John, Mark Zuckerberg has officially hopped on the MAGA train. In just the past few weeks, Meta has:
Meta’s new policies will also end restrictions on hate speech — allowing racist, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic slurs. But Zuckerberg is sensitive to pressure, especially if it hurts his bottom line. In 2020 when the platform was exposed for spreading hate speech and misinformation, our community helped push over 1000 advertisers to join a boycott — costing Meta $7 billion and forcing Zuckerberg to make several policy concessions. We can do it again. But this will only work if people everywhere join. Tell advertisers: boycott Meta. After a meeting in November between Trump and Zuckerberg at Mar-a-Lago, Zuckerberg quickly morphed into a MAGA mouthpiece, claiming fact-checkers have been “too politically biased” and making several policy changes aligned with the Trump administration. But the truth is, Meta’s fact-checking partners followed a strict code of principles which required nonpartisanship and transparency. In fact Lead Stories, one of Facebook’s main fact-checking partners, said they never received notice from Meta about being biased in all the years they worked together. It is scary to witness billionaire tech CEOs gaining so much power over our elections, democracies, and societies as a whole. And as we see a rise in MAGA-like movements around the world, it’s likely that more and more corporations across industries will similarly capitulate to far-right policies. But not all corporations, and specifically consumer-based corporations, want this. Many like Patagonia, The North Face, and Unilever are brand sensitive and don’t want their content appearing next to racist and homophobic slurs or misinformation threatening elections. A lawyer representing Meta in an intellectual property lawsuit publicly fired the tech giant as a client last week, and others may follow his lead. Now is our moment to push. If we keep up the pressure and show advertisers that consumers will not accept a MAGA status-quo, we can get them to take action. Tell advertisers like Unilever, Patagonia, and The North Face: boycott Meta.  Thanks for all that you do, More information: Meta is abandoning fact checking – this doesn’t bode well for the fight against misinformation
The Conversation. January 7, 2025 Lawyer “fires” Meta as client over “descent into Neo-Nazi madness” |
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