Why Zuckerberg killed fact-checking while pandering to Trump

Mark Zuckerberg, which often sways with the political winds, gets out of the business of fact-checking.

And this is part of a broader effort by Meta’s chief executive to ingratiate himself Donald Trump after a long and painful relationship.

After the previous outcry, Zuck made a big show of announcing that Facebook would hire fact-checkers to combat misinformation on the globally popular site. That was a clear sign that Facebook it was becoming more of a journalistic organization, rather than a passive poster of users’ opinions (and pictures of dogs).

But it didn’t work. In fact, this has led to greater suppression of information and censorship. Why should anyone trust a bunch of unknown fact-checkers working for one of the increasingly unpopular tech titans?

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Now Zuckerberg is pulling the plug, announcing his decision in a video to emphasize its sweeping nature:

“The problem with complex systems is that they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor 1 percent of posts. That’s millions of people. And we’ve reached a point where there are just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent election also feels like a cultural tipping point toward giving back give priority to speech.”

Let me jump in here. Zuckerberg openly admits, with a phrase about a “cultural turning point,” that he’s following conventional wisdom—and, of course, the biggest turning point is Trump’s election to a second term. And skeptics portray it as a bow to the newly elected president and his team.

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“So we’re going back to our roots and focusing on reducing errors, simplifying our rules and restoring freedom of expression on our platforms…

“We’re going to get rid of the fact checkers” and replace them with community annotations, which are already in use on X. “After Trump was first elected in 2016, the legacy media constantly wrote about how misinformation is a threat to democracy.

“We tried in good faith to resolve these issues without becoming the arbiters of the truth. But the fact-checkers were simply too politically biased and destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the US”

It was Zuckerberg, along with previous Twitter management, who banned Trump after the rebellion at the Capitol. This led to a number of Trump attacks on Facebook, and the president-elect told me he changed his stance on banning TikTok because it would help Facebook, which he saw as a bigger threat.

Trump said last summer that Zuckerberg was plotting against him in 2020 and that he would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did it again.

The president-elect boiled it down in a post: “ZUCKERBUCKS, DON’T DO IT!”

Here’s more from Za: “We’re going to simplify our content rules and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are simply out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement for greater inclusivity is increasingly being used to shut down opinions and shutting down people with different ideas has gone too far.”

It really is. And I agree with that. In 2020, social media, led by Twitter, suppressed the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, dismissing it as Russian disinformation, though a year and a half later the establishment press suddenly announced hey, the laptop report is true.

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Let’s face it: people like Zuckerberg and Elon Musk (now embroiled in a war of words with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over an alleged cover-up of the gang-rape of young girls while Starmer was chief prosecutor) have enormous influence. They are the new goalkeepers. Because so-called legacy media are less relevant—as we’re seeing with the mass exodus of top talent from Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post and the recent rise of podcasts—they control much of the public dialogue. And yes, they are private companies that can do whatever they want.

At yesterday’s marathon press conference, a reporter asked Trump about Zuckerberg: “Do you think he’s living up to the promises you’ve made against him in the past?”

“Probably. Yeah, probably,” Trump said, twisting the knife a bit.

Meanwhile, after the obligatory trip to Mar-a-Lago for dinner, the CEO took a series of steps to join forces with the new management. And it doesn’t hurt that Meta is throwing a million dollars at Trump’s inauguration.

Zuck named prominent Republican lawyer Joel Kaplan as head of global affairs, replacing the former British deputy prime minister. On “Fox & Friends” yesterday, Kaplan said:

“Now we have a real opportunity. We have a new administration and a new president coming in who are great defenders of free speech, and that makes a difference. One of the things we’ve experienced is that when you have an American president, an administration that is pro-censorship, it just opens the season for others governments around the world that don’t even have First Amendment protections to really pressure American companies President Trump to say no to such things around the world.”

We will work with President Trump. you are at home

Moreover, Zuckerberg is adding Dan White, CEO of the United Fighting Championship, to Meta’s board. White is a longtime Trump ally, so MAGA now has a voice within the company.

In other words, get with the program.

Footnote: At his press conference, in which Trump appeared to be angry about the latest court battles and plans to be sentenced, the future president said — or “did not rule out,” in journalistic parlance — “military coercion” against two of his latest targets.

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“Well, we need Greenland for national security,” he said. And Americans lost many lives building the Panama Canal. “You might have to take action.”

He will not use military force against anyone. But his answer stirs the pot, as he knew it would.