Opinion. That’s how descriptive the headline is. an article from RollingStone magazine that speaks of the “Silicon Valley billionaires struggle to gain sympathy” of the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, and specifically they mercilessly criticize the latest decisions of Meta and its executive director, Mark Zuckerberg.
We make a short stop in the coverage of CES 2025, which this week has us working hard (in Spain and in Las Vegas) to comment on a change in operation (and policies in capital letters) in relation to the content moderation in Metawhich can impact the 3 billion users that the corporation has on its numerous media, see Facebook, Instagram, Threads or WhatsApp.
And Zuckerberg announced a couple of days ago in a statement what goal would end its fact-checking program that until now was carried out by independent experts and organizations, in favor of a US-style approach. “community notes” that other social networks like X use. Although it may seem sarcastic to many, the head of Meta argued it as “an effort to combat censorship and digital misinformation on its platforms”.
Mark Zuckerberg did not hide. Although you see him in the video in a casual manner, his ‘wig’ of almost a million dollars already has to put you on the trail of who we are risking our money with and his intentions: «Meta will eliminate a lot of restrictions on issues like immigration and gender that are out of touch with the general discourse and we will instead focus enforcement of content violation rules on eliminating so-called high-severity violations.”.
Goodbye to content moderation and verification
In case you are not aware of what ‘Community Notes’ means, it is a data verification system that puts the responsibility on the users themselves and was implemented at X (formerly Twitter) after billionaire Elon Musk took over the platform. The dismissal of half of the staff implemented by Musk as soon as he landed with the consequent loss of talent, did not invite us to think about anything positive and the lack of personnel led, precisely, to an alarming lack of moderation.
And it is that this verification process is itself deeply inconsistent and is often plagued by misinformation. At least in from there in search of more neutral services. If there are still them on social networks.
One of the competitors, Mastodon, has already qualified Meta moderation changes “deeply worrying” and its executive director has warned users who publish content from Threads of the consequences. In case you don’t know the connection, it should be explained that Meta opened up its fediverse sharing feature so that Threads users could enable an option that will publish their posts directly to Mastodon, reaching a broader audience.
Mastodon is aware of the difficulties that the Threads integration could soon become a moderation challenge. “Hate speech is prohibited and we will take action against any Threads account that violates our policies”warned the executive head of the social network.
And no one believes that ‘community notes’ are going to work in Meta and you can expect a greater number of homophobic, racist and violent attacks from guy Trump likes and his Internet champion, Elon Muskthis week also in the pillory in Europe for trying to influence the elections, the pressure exerted from its microblogging site X or the capacity of its satellite network that it wants to set up for government and security communications in Italy.
Mark Zuckerberg and Trump’s “butt licking”
«No one has embarked on a more brazen butt-licking campaign than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg«they assure from RollingStone in a comment that, without being so direct, many of us share and that is gaining ground in the editorials of the technological media; the free ones who can talk about all this, which unfortunately is not all. And even less so in the US. Simply put, the billionaires who run the world’s big technology companies do not want to have problems with Trump despite his penultimate occurrences, such as invading the Panama Canal, taking Greenland by force or annexing Canada. Not to mention the tariffs that can cause a global economic crisis.
It has also demanded atrocities in technological matters taking into account the power of information in today’s world. And it seems that the threats are having an effect. We already knew that Elon Musk, by conviction and by businesswas among his group and will be the shadow vice president of the Trump administration. As responsible for «Department of Government Efficiency» He is guaranteed political influence and many billions of dollars in government contracts for his numerous companies.
“The fight is the fight” we say around here… and Meta wants to be part of that ‘management group’ close to the White House, making friendly decisions with it and not with its millions of users. In case there is any doubt that Policy change aims to appease Trumpyou just have to remember that just a few months ago, before the elections, this threatened to imprison Zuckerberg with accusations of “electoral interference.”
Beyond content moderation
RollingStone has reviewed other decisions by Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta managers where this descriptive ‘butt lick’ can be verified. Meta has already donated one million dollars to Trump’s inaugural fund, and Zuckerberg flew to Mar-a-Lago to have dinner with the president-elect and members of his transition team shortly after his victory in November.
Just this week, Zuckerberg intensified his outreach to the incoming Trump administration, announcing the appointment of UFC CEO and MAGA fan Dana Whiteas a member of the board of directors of Meta. The famous fighter, head of the mixed martial arts empire, has been a central figure in Trump’s campaign. He spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention and was even handed the microphone by the president-elect during his victory speech on election night.
In case there were any further doubts about the policy change, Meta’s newly appointed head of global affairs, Joel Kaplan, praised the incoming president in a recent interview with Fox News: «There is no doubt that there has been a change in the last four years. We have seen a lot of social and political pressure, all in the direction of more content moderation, more censorship, and we have an opportunity for real change… Now we have a new administration and a new president coming to power and who are great defenders of freedom of expression, and that makes a difference”.
Kaplan also praised Elon Muska competitor for his company with “played an incredibly important role in moving the debate and getting people to focus again on freedom of expression, and that has been really constructive and productive”.
RollingStone ends its article by arguing that “To view Trump as a staunch defender of free speech is to ignore the president-elect’s well-established pattern of attacking journalists and news networks that criticize him and his administration.”. Among other actions, the president-elect threatened in October with strip the media of their licenses for their criticism of him.
There is no doubt that the threats have had an effect and Mark Zuckerberg, like other Silicon Valley leaders, is willing to “lick” whatever is necessary, preparing the ground for Trump’s second term. The policy changes regarding content moderation will only be activated – for now – in the United States. We will see if the leaders of other regions such as Europe can stop him. Advertisers and users who maintain Internet services also have a lot to say.
Source: www.muycomputer.com
