| Friend, We use Facebook for so many reasons -- to stay connected with those near and far, to plan our social lives, and to find out the latest news. But Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has decided that it’s more important to pander to Donald Trump and protect his bottom line than to make Facebook a safe place for us to share by eliminating fact-checking on the platform.(1) Meta is engaging in a race to the bottom with Elon Musk’s X to see which platform can become a more vile cesspool of lies and disinformation. By allowing unchecked hate and violence to spread on these platforms, they are contributing to a ratcheting up of violent rhetoric and lies that can only end in real-world violence. Will you join thousands of people nationwide in demanding Meta re-instate fact-checking?
Zuckerberg’s decision to not only abandon fact-checking but also to move the skeletal remaining “trust and safety” team from California to Texas “where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.”(2) This move makes clear the reason behind Zuckerberg’s machinations: He is not interested in preserving an unbiased, safe platform but simply wants to gain favor with Trump and sell out Meta's users to protect his own profit. Right-wing trolls, agitators, and insurrectionists have used Facebook to spread hate, intimidate whole swaths of the population, and plot outright violence. And Zuckerberg is opening the floodgates for this behavior to escalate and lending a veneer of credibility to the right-wing disinformation narrative that fact-checking is politically motivated.(3) But we know that Meta needs something even more than Trump’s favor: Its users. If enough of us speak out together and make our voices heard, we can show Meta that their customers–the people they rely on to make money by showing us ads–reject the removal of fact-checking. Add your name and make your voice heard: Meta must restart its fact-checking program immediately. Thank you for being with us. –Irene, along with Annie, Angela, Isidra, Cecilia, Jen, and Lindsay (the Courage team)
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