The war on fake news has backfired

Brian Stelter, CNN's chief media analyst, recently tweeted that “fact-check” had become a dirty word. Stelter’s assessment followed Meta’s announcement that it would scrap its fact-checking processes—once central to the post-2016 response to the proliferation of so-called fake news. Now, with Donald Trump preparing for a second term, many former critics of fake news have curiously dropped their concerns over disinformation and aligned with him. This shift exposes Big Tech and legacy media’s anti-fake-news campaigns as, at best, PR fluff, and at worst, efforts to outright silence dissent. 

These fake news flip-floppers include a self-described Democrat, Elon Musk, who endorsed Trump and donated a staggering $250 million to his campaign. By allying himself with Trump, Musk reaped the rewards with an appointment to co-lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In 2022, Musk claimed he acquired Twitter - which he renamed X - in order to protect and promote free speech by ending what he saw as Twitter’s suppression of truth. Instead, Musk seems poised to use his platform as a tool of propaganda that promotes a positive image of Trump's presidency. After Trump was elected, Musk announced that he would change his platform’s algorithm to promote "positive, beautiful content,” suggesting that since Trump is president, Musk sees no need for negative content on X.

The shift reveals an uncomfortable truth: content moderation was never about eradicating fake news. Rather, it’s a tool wielded by those in power to shape narratives and consolidate influence. This is why it is somewhat concerning that other Trump-friendly billionaires have also expressed an interest in taking control over social media platforms, like Kevin O’Leary, a Trump ally of “Shark Tank” fame who is now attempting to purchase TikTok. Social media platforms often resist moderation for business purposes, but under political pressure, they will act upon moderation marching orders from whoever is in power. What this means for users is that the platform is always biased, showing you what they want you to see, nothing more, and nothing less.

The concerns about fake news and its impact on democracy were and remain well-founded. Disinformation erodes public trust, distorts reality, and weakens democratic systems. Yet the post-2016 solutions offered to combat it, largely centered around entrusting billionaires with the reins of information dissemination. This approach not only failed to mitigate the spread of fake news but also emboldened a small group of elites to expand their wealth and influence globally.

Since Trump’s emergence as a political figure in 2015, the media’s warnings about his attacks on journalists as purveyors of "fake news" were loud and persistent. These warnings were not baseless. Trump’s rhetoric undermined the press and raised fears about threats to a free media—especially when he floated ideas like revoking broadcasting licenses. These concerns escalated during the pandemic, with misinformation about COVID-19 spreading like wildfire. The World Health Organization even labeled the crisis an "infodemic."

In response, liberals and media personalities pushed for increased content moderation on Big-Tech platforms. Congressional hearings pressured tech giants to act and companies capitulated by minimizing the reach of conservative and progressive news outlets (referred to as the ‘adpocalypse”), banning controversial users, and taking part in developing tools such as NewsGuard—a tool promising to identify fake news, but often criticized for having an establishment bias. Post-January 6, 2021, as violence erupted at the U.S. Capitol, tech platforms were urged to clamp down further, leading to Trump’s ban and the suppression of controversial topics like election fraud claims.

President Joe Biden continued the crusade with measures like banning the social media platform TikTok (allegedly in part to curb disinformation) and proposing a Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board, which was ultimately scrapped after public outcry. Media platforms aligned with these efforts by removing content from Russia Today, which is owned by the Russian government, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

After Trump was elected in 2024, everything changed. Big Tech companies, which had previously moderated Trump or content he favored, now faced a president who could potentially push for regulations, increased taxes, or the cancelation of government contracts they relied on. In response, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company would abandon fact-checking entirely in 2025. It was the final blow to those who lived under the delusion that billionaire tech firms would marginalize disinformation and promote truth. Instead, Meta pledged to work with the Trump administration on combating foreign threats and promoting "civil content.” In addition, Dana White, the CEO and president of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a Trump supporter, was added to Meta’s board, and Meta moved some of its content moderators from California to Texas. 

Meta’s attempt to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration reveals that power and profits, not a concern for truth or democracy, is what motivated billionaires to signal they were fighting fake news. In the process, the very strategies designed to combat misinformation have strengthened the systems that perpetuate it. Indeed, a handful of powerful people, often allied with the incoming administration, control the flow of information in the US, and they interact with a public that has been conditioned to believe that the way to save democracy and eradicate fake news is by pleading with billionaires. This approach is not only anti-democratic, but it is also a fool’s errand. Fake news cannot be eradicated; it is a byproduct of human creativity and imagination. Attempts to eliminate it often result in greater censorship and concentration of power, leaving societies more susceptible to manipulation.

The only effective solution is critical media literacy. Critical media literacy teaches people how to think, not what to think. It aims to give students the skills, terms, questions, and knowledge necessary to not only determine the veracity of information, but be empowered and autonomous users who can negotiate their relationship with media. In order to make the nation more critically media literate, schools, communities and homes will need to treat media literacy with the same seriousness that they treat a citizen’s need to be able to read, write, and perform mathematics. 

The lessons of the last decade are sobering. Trusting billionaires and tech companies to act as gatekeepers of truth has not protected democracy; it has endangered it. Instead of empowering the public to critically engage with information, these efforts have built stronger tools for controlling and distorting narratives. The war on fake news has backfired, entrenching the systems it sought to dismantle and deepening public skepticism of information. The lesson is clear: in a democracy, real resistance to fake news comes from a critically media literate citizenry, not the power of billionaire gatekeepers.