Why Zuckerberg killed fact-checking as he continues to cozy up to Trump

Mark Zuckerberg, who often bends to the political winds, is retiring from the fact-checking profession.

And it’s part of a broader effort by Meta’s CEO to curry favor with Donald Trump after a long and rocky relationship.

After an earlier outcry, Zuck made a big show of declaring that Facebook would hire fact-checkers to combat misinformation on the globally popular site. It was a clear sign that Facebook was becoming more of a journalistic organization rather than a passive display of user opinions (and dog photos).

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

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Alongside Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and President-elect Donald Trump. (Getty Images)

Now, Zuckerberg is calling it quits, announcing his decision in a video to highlight its major nature:

“The problem with complex systems is that they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor just 1 percent of messages. That’s millions of people. And we’ve reached a point where there’s simply too many errors and too much censorship. The recent elections also seem like a cultural shift towards a new priority on speech.

Allow me to interject here. Zuckerberg bluntly admits, with that phrase about the “cultural tipping point,” that he’s following conventional wisdom — and, of course, the most important tipping point is Trump’s election to a second term. And skeptics describe this as a bow to the president-elect and his team.

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“So we’re going to go back to our roots and focus on reducing errors, simplifying our policies, and restoring free speech on our platforms…

“We’re going to get rid of fact checkers” and replace them with community ratings, already used on democracy.

“We have tried in good faith to address these concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers have simply been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created, particularly in UNITED STATES.”

SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk speaks during a town hall with Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick at the Roxain Theater on October 20, 2024 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

It was Zuckerberg, along with previous Twitter management, who banned Trump after the Capitol riot. This resulted in numerous Trumpian attacks on Facebook, and the president-elect told me that he changed his position on banning TikTok because it would help Facebook, which he saw as the biggest danger.

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

The president-elect summed it up in a message: “ZUCKERBUCKS, DON’T DO IT!”

Here’s a little more from Z: “We will simplify our content policies and remove a number of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are simply disconnected from mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to being more inclusive has been increasingly used to silence opinions and exclude people with different ideas. And it has gone too far.

Indeed, it is. And I agree with that. In 2020, social media, led by Twitter, deleted the New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation, even though a year and a half later the establishment press suddenly declared : “Hey, the report on the laptop was accurate.”

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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 gang rapes of young girls when Starmer was chief prosecutor) have immense influence. They are the new guardians. With so-called traditional media becoming less relevant – as we see with the mass exodus of top talent from Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post and the recent rise of podcasts – they control much of the public dialogue. And yes, these are private companies that can do whatever they want.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer listens to British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’ speech at the Labor Party conference in Liverpool, England, Monday September 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

During yesterday’s marathon press conference, a reporter asked Trump about Zuckerberg: “Do you think he’s directly responding to the threats you’ve made to him in the past with promises?”

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

Meanwhile, after making the obligatory trip to Mar-a-Lago for dinner, the CEO took a number of steps to partner with the new administration. And it doesn’t hurt that Meta is investing a million dollars for Trump’s inauguration.

Zuck named prominent Republican lawyer Joel Kaplan as global affairs chief, replacing a former British deputy prime minister. Yesterday on “Fox & Friends,” Kaplan said:

“We have a real opportunity now. 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 is that when you have an American president, an administration that is pushing for censorship, it opens the way for other governments around the world that don’t even have the protections of the First Amendment to really put pressure on American companies that we’re going to work. President Trump is going to oppose this kind of thing. things all over the world.”

We will work with President Trump. Got it?

Additionally, Zuckerberg adds Dana White, CEO of United Fighting Championship, to Meta’s board of directors. White is a longtime Trump ally, so MAGA now has a voice within the company.

In other words, follow the program.

Footnote: At his press conference, where Trump seemed angry about the latest court battles and plans to convict him, the new president declared – 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 reasons,” he said. And the Americans lost many lives building the Panama Canal. “You may need to do something.”

He will not use military force against either. But his response stirs the pot, as he expected.