A brand new Fb for the period of President Trump – podcast | Fb

When Mark Zuckerberg introduced dramatic adjustments to Meta’s social platforms final week – together with Fb, Instagram and Threads – he admitted: “We’re going to catch much less dangerous stuff.”

Zuckerberg mentioned Meta would eliminate factcheckers, overhaul its content material moderation and increase political content material in customers’ feeds – all 3.3 billion of them. He argued the corporate was doing it as a result of the political winds had modified: the general public not seen these safeguards as a manner of stopping the unfold of misinformation, hate speech, and even real-world violence, however as censorship by different means.

It was a transfer typical of Meta and Zuckerberg, argues the know-how journalist Chris Stokel-Walker – the corporate was reluctant to introduce moderation within the first place, and has typically modified its insurance policies depending on who’s in energy. “He’s nothing if not politically expedient,” Stokel-Walker says. In a world the place the correct wing has weaponised the problem of free speech on-line – it’s no coincidence that Zuckerberg’s announcement got here days earlier than Donald Trump re-entered the White Home.

However what would be the real-world penalties of those adjustments? Jesse Stiller, a factchecker, tells Michael Safi concerning the affect of his work with Fb and what could occur to the platform now.

Assist the Guardian at the moment