Fact-checking reversal lets Zuckerberg drop charade

MARK ZUCKERBERG'S VIDEO announcement on Tuesday that the company would abandon its fact-checking efforts and loosen moderation marks a stunning reversal of years of promises regarding safety and misinformation.

After promoting GOP-ally Joel Kaplan to head of policy and appointing Donald Trump pal Dana White to Meta's board, this next act to open the floodgates to hate speech means the MAGA storming of Menlo Park is just about complete.

There is a view that Zuckerberg has shamefully abandoned his values in fear of Trump and in the hope that cosying up will be good for business. But it would be wrong to believe Zuckerberg ever truly held those values in the first place — and he's finally found the political cover needed to drop a years-long charade on safety and shed any pretence about being responsible for the accuracy of information that users see.

While it's hard to fathom when exactly America's culture wars began to take hold, it's much easier to pinpoint the moment when Meta — still called Facebook at the time — became one of its central characters. Immediately after the 2016 election, Zuckerberg casually claimed that it was "crazy" to think that "fake news" on the social network had played a role in swaying the election in Trump's favour. He was pilloried in the media.