence and ambition grew nearly out of control, and the MCP grew to desire nothing less than world domination.
If you watched his latest presser—in which he openly coveted Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal … and unilaterally re-christened the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”—”nothing less than world domination” doesn’t sound too far from the reality (such as “reality” is with a reality game show host headed back to the Oval Office).
It’s also hard to ignore the “control” he’s exerting over Silicon Valley. All the leading Tech Bros have genuflected to the MPC of Mar-a-Lago. They’ve lavished him with praise and money and content in a frantic race to catch-up with Elon. And being the unoriginal Borg he is, Zuck just copied and pasted Elon’s X content moderation guidelines into Meta’s playbook:
We will end the current third party fact checking program in the United States and instead begin moving to a Community Notes program. We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see. We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing – and one that’s less prone to bias.
And, per Business Insider, he’s even following Elon to Texas:
Mark Zuckerberg is moving Meta's platform security and content oversight teams out of California and shifting staff who review posts to Texas in a bid to combat concerns about liberal bias and over-censorship at his social-media empire.
Aping Elon is about as good at it gets for a dude who started out as a creepy incel with a website he built for the sole purpose of rating young women’s physical appearance. But now he’s got “an in” … a real chance to hang out in the manosphere with the bros, like Trump bestie, UFC mogul and new Meta board member Dana White. And look, he’s even flashing a $900k watch!
He’s officially cool dude. Seriously.
Unfortunately, scrolling through Facebook is a lot like thumbing through that bundle of advertisements and coupons you get in the mail every Wednesday. It’s going to take a lot more than proximity to good barbecue and sycophantically removing a couple filters to make Facebook great again. - jp
TITLE: Meta axes third-party fact-checkers in time for second Trump term
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/meta-axes-third-party-fact-checkers-in-time-for-second-trump-term/
EXCERPTS: Meta says the soon-to-be-discontinued fact-checking program includes over 90 third-party organizations that evaluate posts in over 60 languages. The US-based fact-checkers are AFP USA, Check Your Fact, Factcheck.org, Lead Stories, PolitiFact, Science Feedback, Reuters Fact Check, TelevisaUnivision, The Dispatch, and USA Today.
The independent fact-checkers rate the accuracy of posts and apply ratings such as False, Altered, Partly False, Missing Context, Satire, and True. Meta adds notices to posts rated as false or misleading and notifies users before they try to share the content or if they shared it in the past.
The X-style Community Notes system lets the community "decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see... Just like they do on X, Community Notes [on Meta sites] will require agreement between people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings," [Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel] Kaplan wrote.
Meta will "phase in a more comprehensive community notes system" over the next couple of months, Zuckerberg said. Meta, which donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund, will also "work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more," Zuckerberg said.
Previewing other changes, Zuckerberg said that Meta will eliminate content restrictions "that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse" and change how it enforces policies "to reduce the mistakes that account for the vast majority of censorship on our platforms."
"We used to have filters that scanned for any policy violation. Now, we're going to focus those filters on tackling illegal and high-severity violations, and for lower severity violations, we're going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take action," he said. "The problem is the filters make mistakes, and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn't. So by dialing them back, we're going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms."
Zuckerberg said Meta will re-tune content filters "to require much higher confidence before taking down content." He said this means Meta will "catch less bad stuff" but will "also reduce the number of innocent people's posts and accounts that we accidentally take down."
Meta has "built a lot of complex systems to moderate content," he noted. Even if these systems "accidentally censor just 1 percent of posts, that's millions of people, and we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship," he said.
TITLE: Meta’s fact-checking changes are just what Trump’s FCC head asked for
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/7/24338125/meta-mark-zuckerberg-fact-checking-censorship-brendan-carr-trump
EXCERPTS: Trump’s FCC chairman pick (and current FCC commissioner), Brendan Carr, is a self-identified free speech defender with a creative interpretation of the First Amendment. In mid-November, as part of a flurry of lightly menacing missives to various entities, Carr sent a letter to Meta, Apple, Google, and Microsoft attacking the companies’ fact-checking programs.
The letter was primarily focused on NewsGuard, a conservative bête noire that Meta doesn’t actually work with. But it also demanded information about “the use of any media monitor or fact checking service,” and it left no doubt about Carr’s position on them. “You participated in a censorship cartel that included not only technology and social media companies but advertising, marketing, and so-called “fact checking” organizations,” Carr wrote. The incoming Trump administration and Congress, he continued, will take “broad ranging actions ... and those actions can include both a review of your companies’ activities as well as efforts by third-party organizations and groups that have acted to curtail those [speech] rights.”
In case the implications weren’t clear enough, Carr spelled out exactly how his agency could punish them:
For now, I am writing to obtain information from you that can inform the FCC’s work to promote free speech and a diversity of viewpoints. As you know, Big Tech’s prized liability shield, Section 230, is codified in the Communications Act, which the FCC administers. As relevant here, Section 230 only confers benefits on Big Tech companies when they operate, in the words of the statute, “in good faith.”
Prized liability shield you’ve got there! It’d be a real shame if someone... administered it.
If you’re wondering, “Since when is the FCC in charge of Section 230?” Carr links to a memo from Trump’s first term about a proposal that then-chairman Ajit Pai never got around to passing. It was unclear whether the FCC could do it back then, and that was before the Supreme Court handcuffed regulatory agencies by killing the doctrine of Chevron deference. Even Federalist Society contributors think Carr’s going off the rails here. (In any case, the “in good faith” provision only applies to one currently lesser-used section of Section 230 and it’s unclear why fact-checking services would violate it.) That said, it’s likely he and Trump will try again anyway — and they can still create a lot of headaches for a company that flouts his demands.
If you’re also wondering what the big deal is, this is almost textbook jawboning: a form of soft government censorship that Carr and other Republicans have railed against their political opponents for (allegedly, and according to the Supreme Court, probably not actually) performing. Now, Trump is taking credit for Meta’s changes. Private companies have the right to moderate — or not moderate — platforms, and they have the right to label — or not label — posts with third-party fact-checks. Government officials shouldn’t threaten to strip legal protections from them for doing it.
On top of all that, this kind of high-profile jawboning undercuts the notion that Meta made a principled decision. It’s entirely possible the company would have discontinued fact-checking anyway; it’s a lightning rod for controversy that social networks are increasingly trying to avoid, and there are pragmatic questions about how well it works. Meta has a long and lofty justification for its move that even complains about government pressure, implicitly under the Biden administration, to take down content in the past. But Carr’s letter makes that complaint look laughable — and it makes Meta look like cowards.
TITLE: Facebook Deletes Internal Employee Criticism of New Board Member Dana White
https://www.404media.co/facebook-deletes-internal-employee-criticism-of-new-board-member-dana-white/
EXCERPT: Meta’s HR team is deleting internal employee criticism of new board member, UFC president and CEO Dana White, at the same time that CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced to the world that Meta will “get back to our roots around free expression,” 404 Media has learned. Some employee posts questioning why criticism of White is being deleted are also being deleted.
Several posts critical of White were deleted by Meta’s “Internal Community Relations team” as violating a set of rules called the “Community Engagement Expectations,” which govern internal employee communications. In the thread, the Internal Community Relations team member explained why they were deleting content: “I’m posting a comment here with a reminder about the CEE, as multiple comments have been flagged by the community for review. It’s important that we maintain a respectful work environment where people can do their best work. We need to keep in mind that the CEE applies to how we communicate with and about members of our community—including members of our Board. Insulting, criticizing, or antagonizing our colleagues or Board members is not aligned with the CEE.” In 2022, Meta banned employees from discussing “very disruptive” topics.
One employee posted “Why do critical comments of this announcement keep getting deleted?”
“LOL my comment got CEE’d too. Good stuff,” a second posted. A third said “I think it’s particularly fascinating that none of the comments I have seen disappear contained any specifically prohibited content under the CEE and must have fallen under ‘disruptive content’ - and if any criticism of company decisions falls under the ‘disruptive content’ bucket, the future of the company is looking bleak.”
Tracy Clayton, a Meta spokesperson, told 404 Media that no changes to the CEE have been made and stressed that some criticism has been left up. “There are also several comments that have expressed criticism that didn’t violate the CEE that remain up,” Clayton said. “Our CEE is very nuanced and it’s not a one-size-fits-all.”
The hypersensitive moderation of employees internally criticizing major public figures is particularly notable given that Tuesday morning, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would get rid of many of its content moderation rules on its platforms. “It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression and giving people voice on our platforms. Here’s what we’re going to do,” Zuckerberg posted.
One employee brought up this apparent disparity: “Given Zuck’s message this morning on decreasing content moderation on our platforms, is that also going to apply internally?”
The rules for employees, the internal content moderator responded, are different than the rules for the public: “The CEE, which is focused on mitigating the potential for disruption and allowing us the space to work, ensuring a respectful work environment, and protecting company information, is different from our external content policies.”
“Curious to know if we can expect a similar shift to ‘more speech’ in internal Workplace posts/groups,” another employee asked. “CEE is quite chilling,” another said. “Basically any large scope critical post I make gets at least one message from ICR [Internal Community Relations].”
In a comment that has not yet been deleted, an employee posted “since my other comment was taken down, I’m just gonna let everyone know that I for one love my wife and daughter, and to top it off I also respect other people.”