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Mark Zuckerberg has decided to follow Elon Musk by dumping an old favourite of the leftists, the one-sided fact-checking regime.
I sincerely hope the blinkered people among us will be able to handle this newfound truth, and that it's not too much of a shock to the system.
https://www.politico.eu/article/mark...-fact-checker/
Love the way the smuggeratti pile into one set of rich people who rip people off, yet they think other rich sods out to exploit you can do no wrong![]()
Nick Clegg has gone.
"In June 2018, vice-president of global affairs and communications at Facebook, Inc. Elliot Schrage resigned his position. After talks with the Facebook leadership and Richard Allan, Baron Allan of Hallam, Facebook's Director of Policy in Europe and the Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam before Clegg, in October 2018 Clegg was hired as a lobbyist and public relations officer, replacing Schrage as Vice-President, Global Affairs and Communications. He joined Facebook because he was "convinced that the culture is changing" and that "lawmakers need to have a serious conversation about whether data-intensive companies allow other companies to share and use data". He admitted that the Cambridge Analytica data scandal had "rocked Facebook to its very foundations" and told the BBC that the company "hadn't done enough in the past" in regards to data privacy.
In April 2019, Clegg was accused by Věra Jourová, European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, in a letter signed by a number of senior EU civil servants, of misunderstanding EU law, stating that proposed new Facebook guidelines on political advertising would "hinder the exercise of EU electoral rights." In May 2019, he rejected calls by American presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, as well as Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes to break Facebook up, saying that Facebook was "a great American success story" and that "I don't think it's a very American tradition to start penalizing success." In June 2019, Clegg said there was "absolutely no evidence" that Russia had influenced the outcome of the EU referendum using Facebook. He said that the company was working towards greater regulation of technology firms. In October 2019, Damian Collins, chair of the British House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, formally asked Clegg to explain why Facebook had exempted political statements from fact-checking guidelines.
In 2020, Clegg helped lead the creation of the Facebook Oversight Board, which reported to him, convincing former Danish Prime Minister and former College of Europe friend Helle Thorning-Schmidt to serve as its co-chair. He then played a role in Facebook's deplatforming of U.S. President Donald Trump in mid-2021.
Ahead of the release of the whistleblown Facebook Files in October 2021, Clegg authored an internal memo saying that there was no evidence Facebook was a main cause in polarisation and that the company does not "profit from polarization, in fact, just the opposite." He later posted a public statement saying that the reporting on the Files "conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook's leadership and employees," saying that it was "just plain false" that Facebook ignored its own internal research. After the release of the Files, he then made a number of public interviews defending the company. In one of the interviews, he stated that "I can't give you a yes or no answer" when asked if Facebook played a role in amplifying extremist content ahead of the 2021 United States Capitol attack. Clegg faced criticism for his role in defending the company, with the Guardian journalist John Harris dubbing him "the fall guy for Facebook's failures". In February 2022, Clegg was promoted to president of global affairs.
In January 2025, Clegg announced he would step down from his role as president of global affairs and leave Meta within "the next few months". He is set to be succeeded by his current deputy Joel Kaplan, a Republican who previously served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff under George W. Bush. The leadership change has been described as an attempt to improve Meta's relations with Donald Trump, who is set to begin his second term as U.S. president 17 days after the announcement."
Fair enough. I didn't realise you were someone who is happy for billionaires to control our politics and, through social media, our thoughts.
There's been a tonne of criticism of fact checkers recently and they actually seem to do the opposite of what they were intended to do and of course are subject to bias themselves. The issue I find is more what they choose to fact check. So it's used selectively and not used other times, and the degree of scrutiny varies too.
Probably more useful as a snappier intervention to call people out on clearly false statistics etc
Whatever anyone else thinks of twitter, Community Notes is a pretty good system really and does democratise it somewhat
I agree with you, but it is fundamentally difficult isn't it, as by definition you have to be very wealthy to own a media company or wealthy (via your salary if nothing else) to run one. The answer, I guess, is things like social media which open things up to everyone.
I've never really been s fan of social media. I sensed twitters role in being divisive years ago as it became clear that people were only reading the stuff the algorithms pushed on them. You have to consciously go out of your way to read different perspectives and many don't want to / don't know to do that.
I would welcome greater regulation on data capture and the use of algorithms. This does well over my head though, but it can have serious consequences in terms of increasing divided societies.
What sort of free speech is prevented by fact checking?