A New World for Facebook and Instagram: Zuckerberg’s Splinternet

When Mark Zuckerberg earnestly looked at a camera and told the world (or President-elect Donald Trump) that he was shutting down all fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram, he left out some important context. His changes would only apply to US users of Instagram and Facebook, just as the European Union rolls out a law to target disinformation. There’s a couple of ways to look at that. If you believe that Facebook’s work on content moderation has been a form of censorship, then Americans will be blessed with new freedom in Zuckerberg’s vibrant public square. If you think it’s protected people from toxicity, you’ll pity the Americans. Either way, you’ll experience social media differently, depending on which side of an ocean you’re on.

Meta’s fact-checking policies, of course, had problems, illustrated by these examples the company provided my colleague Dave Lee. But the cause wasn’t “political bias,” which Zuckerberg cited without evidence as the reason for shutting the operation down. Its was inept decision-making. It would have been more sensible for Zuckerberg to order an upgrade of his fact-checking systems to allow for more nuance, and invest more money in the effort. But the Facebook founder is an opportunist at heart; he jumps on new fads and copies his rivals, and he was bound to take the most politically expedient action when Trump was elected.