Open Editor's Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories for this weekly newsletter.
Mark Zuckerberg was once forced to confirm that “not a lizard” during a live online Q&A session. It didn't mark the first or last time people suggested that Facebook's cool, robotic founder was some kind of alien. You have to love the internet.
These days, however, the master of Meta is sporting a new aesthetic: the little lizard man, the billionaire tech bro. No modest gray T-shirts, tightly fitted to a thin frame; in their place, Ts worn over the body, made of gold chain and 900,000 dollars. I Julius Caesar's haircut has been replaced by a cool, Californian-coiffed mop, and Zuckerberg's skin has gone from dying pale to “tan” (the Americans insist that's the adjective).
I would even suggest that if you were in the same room as Zuck, you would notice that he was wearing a new scent – musk-y, maybe. With his new look comes new ideas, and it looks like they've been heavily influenced by a fellow west coast billionaire.
“It's time to get back to our roots about being free,” Zuckerberg said video report posted on the Meta website on Tuesday. In it, he announced that the company would disband the teams of technical experts it currently employs and replace them with a crowdsourced “social points” system like Elon Musk's X has. This will only be in the US to begin with, although “he will work with President Trump to push back governments around the world”.
“Governments and legacy media have pushed for more scrutiny,” Zuck said (note the use of the term “legacy media”, one of Musk's favorites). But now we have a chance to restore freedom of speech, and I'm glad to take it.
I have to start by saying that I have huge issues with the whole idea of fact checking in social media content, which I have expressed publicly on several occasions. When a Bloomberg reporter asked for examples of fact-checkers showing political bias, Meta returned three pieces, including column I wrote in 2021where I argued that reality checks are often used as tests. I did it too well written about public scores, although that system has limitations as well.
And while the internet's spread of mis- and disinformation worries me a lot, it's impossible for fact-checking to be done properly because all people are biased. Choices must be made about which claims to pursue and which to pass on. So the idea that you can “check the truth” every social network has always been a dream. And there's little financial incentive for platforms to do so (unless they're worried about being fined by regulators).
The problem I have with all of this is that not much is happening here in Meta. I'm also thinking of moving content moderation teams from the Bay Area to Austin, Texas – a Democratic city in a predominantly Republican area – to “help remove the concern that partisan workers are over-emphasizing the content”, as Zuckerberg wrote in Threads. , is a logical assumption. But the phrasing of that gives away his true intentions: this is not about principles, but optics and persuading the soon-to-be resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
My issue with Zuckerberg is the lack of backbone and opportunism. Ask yourself this: is there any chance that Zuckerberg will make all these changes at Meta – he has appointed Trump ally Dana White to the board, and is replaced Nick Clegg and Joel Kaplan, a well-known Republican as president of world affairs – if Kamala Harris had won in November?
Even Trump himself doesn't think so. Last year he warned that Zuckerberg “will spend the rest of his life in prison” if the Meta boss tries to “conspire against him”. Asked Tuesday if Zuckerberg was “directly responding to threats (Trump) has made to him in the past” by considering a U-turn, the president-elect replied: “Maybe.”
Zuckerberg may be giving a good speech about how he will no longer give in to the government's demands, but he's still holding on – to various extents. In many ways, all of this means that Zuckerberg is less dangerous than Musk. It's clear what impact was being made when the Meta boss had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. You go where the wind blows.
I would feel more comfortable if the man who runs the platforms used by two-fifths of the world's population could show moral courage and leadership. He may have successfully changed his image, but at least lizards have spines.