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Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently addressed the ongoing debate surrounding content moderation during a candid discussion on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. He explained that policy reversals and moderation rollbacks at Meta were primarily driven by a need to restore public trust, especially in the United States.
Zuckerberg emphasized that initial moderation strategies, while intended to prevent harmful misinformation and bullying, eventually led to unintended consequences. Reflecting on the most challenging period, Zuckerberg highlighted the COVID-19 vaccine rollout during the Biden administration as particularly problematic.
"This really hit the most extreme during the Biden administration when they were trying to roll out the vaccine program," Zuckerberg stated. "I'm generally pretty pro rolling out vaccines. I think on balance, vaccines are more positive than negative. But while they're trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone arguing against it."
He added, "They pushed us super hard to take down things that honestly were true, right? I mean, they basically pushed us and said, 'anything that says vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down.'"
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Acknowledging the negative impact of such moderation policies, Zuckerberg conceded, "It got to a point where it's just, okay, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States."
Meta’s shift echoes wider trends among social media platforms reconsidering their approach to content governance, and even Meta’s shift away from being purely a social media company. After tech billionaire Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, now rebranded as X, and his vocal advocacy for less censorship, Meta responded by launching Threads to appeal to users shifting platforms due to dissatisfaction with perceived excessive moderation elsewhere. Zuckerberg’s recent policy recalibrations similarly reflect Musk's more libertarian-leaning approach.
This moderation debate occurs amidst significant scrutiny of social media’s impact on political discourse and misinformation management. Zuckerberg expressed frustration with the initial moderation system created during the 2016 U.S. election, highlighting unintended biases.
"I was worried about becoming this sort of decider of what is true in the world," Zuckerberg explained. He described the moderation system, originally designed for straightforward factual inaccuracies, as spiraling into politically charged territory. This, he warned, became a "slippery slope," ultimately resembling a scenario from "1984."
Rogan specifically noted how difficult it is to moderate at Meta’s operating scale. Zuckerberg says that roughly half the world's population uses their services in any given month, and about “3.2 billion people use one of [Meta’s] services every day.” Given that these platforms are used for speech, moderating thoroughly and objectively on that scale seems almost impossible, and even minor updates to moderation policies can have profound impacts.
On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.
