Mark Zuckerberg Announces Meta Will Dump 'Politically Biased' Fact-Checkers

[mountaineer]

Mark Zuckerberg Announces Meta Will Dump 'Politically Biased' Fact-Checkers
HuffPost via MSN
Graeme Demianyk
Jan. 7, 2025

Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta is abandoning its fact-checking program as he criticized the system for becoming “too politically biased.”

The tech billionaire unveiled the changes in a video on Tuesday. Zuckerberg said his companies — which include Facebook and Instagram — would instead implement a “community notes” model similar to the one used on X, which is owned by Elon Musk.

“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” Zuckerberg said. “We tried, in good faith, to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.”

[mountaineer]

Andy Roth
@andyroth
Worth watching the whole thing. The most profound part was when Zuck said he's going to move their content moderation team from CA to TX.  This is an acknowledgement - by a lefty Silicon Valley elitist - that CA is irredeemably lost on radical woke crap.  Can't be saved.
8:49 AM · Jan 7, 2025

https://twitter.com/esaagar/status/1876612227807236310

[Timber Rattler]

I don't believe him one bit.  His censorship goes back beyond 2016 when Facebook started banning groups focused on 2nd Amendment issues and firearms, and even reenacting/living history groups which had "patriot" or "liberty" in their names.  Zuck's just afraid of Trump now, which is why he went to see him.

More here:

Dude, Mirror? Lizard Man Zuck Earnestly Lectures About 'Legacy' Media Censorship

https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2025/01/07/dude-mirror-lizard-man-zuck-earnestly-lectures-about-legacy-social-media-censorship-n3798560

This morning, I watched one of the most unintentionally hilarious and absolutely maddening videos I think I've ever seen.

Mark Zuckerberg, lizard-like bazillionaire founder of Facebook and creator of Meta World, parked at a table earnestly addressing what's wrong with censorship online.

EXCUSE ME, WHUT?!

It was as if the reviled reptilian replicant we've known and despised all these years had suddenly awoken from a deep slumber, like a slick Rip Van Winkle. Only instead of waking up under a tree in Tarrytown, Zuckerberg shed his skin to reveal something akin to a human - with a head of hair, no less - and rubbed his lizard blinkers in wonder at the new world around him.

He seems to have no memory of his role, actively engaging for years to prevent this new day from dawning. No residual inkling of how hard he worked to enable and enforce the very censorship and surveillance he now professes to be shocked by, and zero culpability for the devastating effects of the harsh, unassailable, and unyielding banishments his companies enforced had on the millions of regular people, most of whom were merely expressing opinions.

This is an amazing piece of theater where someone completely reinvents themself. And proceeds to act like he's doing us this huge favor by sharing the big secret that there had fascist assholes - not him, of course - who had worked against the free exchange of information and expression of the American people.

He almost looks human, doesn't he?

EXCERPT

[Free Vulcan]

So you've dropped the boilerplate denials and admitting to what you've been doing all along?

I don't think Schmuckerberg has thought this thru legally.

[Cyber Liberty]

I don't believe him one bit.

I don't either. 

[LadyLiberty]

If they move to Austin, that's really no different than California. Same woke politics, just no state income tax.

[jmyrlefuller]

So you've dropped the boilerplate denials and admitting to what you've been doing all along?

I don't think Schmuckerberg has thought this thru legally.

It screams of political expedience.

Going from four years ago, joining the full-court press on censorship of anyone who dared question the methodology of the pandemic election, to now, abandoning the fact-checking structure that served as its cornerstone... it just screams of opportunism.

[DCPatriot]

Come on, people...THINK!

This new 'development' simply gives them the right to publicly allow outrageous charges against Conservatives and the Republicans without any "Fact-Checking"...since they no longer exist.

And with this "Click-Addiction" throughout social media, it will serve them well in ongoing attacks and BS for the next 4 years.

Until the algorithm is shut down completely, there will be no true "Free Speech".

[corbe]

   He should be in prison for his Zuck$$ role in the 20 election. But he realized all he had to do was kiss one orange ring. He is just as evil as soros.

[Wingnut]

Give Zuck a break.  He had an epiphany.

[Cyber Liberty]

Give Zuck a break.  He had an epiphany.

My ass.

[DB]

It was bad for business. Nothing more.

[Smokin Joe]

I don't either.

Me three. Not a bit.

[Smokin Joe]

Give Zuck a break.  He had an epiphany.

That was sarcasm, right?

[DCPatriot]

Hans Mahncke
@HansMahncke

It's astonishing how easily people forgive or forget the tremendous, often irreversible damage caused by Facebook’s actions.

First off, Facebook banned mentions of the lab leak theory. This had real consequences. If it had been more widely understood that Covid originated in a lab, the entire course of the pandemic would have been very different. Unlike natural viruses, Covid was engineered for human transmission. That rendered mitigation measures such as lockdowns, contact tracing, masks, etc totally useless. Facebook prevented the truth from coming out.

Additionally, Facebook banned discussions about the so-called “vaccines,” which were far from “safe and effective.” In reality, they were unsafe and ineffective. How many people were injured because Facebook censored this truth? Would the government have been able to impose its totalitarian mandates if the public had known the truth? Unlikely.
Facebook also influenced the 2020 election by controlling the conversations on its platform and through over $400 million in funding from Mark Zuckerberg to elect Joe Biden. Given that Trump lost by around 40,000 votes, Zuckerberg’s actions had a significant impact on the outcome, and he is at least partly responsible for the consequences of Biden's policies.

There's much more to discuss here: the Russia collusion hoax, the Ukraine impeachment hoax, the Insurrection hoax, and more.

The bottom line is that no one with a functioning brain should accept Zuckerberg's change of heart at face value, let alone celebrate it. Even if his intentions are genuine, which is doubtful, where is the accountability for what he and his platform have done over the last eight years?

10:35 AM · Jan 7, 2025

[Timber Rattler]

Well the truth is that the mass bannings over COVID were the pinnacle of an increasingly obnoxious and draconian behavior by Zuck, going back to the Obama Administration in general, and Benghazi in particular.

[Wingnut]

That was sarcasm, right?

Yup!   LOL

[mountaineer]

Joy Reid is upset over Meta’s new commitment to free speech, following in the footsteps of 𝕏. Let that sink in.

https://twitter.com/CatchUpFeed/status/1877357459876008277

[Timber Rattler]

Zuckerberg on Rogan: Facebook's censorship was "something out of 1984"

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/10/mark-zuckerberg-joe-rogan-facebook-censorship-biden?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_medium=social

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, in an appearance on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, criticized the Biden administration for pushing for censorship around COVID-19 vaccines, the media for hounding Facebook to clamp down on misinformation after the 2016 election, and his own company for complying.

Why it matters: Zuckerberg's three-hour interview with Rogan gives a clear window into his thinking during a remarkable week in which Meta loosened its content moderation policies and shut down its DEI programs.

Driving the news: The Meta CEO said a turning point for his approach to censorship came after Biden publicly said social media companies were "killing people" by allowing COVID misinformation to spread, and politicians started coming after the company from all angles.

Zuckerberg told Rogan, who was a prominent skeptic of the COVID-19 vaccine, that the Biden administration would "call up the guys on our team and yell at them and cursing and threatening repercussions if we don't take down things that are true."

Zuckerberg said that Biden officials wanted Meta to take down a meme of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV, with a joke at the expense of people who were vaccinated. Zuckerberg said his company drew the line at removing "humor and satire."

But he also said his company had gone too far in complying with such requests, and acknowledged that he and others at the company wrongly bought into the idea — which he said the traditional media had been pushing — that misinformation spreading on social media swung the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

EXCERPT

[DCPatriot]

IMO, Zuck is simply trying to cover-his-a**.

In fairness, he's thinking of Chuck U. Schumer's warning that it's impossible to take on the Intelligence alphabets..."they have six ways to Sunday" to get you.

[Timber Rattler]

IMO, Zuck is simply trying to cover-his-a**.

In fairness, he's thinking of Chuck U. Schumer's warning that it's impossible to take on the Intelligence alphabets..."they have six ways to Sunday" to get you.

He is very much lying through his teeth.  He had the power to record those supposed nasty phone calls and then put the Biden thugs on full blast using Facebook, unveiling the whole ugly truth, like Musk did when he bought Twitter.

But Zuck didn't.

[Sighlass]

After several bans (and bans on groups I belonged to on FB)... Zuck can suck it... I ain't going back.

[mountaineer]

Zuck is a snake.

[Smokin Joe]

When two links to peer reviewed papers in the NIH library, without any commentary, were stopped by the posting Nazis over there as "misinformation", I knew real science was unwelcome.
As one who doesn't just play a scientist on TV, I was out of there.

We will see how much of this 'conversion' is a sham. It will be a long time before I trust that platform for much of anything I cannot personally verify.

Pander all he wants, the lack of free discourse cost lives, and he can't take that back.

[Timber Rattler]

After several bans (and bans on groups I belonged to on FB)... Zuck can suck it... I ain't going back.

Yep, Zuck's censorship extends way back past COVID to at least 2011, when he banned any discussion of Benghazi at Obama and Hillary's behest.  And then again when he went on a censorship rampage against anything Confederate and Revolutionary War history and Firearms/2A-related.  Thousands and thousands of pages and groups were deleted and I had numerous friends go to "Facebook Jail" who never got out. 

Heck, my wife even lost her business page in 2021 when Facebook deleted it because she posted an archival photograph of an 8th USAAF crewman loading a 500-pound bomb aboard a B-17 with a colorful message for Hitler in commemoration of the end of World War II.  No review, no appeal.  Just gone, and a big part of her marketing plan with it.

So yeah, screw Zuck.  He's a liar.