Meta Runs Back Towards Politics

Zuckerberg Announces Major Changes to How It Handles Content

So much for me trying not to write as many newsletters here in January. I originally was going to re-share my post about transitions, legacies and moving on in the wake of the news that Nick Clegg would be leaving Meta and Joel Kaplan - my former boss - would be taking over for him. But then Meta said hold my beer and dumped a series of announcements on Tuesday about how it was changing how it manages content on the site.

I’m in California this week and woke up at 6 a.m. to over a hundred notifications on my phone. Of course, they made this announcement when I was teaching a day-long course workshop, so I’ve been getting a ton of pings from people wanting to know what I thought of the news. However, I have had only a little time to process this all.

There’s a lot to unpack, so consider this the first of many ruminations as I’m still processing it. I haven’t been able to read any commentary on it, and I still need to go to dinner, so I need to keep this short (and probably not as well-written as I’d like). I thank you for your understanding that this is a limited reaction.

1. This announcement fits a pattern: after U.S. elections, Zuckerberg recalibrates Meta’s policies. In 2017, it was integrity initiatives and a manifesto on community-building. In 2021, it was deprioritizing politics and news. Now, the pendulum swings back.

2. Tech companies, including Meta, are known for moving fast. This announcement, echoing Trump’s rapid-fire communication style, dumps much information at once. This makes it hard to process all of it thoroughly. This announcement is also very high level, and the devil will be in the details of how they execute all of it. We won’t know for years the impact of these changes.

3. I’ll fully admit I have not been able to dig into all of the reactions to this announcement, but I think that reaction will give us a sense of what the resistance movement against Trump 2.0 will look like and if it will be more muted than what version 1.0 is. And even if there is one, what impact does that have on the company with them knowing that there’s a Republican trifecta in DC for at least two years and likely an administration and Senate for four? Anytime an administration changes, companies try to build good relationships and curry favor. They did the same when Biden came into office.

4. The technology for doing content moderation at scale has never been perfect and Mark got over his skis in promising what it could do. I don’t like his insinuation that this is any particular team’s fault and more of an understanding of the limitations of doing this at scale.

5. Republicans have always had issues with fact-checkers. This is certainly not new, and I understand Meta wanting to try something more akin to community notes. That also has massive limitations, and the work of these fact-checkers wasn’t just on a single piece of content but also in fanning out to find similar ones and to try to reduce repeat offenders. It is unclear if they will keep those policies and such in place.

6. I already thought the approach by folks in the information integrity space and trust and safety would need to change and evolve after this election. There are things we are doing that work and others that don’t. No one has a specific definition of what success looks like. I don’t think this work is going away with this announcement, but it will change. I don’t fully know what that looks like, but some serious conversations need to be had about balancing speech and safety in today’s world.

7. I’m fascinated by Mark bringing up geopolitics and working with the Trump administration to push back on regions and countries that would ask companies to take down more content. This indicates the more vocal and public role tech companies plan to take in geopolitics - no doubt a version of the playbook we’re already seeing from Musk and what he’s doing in Germany and the UK by promoting different parties and candidates.

8. I’m just going to brag here outright that I was right that Meta would eventually bring back politics and news in its feed. In July 2023, I said they could run, but they couldn’t hide from it, and I knew that if Trump won, they would have to bring it back in some form.

Overall, my emotions have been all over the place with this announcement. I was sick when I first woke up and read Mark’s post on Threads. Then I was pissed off. Then I was crying. Then I was like, well, some of this probably did need to happen. And then I had to teach my class and I’ve been jotting down themes throughout the day as I talk to different folks.

This is all to say my thoughts on this are evolving. I felt like I needed to put something out there with my initial thinking, but know there will be much more to come on this. The whiplash I’m feeling that four years ago Trump was being deplatformed, and now this is a lot to take in. It also shows how much society has changed in those four years as well.

I look forward to navigating this with you in the days, weeks, months and years ahead. Let me know what you are thinking!