Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said “it’s time to get back to our roots” when announcing changes to its content policies and kowtowing to the incoming Trump administration and Republican agenda.
First, he appointed UFC’s Dana White to Facebook’s board. White has been caught on camera assaulting his wife and is a longtime supporter of Donald Trump.
Meta has donated one-million dollars to Trump’s inauguration fund, and last week named one of the company’s most prominent Republicans, Joel Kaplan, as President of Global Affairs.
But these are just the starting points. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, is also making systemic changes to placate Republicans who have long complained of discrimination against conservative voices.
On the Joe Rogan podcast, Zuckerberg denied making the changes to appease the incoming Trump administration but said the election did influence his thinking.
“The good thing about doing it after the election is you get to take this cultural pulse,” The New York Times reported Zuckerberg as saying. “We got to this point where there were these things that you couldn’t say that were just mainstream discourse.”
They are eliminating Fact Checkers. Trump and his acolytes often complain that they are being challenged when they say things like illegal Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Ohio. Now a post like that may get a “Community Note.”
He says this move follows the lead of X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk. Zuckerberg then discredited his Fact Checkers, saying they “have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.”
Also, filters will now look for “bad stuff” like drugs and sex trafficking. The company is also loosening its restrictions on hate speech, especially towards the transgender community.
“I want to make sure people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platform.”
But according to the New York Times, some insiders have said the new rules are contradictory. For example they write: “Some of the text said saying that ‘white people have mental illness’ would be prohibited on Facebook, but saying that ‘gay people have mental illness’ was allowed, they said.”
The Times also reported that the company removed the transgender and nonbinary “themes” on its Messenger chat app.
Additionally employees told The Times managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees.
After previously de-emphasizing political content on Meta platforms, the company is rolling back that as well.
He’s also moving the Content Teams from California to Texas.
“I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.”
Zuckerberg doesn’t explain how Texans are less concerned about bias than Californians. The implication is that Texas is more conservative and will be “fair” to conservative voices, no matter the magnitude of the posted lies.
He then aligns himself with Trump’s America First agenda. “We’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world going after American companies and pushing to censor more.”
He blames “secret” Latin American courts, European regulation, and China.
President Joe Biden blasted Meta calling some of the new changes “really shameful.”
“The only way we can push back against this trend is with the support of the U.S. government,” Zuckerberg said. “That’s why it has been so difficult over the past four years, when even the U.S. government has pushed for censorship.”
