Did you know Zuckerberg Reveals Political Threats and Meta’s Struggle with Censorship Decisions

 

Mark Zuckerberg raised the curtain on Meta’s censorship past and present while appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast yesterday.

The Meta CEO shared more details about how the administration under Joe Biden pushed to censor real or factual information linked to the pandemic. This includes forcing the company to take down authentic data linked to vaccines.

If that was not enough, they tried to hound the media to highlight Facebook as an app that did very little to handle fake information spread after the elections in 2016. Also, he was stunned to hear more about how they kept saying that Zuckerberg and Co. did very little in terms of compliance with the government’s calls when in fact it was the exact opposite.

Speaking during an interview that was three hours long, the Meta CEO shared a lot of very interesting facts surrounding content moderation and how Zuckerberg’s vision has changed after all the company has been through.

Having the country’s head of state accusing you and your firm of ‘killing people’ with incorrect facts was uncalled for, he explained. Moreover, politicians were arriving to target his firm from all directions and he didn’t like this.

From threatening calls to yelling on extreme, there was a lot of pressure on the tech giant to do what Biden and his team wanted, even if it was wrong. They finally drew the line when it came down to getting rid of humor and satire forcefully.

Zuckerberg admitted the organization did go one step too far in terms of complying with the wishes. He did acknowledge that many wrong decisions were made but at the time, it was just a lot to take in.

The Facebook owner mentioned that today it looks like there’s a new culture or trend of people following content creators more religiously as truth speakers instead of the government whom they hardly trust.

More conversations had to do with Meta’s bold decision to get rid of independent fact-checkers and instead take on X’s approach of adopting community Notes. He knows that this has ignited another wave of controversy but he stands by it. The goal right now is to give people a voice and bring back the roots of social media which disappeared.