Meta Mission Creeps

Corporate Fact-Checking Guardrails Ripped Off to Please Trump

The truth guardrail was old and not working anyway. And it’s blocking Mark’s view. [Photo by Bernhard on Unsplash]

Throwing a million dollars at Trump’s campaign, Mark Zuckerberg is a pittance compared to removing the guardrails on Facebook and Meta’s other platforms. Democracy ain’t cheap, and Mark ain’t paying for it. He’s doling out the money for capitalist autocracy. Democracy is dead; why not party.

Instead, he will let the platforms become trashed to fill his coffers even more. He canceled the money he had been spending on fact-checking, and now, when Trump says trash on Meta platforms, “the people” will factcheck Trump and his team. For Facebook’s Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly installed global policy chief, it was “mission creep” to let this expensive fact-checking go unchecked. It’s better to cancel it. Truth has no socialized place on that platform. Facts are whatever users repeat.

It is disgusting to think that democracy is too much of a both-and-mission creep that cuts into profits, but it is also true. Companies do not have to be interested in truth and democracy by law. Under US securities law, the public must return value to shareholders. That is the law. The rest — green energy, pollution controls, consumer safety, and protecting democracy — are all in the realm of the government.