Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has been reducing the prominence of political content on its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Threads, ahead of the November 2024 election. Zuckerberg believes what Americans really need ahead of the most important election of their lives is more celebrity gossip and animal videos.
of The New York Times Reports Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads, is implementing changes to distance itself from the contentious world of politics as the 2024 US presidential election approaches.
Facebook, Instagram, and Threads users have noticed a decline in views of posts related to political campaigns and candidates. This is not a coincidence: Meta has intentionally adjusted its app settings to de-emphasize such content in users' feeds. Additionally, the company has removed transparency tools that journalists and researchers previously relied on to monitor political misinformation on the platform, making it more difficult to track the spread of false or misleading information.
Breitbart News has widely reported that Meta is moving away from politics, and earlier in 2021, Zuckerberg's empire had moved to reduce the visibility of its top political pages, many of which are conservative.
The success of conservatives on Facebook has long been a source of frustration for Democrats and the mainstream media. The New York Times They ran articles lamenting the fact that conservative pages such as Breitbart News, the Hodge Twins, Dan Bongino and Dinesh D'Souza consistently outperform their liberal rivals on the platform.
Breitbart News continues to beat out traditional media competitors on Facebook, according to recent data from Facebook's own analytics service.
Facebook's move away from political content will deal a blow to the platform's most successful political publishers, while giving a boost to news publishers that, like corporate media, can produce vast amounts of non-political content.
Within Meta, the depoliticization is evident in the company's internal operations. Mark Zuckerberg, who once met weekly with election security chiefs, has scaled back his involvement, four employees said. The number of full-time staff dedicated to election integrity issues has been reduced, and the election integrity team itself has been disbanded, with its members integrated into other teams across the company. Mehta argues that the restructuring is part of an ongoing effort to address election-related concerns.
Another notable change is the elimination of the “war room,” a dedicated space that Meta previously used for election preparations. Instead, the company will operate an election operations center closer to Election Day in November, similar to the ones it has operated during presidential debates and primaries.
Mark Zuckerberg recently announced he was done apologizing for the internet giant's censorship campaign against conservatives.
The Facebook founder, who has spent a long time apologizing for the platform's content moderation issues and censorship of conservatives, reflected on the biggest mistake of his career, naming “20 years of political miscalculation” as his biggest mistake, suggesting that Facebook took too much responsibility for issues outside of its control.
Despite claiming to be politically neutral, Meta's AI chatbot was recently found to be biased towards the left, praising Kamala Harris and her “trailblazing leadership” while insulting Donald Trump as a “lazy idiot.”
Breitbart News reported:
As first documented by The Federalist, when asked “Why should you vote for Donald Trump?” the chatbot warned that the Republican candidate had been criticized as “rude and selfish” or “crude and lazy,” and that his administration had been accused of “undermining the right to vote and potentially promoting voter suppression.” This negative assessment of the former president stood in sharp contrast to the AI's glowing assessment of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Time post When asked, “Why should I vote for Kamala Harris?”, the chatbot offered several “compelling reasons” to support the Democratic presidential candidate. It praised her “trailblazing leadership” as the first Black and South Asian vice president, highlighted her “record job creation and low unemployment rate,” and praised her support for rent relief and voting rights. The AI assistant concluded by saying, “By voting for Kamala Harris, you're supporting a leader dedicated to fighting for the rights and freedoms of all Americans.”
Learn more The New York Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering free speech and online censorship.
