Fuck him.....

Mark Zuckerberg points to California 'bias,' moves team to Texas

Meta, the Menlo Park tech giant, is swapping third-party fact-checking for X-style 'Community Notes'

By Stephen Council

Tuesday morning, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a major overhaul to the content policies for Facebook, Instagram and Threads, cutting back restrictions on several politically contentious topics and putting an end to the company’s independent fact-checking program. And while he had everyone’s attention, he got in a dig at California.

In his five-minute video announcement, Zuckerberg framed the policy shifts as a return to his Menlo Park company’s “roots around free expression.” He argued that the company’s content moderation systems have made too many mistakes and enforced censorship, and he said the November elections mark a “cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.” 

The statements, and the policy overhaul, appear to be aimed at assuaging President-elect Donald Trump, who was banned from Facebook for two years following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Prior to the 2024 election, Zuckerberg ditched a previous get-out-the-vote effort skewered by Republicans and criticized the Biden administration. And since Trump won, Meta has donated $1 million to his inauguration fund, switched its global affairs chief to a more Republican-friendly executive, and selected Trump ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White for its board.

Elon Musk has led a tech-world charge for “free speech” and Trump deference; several high-profile CEOs have also sought the incoming president’s favor in recent weeks. One part of Zuckerberg’s Tuesday video leaped out in particular for its “political theater,” in the words of New York Times reporter Mike Isaac, who has long covered Meta. Zuckerberg leaned directly into the California versus Texas divide, making the symbolic choice to base Meta’s content review teams in the more conservative state.

“We’re going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our U.S.-based content review is going to be based in Texas,” the CEO said. “As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.”

Meta workers donated far more heavily to Democratic candidates in the 2024 cycle than to Republicans, according to OpenSecrets, but it’s unclear how a shift to Texas would actually affect the moderation work. Zuckerberg did not mention any specific California policies. Isaac noted in his post to X that the company has always had teams of moderators in Texas.

Zuckerberg said that the company will replace its third-party fact-checking program, launched in 2016 and backed by the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network, with a crowd-sourced “Community Notes” tool in the style of Musk’s X. The company will also phase what it calls “civic content” back into its social media platforms after a stretch of de-emphasizing political posts and those about social issues, per its announcement. 

“On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly is on display,” the announcement, penned by new Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan, said. “But that’s free expression.”

Trump, in a news conference on Tuesday, praised Kaplan. Asked whether he thinks his previous “threats” against Zuckerberg prompted the announced changes, Trump said: “Probably.” (The president-elect popularized the “Zuckerbucks” nickname over the CEO’s pro-voting spending and publicly threatened him with prison time.)

Meta’s newly espoused openness to freedom of expression doesn’t extend to all internal debate, according to a Tuesday piece by 404 Media. The outlet reported that Meta has deleted several internal posts from employees criticizing new board member Dana White over an account of domestic violence against his wife. The company told 404 Media that the internal post removals have nothing to do with the new external platform changes.

Meta did not immediately respond to SFGATE’s request for comment on Tuesday.