Mark Zuckerberg: Course Correction

IN A SHORT VIDEO released this week, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, announced that Facebook and Instagram would stop active removal of ‘unwanted’ posts. They would shift to community notes which had been pioneered by X, in which fake news is only pointed out by crowdsourcing. By itself it might not be such a seminal event when the history of social media is written but it was the reason he gave for it: online moderation had not only failed but had been gamed as a weapon of political ideology. He had recognised this belatedly and now wanted to return to the embrace of free speech. For instance, this line in his clip: “What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far. So, I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.”

It is not so straightforward. The US presidential elections and Donald Trump’s comprehensive victory have shown that wokeness might be strident but the majority finds it problematic. Also, Elon Musk, his competitor, has been on the free speech and Trump wagon for a while and is now reaping the rewards. Zuckerberg finds himself on the wrong side of both history and the establishment, and that can come with commercial costs. He is not alone among businessmen wanting to shed their earlier kowtowing to political correctness but it is in his loud public proclamation that Zuckerberg is signalling his desperation to be back in the right books.

businessfree-speech evangelistMark ZuckerbergMeta CEO