The Slop Society
In the last week we've seen the emergence of the true Meta — and the true Mark Zuckerberg — as the company ended its fact-checking program, claiming that (and I quote) "fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created" on both Instagram and Facebook, the latter of which was shown in a study from George Washington University to, by design, "afford antivaccine content producers several means to circumvent the intent of misinformation removal policies." Meta has also killed its diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Shortly after announcing the policies, Zuckerberg went on the Joe Rogan Experience and had a full-scale pissfit, claiming that corporations are "culturally neutered" and that companies should have both "more masculine energy" and "[have a culture] that celebrates the aggression a bit more," adding that said culture would "[have] its own merits that are really positive." Zuckerberg believes that modern corporate culture has somehow framed masculinity as bad, something he does not attempt to elaborate upon, frame with any kind of evidence (after all, it's Joe Rogan), or really connect to anything besides a sense of directionless grievance.
This means that Meta has now "[gotten rid of] a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate," which in practice means that Meta now allows you to say that being gay is a mental illness or describe immigrants as "filth." Casey Newton at Platformer — who I have been deeply critical of (and will be later in this piece!) — has done an excellent job reporting on exactly how horrifying these policies are, revealing how Meta's internal guidelines allow Facebook users to say that trans people are both mentally ill and don't exist (to be clear, if you feel this way, stop reading and take a quick trip to the garage with your car keys), and included one of the most wretched things I've ever read: that Alex Schultz, Meta's CMO, a gay man, "suggested in an internal post that people seeing their queer friends and family members abused on Facebook and Instagram could lead to increased support for LGBTQ rights."
