Mark Zuckerberg’s cowardice, by Jemima Kelly

Changes to Meta’s fact-checking regime make it look like it’s caving in to Trump

Mark Zuckerberg was forced to confirm during a live online Q&A session that he was “not a lizard.” It was neither the first nor the last time someone suggested that Facebook’s pale-faced founder with a slightly robotic demeanor could be some kind of alien. You have to love the internet.

These days, however, the Meta boss is adopting a completely new look: less lizardman, more standard billionaire “tech bro.” Modest gray T-shirts fitted over a thin frame gave way to baggy T-shirts over a muscular frame, accessorized with a gold chain and a $900,000 watch. The Julius Caesar haircut was also replaced by a relaxed, casually Californian hairstyle with curls, and Zuckerberg’s skin went from extremely pale to something close to a “tan” (Americans insist this is an adjective).

I’d even say that if you were in the same room as Zuck, you’d notice that he’s wearing a new perfume—perhaps something with a “musky” feel. Along with his new look came new opinions, apparently heavily influenced by a certain West Coast billionaire.

“It’s time to return to our roots around free speech,” Zuckerberg said in a video posted on Meta’s website on Tuesday. In the video, he explained that the company would be shutting down the teams of professional fact-checkers it currently employs and replacing them with a crowdsourced “community notes” system like the one adopted by Elon Musk at X. Initially, this will be implemented only in the US, although Zuckerberg also stated that he would “work with President Trump to push back against governments around the world.”

“Governments and traditional media have been pushing for more censorship,” said Zuck (note the use of the term “traditional media,” a favorite of Musk’s). “But now we have the opportunity to restore free speech, and I’m excited to do that.”

I should start by saying that I have serious issues with the concept of fact-checking in the context of social media, something I have expressed publicly several times. When a Bloomberg columnist asked for examples of fact-checkers showing political bias, Meta responded with three pieces, including a column I wrote in 2021 in which I argued that fact-checking is often used as censorship. I’ve also written positively about community ratings, although this system also has its limitations.

While the online spread of misinformation and false information concerns me greatly, it is virtually impossible to perform truly objective fact-checking given that all humans have biases. Choices need to be made about which statements to check and which to pass over. So the idea that it’s possible to completely fact-check an entire social network has always been a fantasy. And there are few financial incentives for platforms to do so (unless they are worried about being fined by regulators).

The problem I see in all of this isn’t so much what’s happening at Meta. I even think moving content moderation teams from the Bay Area to Austin, Texas — a Democratic city in a largely Republican state — to “help alleviate concerns that biased officials are over-censoring content,” as Zuckerberg wrote on Threads , it’s a pretty sensible idea. But the very wording of this reveals his true motivations: This is not about principles, but about appearance and pleasing the future resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

My issue with Zuckerberg is his lack of courage and opportunism. Ask yourself: Is there any chance that Zuckerberg was making all these changes at Meta — he also appointed Trump ally Dana White to the board and replaced Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican, as president of global affairs — if Had Kamala Harris won in November?

Not even Trump believes that. Last year, he warned that Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if the Meta boss tried to “plot against” him. Asked on Tuesday whether Zuckerberg was “directly responding to threats [que Trump havia] done to him in the past” with this fact-checking twist, the president-elect responded, “Probably.”

Zuckerberg can talk all he wants about how he won’t give in to government demands anymore, but he’s still giving in — just to different demands. In many ways, this just means that Zuckerberg is less dangerous than Musk. It becomes clear in which direction the influence was exerted when the head of Meta had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. It follows the direction of the wind.

I would feel more comfortable if the man responsible for platforms used by two-fifths of the world’s population could demonstrate some moral courage and leadership. He may have successfully transformed his image, but at least lizards have backbones.

By Jemima Kelly for the Financial Times*