Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that Facebook, Instagram and Threads would dramatically dial back content moderation and end fact checking. WSJ’s Jeff Horwitz explains what that means for the social media giant. Further Reading: -Social-Media Companies Decide Content Moderation Is Trending Down -Meta Ends Fact-Checking on Facebook, Instagram in Free-Speech Pitch Further listening: -Meta Is Struggling to Boot Pedophiles Off Facebook and Instagram -Is Fighting Misinformation Censorship? The Supreme Court Will Decide. -The Facebook Files Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What changes did Meta announce regarding content moderation?
In would be getting along with the new administration, and out would be content moderation.
Our colleague Jeff Horwitz covers Meta, Facebook's parent company. For nearly a decade, Meta and many other social media companies have taken an active role in policing content on their platforms, taking down posts with hate speech or sticking fact-checking labels on viral content. But now, for Meta, that era is over.
Hey, everyone. I want to talk about something important today because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram.
Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a video announcing big changes to how Facebook, Instagram, and threads will moderate content.
The bottom line is that after years of having our content moderation work focus primarily on removing content, it is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems, and getting back to our roots about giving people voice.
So it's sort of this wholesale departure slash rejection of the idea that the platform should even govern itself, rather than a question of, is it doing a good enough job? It's like, nah, this isn't our job.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Thursday, January 9th. Coming up on the show, Meta's major retreat on content moderation.
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Chapter 5: Why did Meta decide to dial back content moderation?
These social media outlets censor public figures who are conservatives.
Facebook had purposely and routinely suppressed conservative stories from trending news.
If you share my podcast on Facebook, I got hundreds of emails from people who said that this post has been marked as spam. People try to type my name into the search box on Instagram or the Discover box. My account does not show up. It's relentless. I'm thinking about quitting Facebook.
Over the years, Facebook made lots of tweaks to its content moderation system. For example, in 2019, it said it would stop fact-checking political ads. But overall, the system stayed in place. How did Mark Zuckerberg seem to feel about all these efforts?
Mark never loved this stuff. Mark, I think, was always deeply skeptical of human intervention of any variety in the system.
And then, Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election gave Zuckerberg an opportunity to make a big change.
I think it's kind of part of an overall, I would say, shift in Silicon Valley in which dominant companies have all been making extremely nice with the incoming administration.
And obviously, Donald Trump had made clear that he very much cared about whether Facebook was stacked against him and that he did not trust the company and its liberal employee base, to be fair, and that he might go after Mark Zuckerberg personally if Mark Zuckerberg didn't oblige.
Trump writes in the caption that Zuckerberg plotted against him during his reelection campaign and warns Zuckerberg, quote, if he does anything illegal this time, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.
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