Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his decision to loosen Meta’s content moderation policy in an appearance Friday on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Zuckerberg faced widespread criticism of the decision, including from employees at his own company. “Maybe it depends on who you ask,” Zuckerberg said when asked how the Meta update has been received. The main update Meta announced this week is ending its independent fact-checking program and replacing it with a community-based reporting program like X. This means Facebook, Instagram, and Threads will rely more on community members to report misinformation. The company also said it will increase the threshold for automatic content filtering. This means fewer bad posts on the Meta platform will be automatically removed, but also fewer posts will be mistakenly removed. And Meta didn’t announce this, but it reportedly took down DEI’s biggest effort. In a wide-ranging and candid conversation that lasted nearly three hours, Zuckerberg explained why he is elevating the social media platform, as he puts it, back to the roots of free expression. “You only start one of these companies if you believe in giving people a voice,” said Meta’s CEO. “The essence of social media is that it gives us the ability to share what we want. It goes back to our original mission to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. It is impossible to ignore the timing of this decision. Zuckerberg announced the change just a few days before Donald Trump’s inauguration. The president-elect previously claimed that the Meta CEO was planning to run against him in the 2020 election, and reportedly threatened Zuckerberg with jail if he did it again. As for Trump, he said he’s pretty optimistic about the incoming president because he “just wants America.” win.” The CEO noted how important it is to have a government that defends American tech companies abroad, seemingly referring to the scrutiny Meta faces in the European Union. However, Zuckerberg claimed the timing of the change was a coincidence, and that there was no good time for change. a big content moderation change In fact, Meta’s CEO said the change was long overdue. “I was really concerned from the beginning to be the arbiter of what’s right in the world,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s a crazy position for the billions of people who use your service.” In the last decade, Meta’s CEO said that people have started to push for ideology-based censorship on the platform. He specifically mentioned two events that happened: the 2016 US presidential election and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Zuckerberg said that the Biden administration forced him to delete the correct information. Meta’s CEO said that some of the concerns about side effects of the vaccine that Meta was dealing with at the time should not be dismissed as misinformation. Meta’s CEO told Rogan that X and Twitter “just do better than us” on the topic of content moderation, noting how the platform will use its community notes feature. In particular, some advertisers left X in recent years because of its content moderation policy, an exodus that X is now challenging in court as collusion. Rogan and Zuckerberg deviated from content moderation to a variety of topics during Friday’s episode, including jiu-jitsu, AI, and broader changes in American culture. Meta’s CEO said he saw a sea change happening, where people trust government officials and the media is less established. In that space, social media creators and podcast hosts, such as Rogan himself, gained influence and credibility. This sentiment is reflected in Meta’s recent shift to news on its platform, where the company has stopped promoting news or political content. However, Zuckerberg signaled this week that it would implement this political content into its promotion algorithm. At another point, Zuckerberg notes how Western society, and specifically corporate America, has become “masculated” and “neutered.” He defends the need for a more masculine presence in the country and its businesses. Several times in the podcast, Zuckerberg suggested that he had deferred to the media for the past 10 years, and blamed it on things beyond his control. This isn’t the first time Zuckerberg has said that Meta will take less responsibility for everything bad on the platform moving forward. However, he appeared to be more honestand more passionate about the topic than before in Friday’s conversation. “We have reached this point where there are things we cannot understand [on our platforms] that’s mainstream discourse,” said Zuckerberg, referencing how Meta has silenced conservative voices. Meta’s CEO recounted how Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has repeatedly stated that women should not be allowed in combat roles. Zuckerberg said that under content moderation rules Previously, those comments weren’t allowed because they weren’t a protected category. Under Meta’s new policy, those comments will be okay, Zuckerberg said. In Dana White, the CEO of Meta said that he added the president of the UFC to the board of directors because of his entrepreneurial leadership, and to have more people with a “strong backbone” in his company we need some strong people who are going to advise us on how to deal with the situation,” Zuckerberg told White.
