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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newspaper.
Mark Zuckerberg was once forced to confirm that he was “not a lizard” during an online Q&A session. It wasn’t the first or last time people suggested that Facebook’s robotically smiling founder was some kind of alien. You must love the internet.
These days, however, Meta’s head is sporting a completely new form: a non-lizard, with the usual content of a tech billionaire. Blue T-shirts are finished, tightly fitted on a thin frame; in their place, oversized Ts worn over a fat body, accessorized with a gold chain and a $900,000 watch. The Julius Caesar’s haircut has also been replaced by a relaxed, Californian-curly mop, and Zuckerberg’s skin has gone from dying to “tan” (Americans insist that’s an adjective).
I would even suggest that if you were standing in the same room as Zuck, you would notice that he was wearing a new scent – rather musk-y, perhaps. Along with his new look comes a new attitude, and it seems he’s been heavily influenced by a certain west coast billionaire.
“It’s time to get back to our roots about free speech,” Zuckerberg said video statement posted on the Meta website on Tuesday. In it, he explained that the company will remove the fact-checking teams it currently uses and replace them with “social data” that has more people like Elon Musk’s X. have it. This will only be in the US to begin with, although he will “work with President Trump to push governments around the world”.
“Governments and legacy media have pushed for more scrutiny,” Zuck said (note the use of the word “media”, one of Musk’s interests). But now we have a chance to get his feelings back, and I’m glad to take it.
I should start by saying that I have serious issues with the whole idea of fact-checking for social media, which I have expressed publicly many times. When a Bloomberg reporter asked for examples of news analysts exhibiting political bias, Meta returned three categories, including. column I wrote in 2021where I argued that fact-checking is often used as censorship. I have too well written in terms of public information, although that system has its limitations as well.
And while the spread of misinformation and disinformation on the internet worries me a lot, it is impossible for a fact check to be done properly as everyone is biased. Choices must be made about which applications to review and which to process. So the idea that you can “analyze” all social networks has been a pipe dream. And there are few financial incentives for platforms to do so (unless they are worried about being fined by the authorities).
The problem I have with all of this isn’t so much about what’s going on in the Meta. I even thought that moving fact-checking teams from the Bay Area to Austin, Texas – a Democratic city in a heavily Republican state – to “help allay concerns that biased workers are undermining the news”, as Zuckerberg wrote in Threads. , is a reasonable assumption. But its phrasing gives away his true motive: this is not about principles, but optics and pleasing the nearby resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
My issue with Zuckerberg is his stupidity and opportunism. Ask yourself this: is it possible that Zuckerberg will make all these changes to Meta – and he has appointed Trump associate Dana White to the board, and replaced Nick Clegg and popular Republican Joel Kaplan as president of world affairs – if Kamala Harris had won in November?
Even Trump himself doesn’t think so. Last year, he warned that Zuckerberg “will spend the rest of his life in prison” if the Meta boss tries to “conspire against him”. Asked Tuesday if Zuckerberg was “directly responding to (Trump’s) threats in the past” with this fact-checking U-turn, the president-elect replied, “Maybe.”
Zuckerberg may make a big speech about how he’s no longer going to give in to the government’s demands, but he’s giving in — to the opposite. In many ways, all of this means that Zuckerberg is less dangerous than Musk. It’s clear where influence was exerted when the Meta boss went to dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. He goes where the wind blows.
I would feel comfortable if the man responsible for the platform used by two-fifths of the world’s population could show some courage and leadership. He might have succeeded in changing his image, but at least lizards have a back.
