Do you remember them when they announced a fight on the web? They promised each other a physical battle face to facean MMA match that never took place (naturally). Seeing them now, one on the left and one on the right of the most powerful man in the world, almost makes you smile. Of course, Elon Musk has never hidden his sympathies for Donald Trump, and was his most generous financier in the long run that led him to be crowned as the 47th President of the United States of America. The fact that Mark Zuckerberg is now also a ‘president’s child’, however, is perhaps a little more surprising. It is difficult to say whether Mr. Facebook’s ‘genuflection’ in the presence of the tycoon is dictated by fears and personal interest, but being malicious it is not that difficult to sum up.

Mark Zuckerberg bows to Trump

But let’s take a step back. Tuesday 7 January, Mark Zuckerberg announces a series of changes to the content moderation policies on social media by Meta, a galaxy that includes Facebook, Instagram and the less popular Threads: stop to the fact-checking program introduced in 2016, based on organizations independent third parties who evaluated apparently false and propagandistic posts, labeling them as inaccurate while offering users more information. Green light, however, to the so-called ‘community notes’: it is a system introduced by Elon Musk after the purchase of Twitter (now X), which involves users with different points of view on different issues, who add context or clarifications to possibly controversial posts. Zuckerberg plays his cards face up on the table, and in a video released on his channels he talks about “freedom of speech”, “time to return to our roots”, “restoration of free expression”. Plagiarizes, so to speak, the workhorses so dear to Musk before getting his hands on Twitter and subsequently during his unsuccessful internal restructuring process of what was considered by many to be the “living room of the radical chic”.

Green light for the Musk system

It is precisely from this is cool (‘how cool’) commenting on the news from the main media reporting online the change of pace in Meta’s policies, and mocking comments, mostly with emojis and acronyms (lol, lmaoo), to those who highlight the criticisms of disinformation experts of the decision to end fact-checking.

Praise (also in this case tinged with irony, but not too veiled) came from Donald Trump: answering questions from some reporters during a press conference, the new stars and stripes president declared: “I think he has done a lot road”, not hiding, however, that the turning point may have come in the wake of his past threats to Mr. Facebook. It should be remembered that the fact-checking program was also introduced due to the alleged use that Russian agents had made of Facebook in 2016 to push Trump’s presidential campaign; in 2021, however, a further crackdown was put in place following the attack on Capitol Hill and misinformation regarding the spread and fight against Covid, with Trump’s two-year ban from Facebook (and other social networks). What followed is history, including warnings, complaints, congressional investigations, until, overseas, the wind changed. Thus there is now a first alignment, a ‘trinity’ in essence composed of the most powerful man in the world at the top, the richest man in the world at his side, and the man who controls the most influential social networks in the world who plays the role of a modern vassal, who looks out for the interests of his companies, remaining subject to the lord.

How Facebook will change with Trump

Zuckerberg bluntly reveals his desire to get closer to the Trump administration: “The recent elections seem like a cultural turning point to give priority to free speech again.” And he then points the finger at the fact-checking system which will be dismantled first in the United States, and gradually in all other countries too. “We are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often hindering the free expression we aimed for – explains the CEO of Meta -. We have built complex systems to moderate content, but the problem with complex systems is that they make mistakes. If Even just 1 percent of posts are censored by mistake, that’s millions of people. We’ve reached a point where there are too many errors and too much censorship.” Zuck thus sprinkles his head with ashes and continues in the attempt to ease relations started last November in the meeting with Trump in his home in Mar-a-Lago in Trump’s Florida, and subsequently with the donation of 1 million dollars to fund for the inauguration ceremony of the president-elect.

What are the consequences now? It starts with cutting restrictions on sensitive issues such as immigration and gender, as confirmed by Zuckerberg himself. The race for inclusiveness is being pilloried because, according to the head of Meta, fact-checking “has been increasingly used as a way to silence opinions and people who think differently”. If on the one hand there will be the possibility of expressing one’s opinions more freely, on the other, the real risk is that of fomenting racial hatred and hatred towards diversity, no matter what anyone says. Instead, replacing the fact-checking system with that of ‘community notes’ risks hindering the battle launched in recent years against online disinformation. Some reports last year highlighted how the system adopted by X (and now by Meta) was not really able to stem the flood of lies on the platform.

Negative repercussions will be inevitable. Zuckerberg’s clear paradigm shift – analysts and experts observe – risks favoring the political interests of the Trump administration itself, as well as the spread of fake news on delicate topics such as climate change and public health. Then there are those who wonder how the new moderation model can be ready to manage the speed with which disinformation travels on the web, even more so given the incalculable quantity of content that is shared every second around the world. What qualifications do users who participate in moderation have to distinguish between facts and opinions? Is it possible for groups to arise in which we work together to make clearly false content credible? The questions do not end here, but they give a picture, albeit an approximate one, of the chaos that could erupt in a few months’ time.