I’ve to commend Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his new coverage chief Joel Kaplan on their timing. It’s not vastly shocking that, because the pair introduced early right this moment, Meta is giving up on skilled third-party fact-checking. The operator of Fb, Instagram, and Threads has been backing off moderation lately, and fact-checking has at all times been contentious. Nevertheless it’s most likely sensible to do it two weeks earlier than President-elect Donald Trump takes workplace — and nominates a Federal Communications Fee head who’s threatened the corporate over it.
Trump’s FCC chairman choose (and present FCC commissioner), Brendan Carr, is a self-identified free speech defender with a inventive interpretation of the First Modification. In mid-November, as a part of a flurry of frivolously menacing missives to varied entities, Carr despatched a letter to Meta, Apple, Google, and Microsoft attacking the businesses’ fact-checking applications.
The letter was primarily centered on NewsGuard, a conservative bête noire that Meta doesn’t truly work with. Nevertheless it additionally demanded details about “the usage of any media monitor or reality checking service,” and it left little question about Carr’s place on them. “You participated in a…
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