Why Zuckerberg has killed fact-checking while constantly bashing Trump

Mark Zuckerberg, who often bends to the political winds, is from the fact-checking business.

And this is part of a wider effort by Meta's CEO to please himself Donald Trump after long and trying relationships.

After the previous outcry, Zuck made a big show of announcing that Facebook would hire fact-checkers to fight misinformation on the world-famous site. That was a clear sign that Facebook it was becoming a media organization instead of a user-centered image (and dog pictures).

But it didn't work. In fact, it led to more information and censorship. Why should anyone believe a bunch of anonymous critics working for one of the most unpopular techies?

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Now Zuckerberg pulls the plug, announcing his decision in a video to highlight its massive nature:

“The problem with complex systems is that they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally delete just 1 percent of messages. That's millions of people. And we've reached a point where there are too many mistakes and too much censorship. Elections the latter also feels like a cultural element that refocuses attention on language.”

Let me jump in here. Zuckerberg openly admits to “conventional wisdom,” that he follows conventional wisdom — and, of course, the biggest factor is Trump's election for a second term. And skeptics point to this as bowing down to the president-elect and his team.

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“So we're going to go back to our roots and focus on reducing errors, simplifying our policies, and bringing our free ideas back to our platform…

“We're going to get rid of the checkers” and replace them with public information, which has already been used in X. “After Trump was first elected in 2016, the legacy media went wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.

“We have tried in good faith to solve those problems without being fact-checkers. But fact-checkers are just too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created, especially in the US”

It was Zuckerberg, along with former executives at Twitter, who blocked Trump after the impasse in the Capitol. This has led to many Trumpian attacks on Facebook, and the president-elect told me that he changed his position on banning TikTok because it would help Facebook, which he considered a great danger.

Trump said last summer that Zuckerberg plotted against him in 2020 and “will spend the rest of his life in prison” if he does it again.

The president-elect cooked it up in a post: “ZUCKERBUCKS, DON'T!”

Here's more from Z: “We're going to simplify our news rules and remove many of the restrictions on issues like immigration and gender that have recently entered the mainstream. What started as a movement for inclusiveness more and more it is being used to shut down ideas and people who have different views and it has gone too far.

It certainly did. And I agree with that. In 2020, social media, led by Twitter, suppressed the New York Post story on Hunter Biden's laptop, dismissing it as Russian disinformation, although a year and a half later the journalist he announced that hey, the laptop report was correct.

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Let's face it: People like Zuckerberg and Elon Musk (he is now engaged in a war of words with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the cover-up of child sex offenders during Starmer's time as chief prosecutor) he has a lot of power. They are the new gatekeepers. With so-called dysfunctional media—as we've seen with the massive influx of top talent from Jeff Bezos' Washington Post and the recent rise of podcasts—the control most of the public discussion. And yes, private companies can do what they want.

At yesterday's marathon news conference, a reporter asked Trump about Zuckerberg: “Do you think he's responding directly to the threats you've made to him in the past with promises?”

“Maybe. Yes, maybe,” Trump said, twisting the knife slightly.

Meanwhile, after making the obligatory trip to Mar-a-Lago for dinner, the CEO has taken several steps to connect with the new administration. And it doesn't hurt that Meta is kicking a million dollars into Trump's startup.

Zuck named prominent Republican lawyer Joel Kaplan as head of global affairs, replacing the former British deputy prime minister. On “Fox & Friends” yesterday, Kaplan said:

“We have a real opportunity now. We have a new administration and a new president coming in who are big defenders of free speech, and that makes a difference. One of the things we look, when you have a US president, an administration that is pushing for a ban, it just makes it open time for other governments around the world that don't even have the protection of the First Amendment to put pressure on companies US President Trump wants to roll back something like that around the world.”

We will work with President Trump. Got it?

In addition, Zuckerberg is adding Dana White, the chief executive of the United Fighting Championship, to Meta's board. White is a longtime Trump ally, so MAGA already has a voice inside the company.

In other words, get with the program.

Footer: At his press conference, where Trump appeared angry about recent court battles and plans to impeach him, the incoming president said — or “didn't rule out,” in press parlance – “military problems” against his two most recent targets.

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“Well, we need Greenland for national security,” he said. And the Americans lost many lives building the Panama Canal. “You might have to do something.”

He cannot use military force against the other. But his answer stirs the pot, as he knew it would.