Wildfires are raging out of control in all parts of Los Angeles. A raging windstorm ignites the coal, spewing noxious smoke across the city and turning the sky an apocalyptic red.
At least four fires are burning in Southern California, along the scenic coast, in Malibu and the Pacific Palisades, and inland. Firefighters are struggling because of the wind, and the fires are not contained.
At least 30,000 people have fled. Others left their cars and fled on foot to avoid the crowded streets. Residents of one nursing home were taken out on gurneys, officials said. Homes, landmarks and places of worship have been vandalized, and officials have warned that more destruction is to come.
Truth in society
Ensuring the truth on social media is a Sisyphean challenge. The volume of content – billions of posts in hundreds of languages - makes it impossible for platforms to identify every error or lie people post, let alone remove them.
Yesterday, Meta – the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Threads – successfully stopped trying. The company said independent fact-checkers will no longer police content on its sites. The announcement underscored an industry-wide retreat from fighting falsehoods that poison public discourse online.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, said the new policy would address a number of cases where platforms “accidentally” take down posts that have been wrongly flagged as fake. The trade-off, he admitted, is that more “bad stuff” will pollute the content we’re scrolling through.
That’s not just an annoyance when you open Facebook on your phone. It also destroys our public health. Social media apps — where the average American spends more than two hours a day — make it clear that truth, especially in politics, is a toxic and incomplete debate online.
Meta description
It’s easy to see why Meta made the change. With Donald Trump about to begin his second term, Zuckerberg seems to have decided that dividing half of the country is bad business.
Just four years ago, Facebook suspended Trump’s account after the Jan. 6 at the Capitol, although Zuckerberg had reservations at the time about defying a sitting president.
Since then, Republicans in Congress and the courts have issued rulings on social media to remove posts as an extension of government surveillance. Officials in Washington have urged companies to remove some positions on election fraud and Covid policies. The Supreme Court took up a case regarding the removal of Facebook last year but dismissed it on technical grounds.
Still, the controversy clearly bothered Zuckerberg. In August he wrote a report to the Republican congressman leading the charge against the stadiums. He said Meta should have spoken out against what he called “government pressure” to remove some of the content.
Yesterday, the company went ahead with the court of the new policy officer of the GOP Meta, a former Republican, told Fox News that “there is a lot of political bias” in the fact-checking process. Zuckerberg even plans to move trust and security teams — those responsible for policing all kinds of content — from California to Texas “to eliminate concerns that biased employees are policing excessive content.” The company appointed Dana White, a close associate of Trump, to its board.
The new town scene
Meta does not completely disclaim responsibility for what appears on its platforms. It will still take down posts that contain illegal activity, hate speech and pornographic images, for example.
But like other platforms, it leaves the political space to maintain market share. Elon Musk bought Twitter (now called X) with the promise of unrestricted free speech. He also invited backstage users who were banned for bad behavior. And he replaced content moderation teams with “public notes” that are crowded under controversial content. YouTube made a similar change last year. Now the Meta accepts the model, too.
Many studies have shown an increase in hateful content, with a tendency towards X. Antisemitic, racist and misogynistic posts rose sharply after Musk took over, as did misinformation about climate change. Users spent more time liking and reposting material from authoritarian governments and terrorist groups, including the Islamic State and Hamas. Musk himself often debates conspiracy theories about political issues like immigration and gender to his 211 million followers.
Allowing users to check the validity of a post — say, someone saying vaccines cause autism or that no one was hurt in the Jan. 6 – there is promise, researchers say. Today, when enough people talk about X, a note appears below the disputed content. But that process takes time and can be easily manipulated. By then, the lie may be gone, and the damage done.
Maybe people are still longing for something reliable. That’s the promise of upstarts like Bluesky. What happened to X could be a warning. Users and, more importantly, advertisers have fled.
It is also possible that people value entertainment and ideas they agree with more than sticking to the truth. If so, the Internet may be a place where it becomes increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction.
To find out more: Zuckerberg, fed up with the criticism, has gone out of his way to apologize for the problems in his platforms. Read about Zuckerberg’s political transition.
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