Zuckerberg Is Removing Fact-Checkers: Did He Just Have A Change Of Heart? – OpEd

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By Peter Jacobsen

Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, recently made a big announcement: the platforms are going to stop fact-checking user posts. Instead, Meta will be moving to a community-driven system (similar to X’s “community notes”).

The move represents an about-face for Zuckerberg. In early 2018, Zuckerberg voluntarily testified before Congress to apologetically discuss Facebook’s role in spreading Russian disinformation. It was around this time that Facebook rolled out fact-checks.

Meta’s fact-checking was subject to scrutiny within months of its implementation. Much of the scrutiny has stemmed from Meta getting fact-checks wrong on several major issues over the last few years, including the Covid-19 lab-leak theory and the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

In his testimony, he went so far as to say, “The most important thing I care about right now is making sure no one interferes in the various 2018 elections around the world.” When asked whether he would support new regulations, he said he would if they were “the right regulations.”

In 2020, Zuckerberg donated over $400 million to election nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life to ensure “election integrity.”

So why the change? Why is Meta changing from a fact-checking hall monitor to a hands-off bystander?

Rent Extraction, Regulatory Capture, and Fact-Checking

After the 2016 election, Trump’s victory was considered an aberration. His narrow victory and the now-debunked Russian collusion narrative dominated major outlets.

Many Democrats blamed Facebook for the loss. They argued that voters had been swayed by Russian-funded propaganda spread on Facebook. Clinton herself took to The Rachel Maddow Showto scold Facebook for its role in spreading “disinformation.”

As the 2018 midterms approached, the mainstream media took aim at Facebook for being the cause of Trump’s 2016 win. One article from the New York Times used a meme of Jesus and the Devil arm-wrestling as their top example of Russian-paid disinformation. Was the meme paid for by Russians trying to sow discontent? It seems like it. Did a meme of Jesus and the Devil arm-wrestling cost Clinton the election? I’ll let you answer that.

Regardless, Zuckerberg was clearly feeling the heat and began trying to work with Democrats to stop the apparent misinformation problem on Facebook.

Why would Zuckerberg go from ridiculing the disinformation charges to spending millions to ensure election integrity? One possibility is that he changed his mind, but I think there’s a more likely answer. Zuckerberg was concerned that Democrats’ rhetoric against him would turn into retaliatory regulation, so he gave money and lip service to Democratic efforts.

When politicians use their power to threaten companies into doing things that benefit them or their party, economists call their actions rent extraction.

There’s a second force at play here. If Zuckerberg agreed to cooperate with regulators, there is a chance he, or his team, could be involved in writing the regulations. Politicians aren’t exactly tech-savvy, which means they need to rely on experts to help create regulations. Oftentimes, the best experts are industry insiders like Zuckerberg and his employees. When industry leaders can write regulations for their own businesses—inevitably in ways that favor those businesses—economists call this regulatory capture.

So, by pivoting toward concern about disinformation, Zuckerberg was able to avoid retaliatory regulation and position himself to write new regulations. Rent extraction and regulatory capture explain the pivot. By 2021, Zuckerberg had gone from election-theft-enabler to savior of the 2020 election. All it cost was incorrectly fact-checking user claims and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Tech and the Triumph of Trump

Trump’s 2024 win struck a different chord. Unlike 2016, Trump got more of the popular vote than the Democrats, and there’s been very little talk of Russian campaigns to upend the election.

One tech giant, Elon Musk, bet big on Trump and won. Elon’s support of Trump was a risky move that certainly would’ve come back to bite him if Trump lost.

Tech CEOs have noticed the changing tides, and are responding. Apple, Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI have donated $1 million each to Trump’s inauguration. To be blunt, it looks like a new sheriff’s in town.

Trump’s relationship with Musk, his new friendly view of TikTok (which he credits his son Barron for), and his support of H-1B visas (a major supply of tech-industry labor) highlight his friendly relationship with the industry.

It’s unsurprising that Zuckerberg is trying to jump on the same bandwagon. The community notes system, although not immune to error, is not viewed as censorship in the same way Meta’s fact-checking system was.

Zuckerberg maintains that the timing of these changes is coincidental in a recent Joe Rogan interview, but there are two problems with taking this at face value. One, talk is cheap. Making ideological changes for cynical reasons tends not to sit well with people. Secondarily, it’s possible that Zuckerberg is the type of person who acts in accordance with beneficial trends without even realizing it himself. Being business-savvy as a second nature may mean Zuckerberg can make otherwise calculated decisions using heuristics which themselves are more complicated than he realizes.

With Democrats firmly out of the halls of power, Zuckerberg no longer feels the heat of rent extraction, and it makes more sense to saddle up with the GOP if he wants to be on the ground floor of tech regulations. As a result, Meta is killing its fact-checking.

It’s also important to note how other factors may be influencing this decision. For example, international controversies (such as the war in Gaza) likely make the system more expensive as more sites with variable languages need to be assessed.

Overall, supporters of free speech can be happy about this, but they should be careful to recognize that Meta’s decision (and perhaps Zuckerberg’s libertarian turn in general) is probably the result of cold political calculations rather than changed minds and hearts.

  • About the author: Peter Jacobsen is a Writing Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.
  • Source: This article was published at FEE

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