Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shrugged off criticism that his new coverage that does away with third-party fact-checking and censorship will alienate customers — insisting that anybody who quits firm platforms Fb, Instagram and Threads could be “virtual signaling.”
Zuckerberg responded to a submit on Threads that criticized him for Tuesday’s resolution, with many calling him a “coward” and a “liar” who was “kissing the ring” of President-elect Donald Trump.
The Meta boss was defiant in downplaying the potential for a mass exodus of customers.
“Some people may leave our platforms for virtue signaling, but I think the vast majority and many new users will find that these changes make the products better,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Mary-Frances Makichen, a Threads person who has 253 followers, lamented that Meta and Zuckerberg “are counting on the fact that it’s too hard for people to leave Threads and IG.”
“Meta has us in a chokehold. They make money off our presence in order to continue to be in business and yet it’s too difficult for people to leave,” Makichen wrote.
“This is not a great cycle. Meta is a system based on a negative feedback loop that just keeps reinforcing itself.”
Zuckerberg replied to the submit, writing: “No — I’m counting on these changes actually making our platforms better.”
The Meta chief defended his resolution to transition to a “Community Notes”-style format of fact-checking just like that used on X, the social media platform run by proprietor Elon Musk.
Zuckerberg predicted that Group Notes “will be more effective than fact-checkers, reducing the number of people whose accounts get mistakenly banned is good, people want to be able to discuss civic topics and make arguments that are in the mainstream of political discourse, etc.”
Zuckerberg’s critics weren’t satisfied.
“You bowed down to [President-elect Donald] Trump, because you are afraid of what might happen if you dare to stand up to him,” one Threads person wrote.
Zuckerberg has made efforts to curry favor with Trump in current weeks. His firm donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund and he just lately trekked right down to Mar-a-Lago to satisfy the president-elect for dinner — throughout which he gifted him a pair of Ray-Ban sensible glasses.
In his Tuesday announcement, Zuckerberg had some pointed criticisms of “legacy media” that “wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.”
“We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth,” Zuckerberg mentioned.
He admitted that the third-party fact-checkers relied on by Fb “have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created.”
Fb will even eliminate “restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse,” Zuckerberg mentioned.
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas,” he mentioned, including: “It’s gone too far.”
Zuckerberg additionally introduced that Meta will “move our content moderation teams out of California” and relocate them to Texas.
“As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help build trust to do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our team,” the Meta boss mentioned.
Meta workers blasted the choice in addition to the transfer so as to add Final Preventing Championship head Dana White to the board of administrators, based on a report.
Zuckerberg reportedly determined to eliminate censorship mechanisms at Meta after a seemingly innocuous photograph that he posted on Fb in November 2023 in regards to the surgical procedure that was carried out on his left anterior cruciate ligament didn’t go viral, the Wall Avenue Journal reported.
When Zuckerberg adopted up as to why the submit wasn’t as broadly shared as he had hoped, he discovered that software program engineers adjusted the algorithm to restrict the unfold of health-related content material — notably in gentle of the claims made in regards to the coronavirus vaccine, based on the Journal.
