Marionette Mark? Meta rolls out Trump red carpet

You might think that Mark Zuckerberg is acting as a kind of press secretary for US President-elect Donald Trump when you watch his meta realignment video. Zuckerberg himself is one of the most influential tech entrepreneurs of all time, head of a social media empire that includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads and is used by over three billion people every day. Meta is also one of the largest players in the context of the development of future-oriented generative AI: More than 600 million people already use Meta AI. But Zuckerberg’s rhetoric, which he reveals in his latest video, does not necessarily bode well for the liberal-democratic further development of the digital space – even though “free expression” is the focus of his remarks.

It talks about Role Model X, about rules that are too strict in Europe, about secret courts in Latin America and about a “global trend” to restrict US companies. This development can only be counteracted with the help of the US government. Mark Zuckerberg is fueling the MAGA-style omnipotence fantasies of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and is also having Meta change personnel. The time for fact checks is over. What many users celebrate, however, causes concern.

You too, Mark? X and Meta seek support from the US government – ​​at the expense of user protection

For many users, X owner Elon Musk is an advocate of free speech. On its platform, users can spread content almost unhindered, including hate speech, glorification of violence, pornography and insults – the level of content moderation has been reduced to a minimum. Users who share hate speech should not be banned either. Martin Holland writes for Heise even that Holocaust denials do not have to disappear from the platform. According to internal guidelines, some of the content will have less reach, but will not be deleted and punished. In addition, numerous fake news are circulating on the platform – all under the guise of free speech, which, however, is interpreted less accommodatingly when it comes to critical statements against Musk or people close to him – which also includes convicted criminals to whom he gave a voice again on X . The fact that numerous users and groups suffer from corresponding policy changes is often trivialized.

Donald Trump is one of those close to Musk. After he was blocked from Twitter as part of his involvement in the storming of the Capitol in 2021, Musk also had Trump return to X. In the summer of 2024 they met at X Space, and various false information was shared in the talk, including about the election. However, Trump won the US election and has promised his media ally Elon Musk a position in the new government. He is supposed to head an agency that is supposed to streamline the US bureaucracy; However, critics fear an erosion of democracy. Musk’s ingratiation with Trump supporters and his political allies came as no surprise. He himself attracted attention through racist, misogynistic, transphobic and anti-media statements. His rapprochement with the AfD, his political influence in the election campaign in Germany and his anti-democratic statements have also been heavily criticized.

What may come as a surprise to some, however, is the level of adjustment that Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are willing to make in order to remain compliant with the government in the USA. Personnel changes have recently caused a stir. Meta Appoints, among others, Dana White to the Board of Directors. He is the head of the MMA league UFC and is considered a close confidant of Donald Trump. Joel Kaplan will also take over the role of Chief Global Affairs Officer from Nick Clegg at Meta. With Kaplan, Meta has a man in its own ranks who could perhaps better convince the new, thoroughly Republican US government of Meta’s relevance in the US. After all, Kaplan was already the White House Deputy Chief of Staff during George W. Bush’s term and worked as a lobbyist for energy companies. He is considered extremely conservative. Kaplan’s appointment as Chief Global Affairs Officer is likely to be a further indication of Meta’s rapprochement with the incoming US government. The company also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

After the Trump-fueled storm on the Capitol in January 2021, Instagram and Facebook blocked Trump’s accounts such as Twitter, but only temporarily. Trump later repeatedly made critical and derogatory comments about the platforms. Trump has even described Facebook as an “enemy of the people”. He may now change that opinion. Mark Zuckerberg made sure of that.

Meta:

New Chief Global Affairs Officer is supposed to appease the US government

What Zuckerberg said and where Meta is heading

There will no longer be any fact checks for content on Meta in the future. Instead you want to go up Community Notes like on X to indicate if content is misleading or untrue. This should initially happen in the USA. According to Zuckerberg, the fact checkers – after all, established institutions in the digital media world – are politically biased and they destroy the trust of users. Emarketers Principal Analyst Jasmine Enberg explained in a statement that we have received:

Meta is repositioning the company for the incoming Trump administration. The move will elate conservatives, who’ve often criticized Meta for censoring speech, but it will spook many liberals and advertisers, showing just how far Zuckerberg is willing to go to win Trump’s approval. In a shift driven largely by Trump ally and X-owner Elon Musk, third-party fact-checking has gone out of fashion among social executives. Social platforms have become more political and polarized, as misinformation has become a buzzword that encompasses everything from outright lies to viewpoints people disagree with. But brand safety remains a key factor in determining where advertisers spend their budgets. Social media is already a minefield for content that many brands deem unsafe, and Meta’s change could exacerbate those problems. Meta’s massive size and powerhouse ad platform insulate it somewhat from an X-like user and advertiser exodus. But any major dropoff in engagement could hurt Meta’s ad business, given the intense competition for users and ad dollars.

Furthermore, new content guidelines are intended to create a more relaxed approach to “issues such as immigration and gender”. The previous guidelines are no longer up to date. The Meta CEO even believes that the movement towards inclusion in this context has led to the suppression of other opinions.

And it’s gone too far,

he continues. This sounds like Elon Musk’s rhetoric and sounds like a conservative step backwards. The fact that the trust and safety and content moderation teams are being relocated from Florida to Texas sounds basically irrelevant, but the explanation is not. It’s happening because there are fewer concerns about team bias in Texas than in California.

The third major point Zuckerberg mentions is the prosecution of policy violations. Recently, only illegal actions and serious violations of the guidelines should be tracked by Meta’s own filters. But not minor violations; the group then relies on third parties to report such violations in case of doubt. But this also means that minor violations often go unpunished. And this could include fake news, insults, racist or misogynistic statements. Ultimately, the group also wants to increase the hurdles for content removal. This is a reaction to your own realization that you have mistakenly blocked too much content.

This is a trad-off. It means that we’re going to chat less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.

Harmless content blocked too often:

Meta accidentally moderates too much

Suddenly political topics should have a place again

Meta wants to bring back so-called “civic content”. This particularly refers to political and local issues. The company deliberately restricted these on Instagram and threads by default in 2024 before numerous creators rebelled. Political content was no longer suggested by Meta; politics became a user matter. That’s changing again now.

The planned changes alone may have an aftertaste, but in the USA they may correspond to the spirit of the times. Zuckerberg’s choice of words in particular should give liberal-democratic-minded participants in the digital space something to think about. Together with Trump, Meta wants to “take action against governments” and promote censorship. In the video, Zuckerberg also describes the effects of his own guidelines that are still in effect as censorship. And he equates European laws with institutionalized censorship. In Latin America, however, secret courts should be able to order companies to remove content. And China is outright censoring Meta. Ultimately, he even says that the US government has promoted censorship over the past four years – it sounds like a Trump statement.

Mark Zuckerberg wants to take advantage of an opportunity, he says, that the new US government is giving him and US tech companies.