Mark Zuckerberg's gaslighting can't hide the truth for Donald Trump

Mark Zuckerberg’s gaslighting can’t hide the truth for Donald Trump
Mark Zuckerberg’s gaslighting about Meta’s shameful decision to end fact-checking is still very dangerous

By Austin Sarat
Published January 14, 2025 9:07AM (EST)


(Salon) When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his company’s shameful decision to end fact-checking on its Facebook and Instagram platforms last Tuesday, he defended his decision in a five-minute video, claiming that it represented a return to the company’s “founding values.” In truth, Meta’s bottom line and Zuckerberg’s well-known tendency to accommodate himself to the prevailing political winds are the only values his decision serves.

It will be cheered by authoritarians everywhere and be especially welcome at MAGA headquarters in Mar-a-Lago. An aide to President-elect Trump made that clear when they proclaimed that Zuckerberg is now “speaking Trump's love language.” Not coincidentally, the new Meta policy followed quickly on the heels of Zuckerberg’s powwow with the president-elect the day before he announced the end of fact-checking.

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Early in his speech, Zuckerberg revealed his preferred side when he made the entirely false but very Trumpian claim that “Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.” He added the complaint that “After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.” He said that Meta tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth.” But, as Zuckerberg put it, “The fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US.”

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According to materials obtained by The Intercept, the content users will now be free to post on Facebook and Instagram, includes “derogatory remarks about races, nationalities, ethnic groups, sexual orientations, and gender identities, That is one reason why the new era Zuckerberg is promising feels like an older era when freedom meant the absence of regulation and a “let the buyer beware” approach in economics and politics. That was great for the powerful and not so much for the rest of us. ....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/14/mark-zuckerbergs-gaslighting-cant-hide-the-truth-for-donald/