Charlie Warzel: Zuck Sucks Up to Trump

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The Bulwark Daily 59 min 4 speakers 8 chapters transcribed
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What changes is Zuckerberg making to Facebook's content policies?

Tim Miller 1:28
He's going to move them to Texas, which is a beacon of just this right down the middle of the road political ideology in Texas, no bias in Texas, or moving the moderators to the worst jobs in the world, I think, the content moderators. Those people, the moderation slums are moving from California to Texas to weed out bias. We've also, I think, It's going to get less attention, but I think potentially the most pernicious thing that is happening is they're bringing back more political content to the algorithm and the news feed. They're not deranking that anymore. Crazy shit people post is going to be back in your Facebook news feed if you are of the demographic that uses the Facebook news feed. So those are the big updates.
Tim Miller 2:10
Joel Kaplan went on Fox to discuss. I have some audio from that I want to get to, but I want your big picture thoughts on the changes first.
Charlie Warzel 2:16
Sure. I woke up to this like full candor like an hour ago. Yeah, same. My thoughts on this are basically, I think that Mark Zuckerberg is very, and I felt this way for a while, very ashamed of everything that he and Facebook did between, let's say, March 1st, 2020 and January 10th, 2021, right? So... beginning of the COVID pandemic, right into, you know, post-January 6th.

Why is Zuckerberg restructuring Meta's moderation approach?

Charlie Warzel 2:46
I mean, the fact that this announcement is coming on January 7th... I'd go back.
Tim Miller 2:51
I think he's probably ashamed of what they did starting in 2016, trying to root out the Cambridge Analytica stuff and all that. I don't think he cares about, actually.
Charlie Warzel 3:01
I would agree with that. But I think, too, you know, they were... up against a lot of pressure there. And they were always trying to do the very least. They were being dragged along by people. But Zuckerberg did an interview in March or April of 2020 with my old boss, who was at The Times then, Ben Smith, about COVID misinformation. And it was like the first interview I'd really heard from Zuckerberg, where he was basically like, no, it's good that we're like censoring, quote unquote, right? Like, it's good that we're taking action against this. This is a very clear cut situation in which there is actual harm, you know, connected to this type of content, these type of words, right? And I think – I bet you if you had to, like, read that to him in front of him, he would just, like, cringe, like, full body, right? Because I think there's this real understanding in his mind, in the mind of a lot of the people who he's running with in these circles in Silicon Valley and in the world of, like, UFC or jujitsu or whatever, that there's this –
Charlie Warzel 4:08
you know, this huge overreach during the COVID and the, you know, the lead up to the 2020 election. And then of course the big one, right after January 6th, you know, getting rid of Trump, all of that stuff. I mean, the fact that this announcement is taking place on January 7th, four years later is like, it's a big, like middle finger.

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