Meta’s new 'fact-free' era should worry us all
Social media was once meant to democratise access to information. Now, it may do the exact opposite.
When in 2014, Mark Zuckerberg said that he wanted to “move fast and break things”, no one suspected that a decade later, he’d move fast to break the world’s democracy.
Yet on Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced how Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, would be shedding its fact-checkers for a community-notes function and recommending more political content.
Moderation teams will also move from California to Texas, where there is “less concern about the bias” of the tech firm’s staff. So, if you thought you could escape Musk’s wrecking of Twitter/X by moving over to Instagram, I’ve got some bad news: the Nazi-adjacent AI drivel will shortly appear on there too.
This move is extremely worrying because Meta’s user base is much larger than X’s, meaning these changes will reverberate with billions more people around the world.
Over the years, the company has been at the centre of major disinformation scandals – from election interference incidents like Cambridge Analytica and posts that worsened violence against persecuted minorities, to rampant Covid-19 vaccine conspiracies – demonstrating just how quickly false narratives can take shape. By scaling back on fact-checkers and relying on crowd-sourced moderation, as well as getting “rid of a bunch of restrictions” on topics like immigration and gender, Meta is likely to amplify extremism, both on a local and international level.
Critics are already sounding the alarm over the announcement. “These changes will make it more dangerous for women, LGBT+ people, people of colour, scientists, and activists to speak out online, where they already face disproportionate harassment and attacks,” human rights organisation Global Witness told The Guardian.
Meanwhile, The Centre for Information Resilience branded Meta’s new chapter a “major step back for content moderation at a time when disinformation and harmful content are evolving faster than ever.”
Clearly, this is a political trade-off Zuckerberg is willing to make. Despite admitting that Meta is going “to catch less bad stuff”, the 40-year-old billionaire seems set on pushing these changes ahead of Trump’s incoming presidency, aligning with him to fend off foreign governments “going after American companies and pushing to censor more”.
This is rather surprising, given that in 2021, Meta suspended Trump’s Facebook and Instagram platforms for two years. Was it Trump’s jail threat that forced Zuckerberg’s manoeuvre, or was dropping fact-checkers simply a money-saving exercise – a quick way for a blue-chip tech giant to trim billions amid sweeping tech layoffs? Perhaps it doesn’t matter, given how neatly those two motivations fit together.
Zuckerberg’s political journey is likely to have influenced him too. Conventional wisdom says we turn more conservative with age (though recent data suggests millennials are refusing to follow that path), but research shows that wealth, more reliably than years, drives that shift.
For someone like Zuckerberg, one of the richest men on the planet, his tilt to the right was almost inevitable.
In his 20s, the fresh-faced CEO was keen to tackle inequality and social injustice through newspaper columns and philanthropic endeavours. Yet, according to those close to him, over the years, he has quietly drifted towards libertarianism, a political ideology favouring minimal government intervention and maximum individual liberty – one that aligns with Silicon Valley’s drive to innovate and accumulate vast amounts of capital on its own terms.
Unfortunately for Zuckerberg, this desire for minimal government intervention diametrically opposes Europe’s intensifying regulation of Big Tech, as embodied by the recent EU Digital Services Act (DSA) and the UK’s Online Safety Act.
While Meta has not yet confirmed plans to roll out the contentious changes outside of America, doing so would test Europe’s mettle in enforcing these rules – particularly given that Musk’s X was under investigation for breaching the DSA last year.
If Brussels were to challenge Meta’s approach and issue the company a hefty fine, it could set off a high-stakes power struggle with the US over regulatory authority and potential international trade repercussions. We’re not quite there yet, which may be why Zuckerberg is so vocally criticising the EU. By mounting a media offensive alongside Trump, he may be laying the groundwork for public support before plunging into outright legal defiance.
Yet, as social media platforms mature and get more dangerous, we can’t leave safety in the hands of a few Big Tech titans, no matter how much they may want us to. Far too much power is concentrated in too few individuals and companies.
At a time when nearly three-quarters of the global population live under autocratic regimes, in countries where governments themselves spread hate speech and misinformation, that power must be challenged and dispersed.
Social media was once meant to democratise access to information. Now, as it promises to do the exact opposite, we must decide: either we shape social media, or it shapes us.
More on this topic: The Lead’s founding editor Dimi Reider outlines why he’s staying on X, despite everyone flying off to Bluesky. And Westminster editor Zoë Grünewald looks at how Labour must not get distracted by the likes of Musk and co.