Meta to get rid of factcheckers and recommend more political content

[CeceliaImrie]

Just in the news,

"Meta will get rid of factcheckers, “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship” and recommend more political content on its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Threads, founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced."

Are social media platforms going to end up the domain of sorry to be harsh but, idiots arguing and celebrities showing off?

The legitimacy of fact-checking and censorship of damaging content was about the only thing keeping Facebook, Twitter and the others from descending into a complete cesspit of argument, lies, bullying and porno spammmars.

Aibu to think this is the end of the idea and content it was borne out of?

Will it continue as a trashy corner of the internet or will it die off?

Well we wouldn't want to see Mr Zuckerberg missing out on the $$$tech spree and leaving it all to Elon would we ? Go, Mark, fill your boots, there's a lot of hatred about. Get fanning those flames, Donald will be along soon enough.

Relevant reading here:
www.factcheck.org/2025/01/our-partnership-with-meta-is-ending/

More toxic wastelands. Great.

Anyway Meta barely has moderators and censorship now. Just dodgy algorithms.

I don’t care I just want them to go back to the model when all I saw was stuff from friends. Not random accounts I don’t wish to see.

I guess I can make this social media break permanent.

They protected my son from anti LGBT speech. Propaganda to you but necessary for us. We live with the fallout that hate speech and bullying causes.

Fact Checking is important but the other bit I object to is that more posts about random subjects including politics appearing. If I want news, politics, sport etc and I look it up on FB then ok send me more like that. I just use it for family and a local area group with posts on lost cats.

Of course porn should be censored, don't think anything is changing in that regard.

The problem with censoring speech is the bias of those doing the censoring. It's clear there has been huge overreach.Who decides what are slurs?

So no porn should be censored but not homophobic abuse.

And ableist rubbish?

Or racism and racist lies dressed up as “facts”.

Why is porn more offensive than racism and homophobia ?

Lots of people completely missing the point that this backlash against censorship has come because reasonable concerns about immigration and grooming gangs have been censored as racist. I'd rather be able to have the conversation thanks.

Also actually being abusive is a completely different matter.

@Porcuporpoise the people censoring are the ones that can't deal with truth/science/reality. They have to stop people talking about truth and reality because it exposes and challenges the flaws in their way of thinking too much.

Social media was never designed to be a place to ascertain facts from. But of course as a place online where people interact with other people, where users are the product and dwell time and engagement are money makers, it's a consequence of the way these sites are run that people pick up beliefs from there.

Add in human behaviour around our own conscious and unconsious biases, and the fact that most people have neither the desire nor the knowledge nor the time to be looking on Pubmed for 3* evidence to support things that others claim as facts, and we've all been in trouble for quite some time.

I think you've got a point when it comes to things like the left wing in politics ignoring people's concerns about these things, whether they felt they were legitimate or not they should have spoken to them. I think we saw surprise Tory election results and Brexit because the left wing behaved as if all concerns were racist and didn't deserve anything other than to call people racist and fascist, and to suppress concerns. Funnily enough, censoring people from taking about them doesn't stop them from having those beliefs.

I think in the case of Meta's most recent news, it's nothing other than Zuckerberg crawling into the pocket of the US president for business reasons. I think you're giving him too much credit.

if people choose to be mislead on social media then how is that social medias fault ?

I'm not sure it is social media's fault - although don't underestimate what the impact is of algorithms designed to keep you scrolling and engaging, and likely attacks and interference from places like Russia.

Social media is designed to ve profitable, with people's attention and engagement being the product. I think it would be naive to underestimate the impact that how those businesses are being run has on individuals.

As V from vendetta would say in his speech, you only have to look in the mirror to see who is ultimately responsible for believing in x information and usually the algorithms operate off of previous information you click on and look up via the cookies etc ( i could be wrong but that's my understanding)

They have fact checkers? You could have fooled me.

I once got censored for posting the "UK is revoking American independance" satirical letter that's been doing the rounds for a couple of decades. Apparently the reason that it attracted Meta's ire is that contrary to popular belief the letter wasn't written by John Cleese - I never claimed or implied that it was. At the same time Facebook is chock-full of scams that "don't breach our community standards". As far as I can see, almost all Facebook moderating is entirely handled by a rather dim bot which only really cares about whether an advertising cheque is included.

It’s akin to the Sopranos, MZ has effectively payed his respect to the Don and bestowed upon him a generous gift.

This reminds me of Horrible Histories with Jim Howick playing Pope Alexander VI in all his corrupt glory akin to Marlon Brando's Godfather, so funny, so accurate.

Sorry am I missing something, could we then apply this analogy to any number of damaging agencies and networks, perhaps child sex groomers, cults, family abusers.. "if people choose to be mislead by <insert choice of damaging influence> then how is that <insert choice of damaging influence> fault?