In part because of his goofy appearance and in part because he doesn't engage in fascist trolling like fellow billionaire Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg is rarely seen as a sinister character in modern American life. But Zuckerberg's announcement that Facebook and Instagram will soon cease fact-checking is such a stellar model of villainous doublespeak that George Orwell would have thought it was a bit much. Zuckerberg insisted it's in the name of "free speech" that he must unleash uncontrolled disinformation on his platform, adding, "The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech."
It's bad enough when leaders like Trump and Musk, who are at least open about their authoritarian beliefs, tell their followers that it's okay to ignore facts and believe whatever feels emotionally satisfying. When someone like Zuckerberg — who has long presented as moderate or even liberal — says it, it furthers this normalization of dishonesty.
Yep, he is saying Donald Trump is a "free speech" champion, saying the company plans to "work with President Trump" in what sounds very much like bullying countries that have more stringent laws banning false information and hate speech. Of course, Trump is a stalwart enemy of free speech and the First Amendment. Trump has repeatedly threatened to imprison journalists or use government power to shut down news organizations that publish unflattering information about him. The president-elect routinely uses baseless defamation lawsuits to punish journalists for reporting his actions. He has repeatedly called for throwing people in prison for criticizing right-wing judges. But, as the Atlantic's Adam Serwer said on Bluesky, the right's definition of "free speech" is "conservatives being able to say nasty things about people without those people being able to respond."
Instead of using professional fact-checkers, parent company Meta will copy X's "community notes" model. This feature allows people to attach "corrections" to tweets they believe contain false information. If enough people do this, the community note will appear on the original post. X's owner, Musk, claims the notes are "the best source of truth on the internet." Like much of what Musk says, this is not true. A Washington Post report on the program published in October shows it "does a poor job of responding to falsehoods relating to politics," because people who post factual corrections are challenged by those who defend the original lie. The researchers found that accurate community notes only survived downvoting by trolls 9% of the time.
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But even on those rare occasions when the facts get attached to a false post, it may not matter. As disinformation expert Jared Holt noted on Bluesky, "fact-checking ultimately does very little to curb the spread of false information online." What matters instead, he said, is algorithms that favor good information over bad. If anything, community notes may end up spreading disinformation wider. When people are arguing over the content of a post, as community notes encourage, that boosts its engagement — and therefore pushes the disinformation in front of even more eyeballs than if people were just ignoring it. Meta is "consciously going to let more toxicity through the floodgates," Holt added.
From a business standpoint, choosing to be even more of a vector for right-wing disinformation and general looniness seems like a poor idea. Musk turned Twitter into a MAGA cesspool after acquiring it in 2022, and the results haven't been good for the accounting books. As Futurism reported last month, the renamed X is rapidly losing users to competitors like Threads and Bluesky. As the Deseret News reported in October, X has lost 80% of its value since Musk took over, mostly because "the company’s primary source of income, advertising revenue, has hit the skids during his tenure as owner."
Musk probably doesn't care. He spent a ridiculous sum — $44 billion — to buy X, which was only valued at $20 million at the time. (It plummeted in value to $4.2 million in two years.) One reason is his narcissism and wanting to use the platform to force people to pay attention to him. It was also an in-kind donation to the Trump campaign, on top of the over quarter-billion Musk spent directly on Trump in 2024. That investment has returns for Musk, who made most of his money off the federal government and would like to keep that spout open. Zuckerberg isn't plugged into such investments, though his announcement video did suggest one reason he's buttering Trump up like this: he wants the U.S. government to penalize foreign nations that have cracked down on Facebook disinformation. Considering that the free flow of lies on the platform has led to countless deaths from everything from vaccine refusal to genocide, Zuckerberg's urge here feels less about "free speech" and more about avoiding the consequences of vile behavior.
Whatever Zuckerberg's motives, this move will have ramifications far beyond making Facebook, which is already a miserable platform, even more unusable. There will be an immediate effect, which is that the already voluminous amount of MAGA disinformation on the network will grow. But this is much worse than having to deal with MAGA grandpa sharing more fake stories about "migrant crime." By so publicly affirming the Trumpian belief that facts don't matter and that "truth" is whatever MAGA says it is, Zuckerberg has offered even more permission to ordinary Republicans to lie shamelessly and spread obviously false conspiracy theories.
As Mike Caulfield and Charlie Warzel wrote this week in the Atlantic, "misinformation is powerful, not because it changes minds, but because it allows people to maintain their beliefs in light of growing evidence to the contrary." It's bad enough when leaders like Trump and Musk, who are at least open about their authoritarian beliefs, tell their followers that it's okay to ignore facts and believe whatever feels emotionally satisfying. When someone like Zuckerberg — who has long presented as moderate or even liberal — says it, it furthers this normalization of dishonesty. The message is now perceived to be coming from all corners: it's okay to lie for MAGA, and anyone who says lying is immoral wants to take your "free speech" away. With this new level of permission to lie without shame, the already mendacious MAGA movement is going to get even more addicted to disinformation.
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