Zuckerberg’s fact-checking rollback ushers in chaotic online era
To researchers who have studied moderation efforts and platforms, it’s the most recent move toward a more freewheeling and unbridled social media environment.
First, it was Elon Musk. Now, it’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Meta’s announcement that it would be ending its fact-checking program and shifting policies around content moderation — a move that Zuckerberg said was inspired by Musk’s X — marks a new high-water mark for a worldview, pushed in large part by conservatives, that frames centralized efforts to control mis- and disinformation as censorship rather than public service.
Zuckerberg, who once touted the importance of the company’s moderation efforts, echoed that worldview Tuesday when he said that times had changed and the new shift would reduce “censorship” and “restore free expression” — a message that was quickly embraced by some Republican pundits and politicians.
To researchers who have both studied moderation efforts and platforms, it’s the most recent move toward a more freewheeling and unbridled social media environment, where what is real and what isn’t will come to be blurred.
“The fact-checking program was never going to save Facebook, but it was the last bulwark to complete chaos on the platform,” said Nina Jankowicz, former head of a disinformation board within the Department of Homeland Security, who now helms a nonprofit organization focused on countering attacks on disinformation researchers. “And now Mark Zuckerberg is choosing chaos.”
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