Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement about the supposed return of unfettered free speech on his platforms was cynically reported in the lead story slot on Wednesday.by New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac and Theodore Schleifer, who covers “billionaires” (though perhaps not leftist billionaire George Soros, given that criticism of him is posed as anti-Semitic)
Meta said on Tuesday that it was ending its longstanding fact-checking program, a policy instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps, in a stark sign of how the company was repositioning itself for the Trump presidency and throwing its weight behind unfettered speech online.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said it would now allow more speech, rely on its users to correct inaccurate and false posts, and take a more personalized approach to political content….
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, said in a video announcing the changes. The company’s fact-checking system, he added, had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
Mr. Zuckerberg conceded there would be more “bad stuff” on the platforms as a result of the decision. “The reality is that this is a trade-off,” he said. “It means that we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”
After cynically stating that "few big companies have worked as overtly to curry favor with the president-elect,".as Meta, the Times turned to the censors' (i.e. "misinformation researchers") handwringing without any ideological labeling.
Misinformation researchers said Meta’s decision to end fact-checking was deeply concerning. Nicole Gill, a founder and the executive director of the digital watchdog organization Accountable Tech, said Mr. Zuckerberg was “reopening the floodgates to the exact same surge of hate, disinformation and conspiracy theories that caused Jan. 6 -- and that continue to spur real-world violence.”
Does the Times mean this sort of ludicrous fact-checking of the conservative Christian satire site The Babylon Bee (a site also targeted by the paper’s humor-impaired tech reporter Kevin Roose)?
In 2021, Facebook shut down Mr. Trump’s account after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol for inciting violence, later reinstating him. Multiple studies have since shown that interventions like Facebook’s fact-checks were effective at reducing belief in falsehoods and reducing how often such content was shared.
But Meta’s move elated conservative allies of Mr. Trump, many of whom have disliked Meta’s practice of adding disclaimers or warnings to questionable or false posts….
This sounded rather extreme:
Inside Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg’s announcements were met by praise and horror.
The story eventually settled into just relaying the unflattering facts.
Mr. Zuckerberg also regretted the pressure that the Biden administration put on him to take down content related to Covid-19, a sentiment he relayed publicly in a letter to Congress last year. [Editor’s Note: And which the Times ignored for nearly two months.] In the letter, Mr. Zuckerberg said the administration overreached in requests to take down content, “including humor and satire.” In hindsight, Meta should have pushed back more on the White House’s requests, he said.
Also at the Times, reporter Stuart Thompson's story with a "clever" headline backfired on social media: “Meta Says Fact-Checkers Were the Problem. Fact-Checkers Rule That False."
Cringe!
