ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS, JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP
Mark Zuckerberg, photographed on January 31, 2024 (left) / Donald Trump, photographed on September 17, 2024 (right).
SOCIAL MEDIA – It’s a throwback for Meta. The American group, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, will end its fact-checking program in the United States. This is a major setback in its content moderation policy. “We will get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X (formerly Twitter), starting in the United States”declared his boss Mark Zuckerberg in a message published on social networks this Tuesday, January 7. According to him, “auditors have been too politically oriented and have done more to reduce trust than to improve it, particularly in the United States”.
This announcement from Meta, described as « cool » by the owner of the competing social network
“The recent elections appear to be a cultural tipping point once again prioritizing freedom of expression”estimated the boss of Meta (listen in the video below). At the same time, the group should review and “simplify” its rules regarding content on all of its platforms and “put an end to a number of limits regarding topics, such as immigration and gender, which are no longer in dominant discourses”.
Mark “Zuckerberg explains that he will work with Trump and his administration to push back against governments that attack US companies (he means Meta), by using censorship (he cites the EU)”, digital specialist Tristan Mendès France comments on X who speaks of a « Zuckerberg qui s’ElonMuskise »before delivering his analysis on this important speech: “Zuckerberg is following what he believes to be the spirit of the times, will relax even more the mode which is nevertheless failing, and will rely on the Trump government to put pressure on the EU (and the countries which would like the social networks do not become more toxic). »
Dana White on the board, Joel Kaplan at the head of public affairs
The AFP recalls for its part that it participates in more than 26 languages in a fact-checking program developed by Facebook, which pays more than 80 media outlets around the world to use their « fact-checks » on its platform, on WhatsApp and on Instagram.
This decision is in any case one more element demonstrating the pro-Trump turn taken by Mark Zuckerberg’s company, while Donald Trump will take office at the White House on January 20. And this while the Republican, last year, had threatened to imprison the CEO of Meta if he interfered in the presidential election of 2024. He had even described Facebook as“enemy of the people” last March, or accused the company of supporting progressive speeches.
As a comment, Donald Trump judged this Tuesday that he had ” probably “ influenced Meta’s decision. Meta and Facebook “have made a lot of progress”he judged, before responding ” probably “ to a journalist who asked him if he believed that Mark Zuckerberg had acted in this way because of threats that the future president had issued in the past.
At the start of the week, we learned that Dana White, the sultry boss of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the American mixed martial arts (MMA) organization, was joining the board of directors of Meta, reported NBC News. Friend of Donald Trump, he appeared on stage the evening of the billionaire’s election. “He keeps moving forward, he doesn’t give up, he’s the most resilient and hardworking man I’ve met in my life”he said at that time about the president-elect.
Trump loyalists in the upper echelons of Facebook
Another gesture aimed at conservatives: Meta recently designated a Donald Trump loyalist, Joel Kaplan, at the head of its public affairsreplacing the former British Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, who resigned after seven years in office. “Too much harmless content has been censored, too many people have been unfairly locked up in “Facebook prison””Joe Kaplan said in a statement, insisting that the current approach had gone “too far”.
Among the developments to come, Meta should also move its teams “trust and security” from California, generally more progressive, to Texas, a more conservative state. “This will help us build the confidence to get the job done with less worry about bias among our teams.”justified Mark Zuckerberg.
It is also necessary to remember Meta’s million dollar donation for the fund financing the inauguration ceremonies of Donald Trump’s term on January 20. Amazon made exactly the same announcement a few hours later, in mid-December.
Mark Zuckerberg had dinner in November with Donald Trump at the latter’s Mar-a-Lago (Florida) residence, in a gesture seen as a desire to calm relations with the future American president, who had been suspended from Facebook after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. His account was finally reactivated at the beginning of 2023.
Source: www.huffingtonpost.fr
