In the name of “freedom of expression”, Mark Zuckerberg has announced measures that will transform his digital platforms into even more fertile ground for the contamination of public debate with misinformation and hateful content.
Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg announced changes to content moderation actions on its platforms Facebook, Instagram and Threads, eliminating fact checkers, slowing down the processes of removing content potentially harmful to the social fabric and reducing/transferring their moderation teams, all in the name of “freedom of expression”.
Despite the noble tone, those who study the very current phenomena of threats to information integrity and ethics, social datafication, the platformization of the economy, surveillance capitalism, and data colonialism were horrified.
Zuckerberg didn’t just list measures to loosen content controls on his networks. As on Elon Musk’s platform evidence – on contents in disinformative terms.
But the similarities with Musk don’t end there. Zuckerberg has announced an alliance with Donald Trump’s uninaugurated government in an imagined crusade against censorship of free expression inside and outside the United States. Taking into account what is known about the digital way of acting of Trump and Musk, it would be better to speak of a crusade in defense of disinformation, chaos and social polarization caused largely by the contamination of public debate by disinformation, incitement to ‘hate and far Right. These are tactics that benefit the two billionaires politically and economically, as well as in gaining and maintaining power.
“(…) we will work with President Trump to stand up to governments around the world who persecute American companies and push for greater censorship. The United States has the strongest constitutional protections for free speech in the world. Europe has a growing number of laws that institutionalize censorship and hinder innovation. Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to silently remove content country The global trend is with the support of the American government,” Zuckerberg said in his speech.
Claiming that it will strengthen so-called “civic content” – people’s opinions -, Meta aligns its platforms with Trumpism, surrendering to the narrative defended by Trump and Musk, a kind of post-truth billionaire dystopia that places more value on personal opinion than than individual or collective rights.
Therefore, today’s announcement creates a few fronts for planetary conflicts:
Information integrity:
By giving up control and adopting readers’ opinions as beacons of truth in its ecosystems, Meta joins X in the disservice of giving volume and velocity to misinformation and extreme, hateful speech. The decision affects billions of (unregulated) users around the world who today shun journalism and get their information and decisions based on networks, according to the Reuters/Oxford Digital News Report. And it financially asphyxiates data control companies that currently have an important customer in Facebook.
With the excuse that fact-checkers “have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created, especially in the United States” (which is not true, according to studies conducted on the role of fact-checking), Zuckerberg creates the ideal environment for accelerating the spread of any emotionally engaging content that generates engagement and sharing, the exact environment in which misinformation is reproduced.
Those who are better at manipulating emotions and the perception of the world tend to win the war, even if they are devoid of truth. Plus, the increase in engagement helps Facebook itself, which is losing audiences year after year.
Geopolitics: The person who carried out the best and quickest analysis of this risk was the secretary of Digital Policies of the Communication Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, João Brant. He said, inside your Instagram profile: “Meta will act politically internationally in collaboration with the Trump administration to fight policies in Europe, Brazil and other countries that seek to balance rights in the online environment. The statement is explicit, signaling that the company does not accept sovereignty of countries on the functioning of the digital environment and sounds like a preview of the actions that will be taken by the new administration in the United States.” Ensuring this type of international action – and which will be associated with the interests of far-right groups and religious moral conservatism of the countries themselves –, Trump it guarantees voice, strengthening and easy expansion of these groups on a planetary scale.
Economic:
The defense of the interests of Meta e (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads), Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, the so-called Big Tech (China also has its own: Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi. But without the American imperialists’ claims of this scope, at least for now). An alliance to use American platform technology with possible political/economic pressure from the US government is a powerful way to maintain the North’s data colonial status over the South, including impeding the development of innovations local, in particular in Artificial Intelligence, the great innovation tool among the most developed countries.
All these conflict fronts potentially represent a threat to the social, political and economic stability of countries whose rulers and politicians have not yet made the defense of democracy their primary priority. There is enormous destabilizing potential in Meta’s decision, in several respects, and Brazil has the possibility of protecting itself, through the regulation of platforms (also from the point of view of competition), from billionaires or reactionaries who use social networks to gain and maintain power. through manipulation and misinformation in society. As Brant states: “The announcement only reinforces the relevance of the actions underway in Europe, Brazil and Australia, involving the three powers. And it broadens the centrality of the international efforts made within the framework of the UN, UNESCO , the G-20 and the OECD strengthen the agenda of promoting information integrity”.
Gilberto Scofield Jr. does not consult, work with, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that could benefit from the publication of this article, and has not disclosed any relevant connections beyond his academic position.
Source: Terra
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