Mark Zuckerberg, who often bends with the political winds, is getting out of the fact-checking business.
And this is part of a broader effort by the Meta CEO to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump after a long and testy relationship.
After a previous outcry, Zuck made a great show of declaring that Facebook would hire fact-checkers to combat misinformation on the globally popular site. That was a clear sign that Facebook was becoming more of a journalistic organization rather than a passive poster of users’ opinions (and dog pictures).
But it didn’t work. In fact, it led to more info-suppression and censorship. Why should anyone believe a bunch of unknown fact-checkers working for one of the increasingly unpopular tech titans?
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Now Zuckerberg is pulling the plug, announcing his decision in a video to underscore its big-deal nature:
“The problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor just 1 percent of posts. That’s millions of people. And we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.”
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