Zuckerberg said senior Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to “censor” content in 2021. “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken,” he wrote to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). “Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” Zuckerberg added.
Zuckerberg thinks Facebook should self regulate and that means in this case be free to allow posts of anti-vax propaganda and covid conspiracy theories that literally cost lives.
This is just a great example of why social media needs external regulation.
This is just a great example of why social media needs external regulation.
And “needs external regulation” here just means “needs to not be above the law”.
They are not above the law, because these is no law in the US that regulates how social media platforms should be moderated. This is new territory. The EU only recently passed the Digital Services Act that broadly deals with this topic.
They are not above the law, because these is no law in the US that regulates how social media platforms should be moderated.
And that is entirely coincidental and has nothing to do with the endless billions pouring into political bribery in the US. The EU started regulating it because the shit was piling up so high, it started to smell over the Atlantic.
What I mean by being above the law is both that they get to write the law, and that even if they run afoul of it, they get to get off with bullshit fines, often without admitting that they did anything wrong.
But there is surely room between “controlled by the government” and “not accountable for the content on its platform.”
