Zuckerberg decided to imitate X and, like Musk, eliminated external fact-checking tools from Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s platforms. Before the official announcement, he knelt before the king, offering the information to Trump. Outside extremist circles, the news caused some scandal, for minor reasons. The relevant news almost went unnoticed: the two US-based global media outlets intend to be semi-official agencies.
Ideology dissolves into thin air. Musk’s connection to Trump is solid as steel: SpaceX’s multibillion-dollar business with NASA and Tesla’s state protection from Chinese competition. The elevation of the tycoon to advisor to the elected president and head of a powerful government department outlines the contours of postmodern state capitalism.
Meta read the words on the wall. Along with the extinction of the checking, he added to his board the figure of Dana White, CEO of the UFC, friend and strategist of Trump. The parallel gestures, a pilgrimage to Zuckerberg’s Canossa, are intended to cancel a trajectory of friction in which the leader of Maga (Make America Great Again) even promised that he would make the owner of Meta “spend the rest of his life in prison “.
There were “many mistakes” and “too much censorship”, explained Zuckerberg. There is no shortage of outcry for censorship on the networks. There are, particularly in the identity militancy, those who want to attribute to platforms the duty of vetoing speeches that challenge their ideological playbook. In Brazil, Alexandre de Moraes practices prior censorship through court orders wrapped in the cloak of secrecy – and wins applause from those who would indignantly condemn the Bolsonaro judge engaged in removing his own posts. But, by invoking freedom of expression, X and a twist the concept until it is empty of meaning.
Freedom of expression is always, exclusively, the right of those who disagree with the government – and this for the simple and obvious reason that the free speech of those who hold state power is never in danger. Removing the check is not intended to preserve this right. In fact, what the two tycoons seek is the hegemony of the White House in the arena of public debate. Freedom, for them, is the absolute freedom of algorithms to select, customize and boost posts.
“Our Meta algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to division,” according to a slide used in an internal company strategic presentation. The networks’ business is extremism, in its legal or criminal discourses. Posts that gain wide circulation originate from a small minority of users, but are preferred by algorithms. The alliance of platforms tends to further ideologically refine the selection of content. This is why checking needs to be abolished.
Factual checking, a daily practice of professional press outlets, should not be confused with censorship. In the democratic regulation of networks adopted by the European Union, mandatory checking does not overturn legal erroneous speeches, but alerts to the factual truth.
Pravda, “truth”, in Russian: this is the name of the main official newspaper in Soviet times. In the USSR, it was said that the newspaper had never published a single truth. Trump wins, even before his inauguration, two Pravdas.
LINK PRESENT: Did you like this text? Subscribers can access seven free accesses from any link per day. Just click the blue F below.
