Although Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was among the heaviest-handed tech executives when it came to silencing social media users with unapproved opinions about the pandemic, he has recently distanced himself and his company from those censorial policies.
Most recently, he confirmed that his employees were forced to repeatedly field irate and profane representatives from the Biden White House who were upset about content published on Meta platforms.
According to The Hill :
“These people from the Biden administration would call up our team and scream at them and curse,” he said on an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” posted Friday.
Zuckerberg discussed his shift on fact checking following his announcement earlier this week about Meta’s plans to overhaul its content moderation policies.
“I was really worried from the beginning about basically becoming this decider of what is true in the world,” the Meta CEO said of his foray into combatting misinformation. “That’s kind of a crazy position to be in for billions of people using your service.”
“It just got to a point where it’s just OK this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States, to have this program,” he added.
His decisions to curtail third-party fact-checking across all Meta platforms and scale back the company’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies have sparked significant social media discussion this week.
It’s safe to say that many pro-freedom Americans are still skeptical about his apparent change of heart:
Axios also reported on the new direction for Meta:
Context : Meta said it was changing course because the “legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” per a memo by Janelle Gale, vice president of human resources.
The moves come just three days after Meta ended many of its efforts to fact-check and police speech on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
The announcement also follows a host of public moves by tech companies and executives to align with the politics and cultural views of President-elect Trump and the MAGA movement.
State of play : Friday’s memo by Gale — announcing changes to “our hiring, development and procurement practices” — was posted for Meta employees in Workplace, the company’s internal communications tool.
“The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” Gale wrote.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. … The term ‘DEI’ has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.”
Here’s a clip of Zuckerberg’s recent remarks about the Biden administration:
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