A new era of lies: Mark Zuckerberg has just ushered in an extinction-level event for truth on social media | Chris Stokel-Walker
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The Meta boss’s decision to end Facebook and Instagram’s factchecking program has set the stage for a fact-free four years online. Social media has always acted as something of a funhouse mirror to society as a whole. The algorithms and amplifications of an always-online existence have helped accentuate the worst parts of our lives, while tucking in and hiding the best. It’s part of why we’re so polarised today, with two tribes shouting past one another on social media into a gaping chasm of hopelessness.
![[Chris Stokel-Walker]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2024/08/26/Chris_Stokel-Walker.png?width=180&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Which is what makes a declaration by one titan of big tech this week so worrying. Abandon hope all ye who enter: less than two weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House for a second crack at the US presidency, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Threads, has made major changes to content moderation, and in doing so appears to align itself with the views of the incoming president.
In a bizarre video message posted to his personal Facebook page on Tuesday, Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the platform is getting rid of its factcheckers. In their place? Mob rule. Zuckerberg has said that the platform, which has more than 3 billion people worldwide logging on to its apps every day, will be adopting an Elon Musk-style community notes format for policing what is and isn’t acceptable speech on its platforms. Starting in the US, the company will be dramatically shifting the Overton window towards whoever can shout the loudest.
The Meta CEO all but admitted that the move was politically motivated. “It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” he said, confessing that “restrictions on topics like immigration and gender […] are out of touch with mainstream discourse”. He admitted to past “censorship mistakes” – here, probably meaning the past four years of tamping down political speech while a Democratic president was in office – and said he would “work with President Trump to push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more”.
