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I really, really don't want to do this, but let's do a bit (just a LITTLE BIT) of fact checking about what Zuck said on the Joe Rogan podcast, because this is something I not only followed closely, but also spent time *talking to the actual people at Meta who dealt with this* which WAS NOT ZUCK.

Then he talks about the administration pressuring them to take down people raising concerns about vaccine side effects. He then says that Meta refused to do this. Which... should be the end of the story. That's what came out in the Murthy case: while admin officials reached out, FB told them no.

And... that's what matters. Because it only violates the law if the gov't engages in *coercive* pressure, which it didn't do here. The gov't tried to persuade the company, the company said no. That's... not unusual. Nor is it a violation of free speech.

But we're already seeing people ignore the "we told them no" part of this, and go into what a massive violation this is. Note that they're not saying anything about Trump admin goons like Brendan Carr now going around issuing *actual* threats, including to Meta about its fact checking program...

The other big part that's getting attention: he talks about Biden admin folks who would call up Meta and "scream and curse" at them. He notes that this is all public *because of the Jim Jordan investigation* and the Murthy lawsuit. But because (unlike Zuck) I actually followed all that, I know...

... that the only documented case of the "cursing" was in an email from Biden admin official Rob Flaherty. The courts made a big deal of him cursing. They paraded an email where he said: "Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today."...

Except that this was totally taken out of context. That email HAD NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with content moderation. Instagram had a glitch that effectively blocked people from following the Biden Insta account. The team apologized, but not clear enough for Flaherty.

But in the lore of the Twitter Files/Murthy case, this email has been the smoking gun of "OMG, the Biden admin cursed out FB officials over content moderation!" You can see the email above though, it has nothing to do with content moderation.

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Zuck seems to have been fed *the false narrative* that has circled around the Jim Jordan / Matt Taibbi / Elon Musk circus, *rather than* what *actually happened* at Meta by TALKING TO THE PEOPLE AT META who dealt with these issues.

Great info. In the end I don’t I don’t think he really cares about anything but doing nothing but pleasing musk/trump. The other big platforms bowed to trump. They each want their platforms to rule. They think they can’t beat him so they join him. Will the users quit? Not many i’m afraid.

Yes and people will stick with Facebook because many small businesses and groups are tied to it and there isn’t yet an alternative that offers the same service.

Zuck seems to have been fed *the false narrative* Yeah, you are being kind here--given the hands-on decision making he's shown in other parts of the business, it would be odd he suddenly gets passive here.

Think this highlights why no one person should have so much power. Because we are all fallible easily duped one way or another. Not sure how you eliminate this because they seem to have the power to also have a bunch of enablers around them. People are pretty cowardly, including me.

There is thevery real fact that the heads of the large social media companies have gone MAGA because they know that in 4 years the Republicans will put up a very real battle against having more elections, and they will be instrumental in making this happen. The 1st oligarchies in the US?

You are being too kind to Zuck. He is plenty smart enough to know what really happened. There is no “false narrative” removing his agency. He’s doing exactly what he wants and is likely fully informed.

The lips, chin and jawline are dead on…as are the lack of iris and pupil in the dead shark eyes. Caligula’s hairdresser was much better than Zuck’s, unless Zuck did a home perm himself (not out of the realm of possibilities).

Yea, for a billionaire who could afford an advisor who could dress and style him for visual appearances so that he doesn’t look like he lives in a hamster 🐹 cage. But that hair, had a male anchor who did that once, he never lived it down.🤡

Wrong: Zuck IS FEEDING this false narrative. If that is due to him being fed it, we do not know. I'm more inclined to think that he's himself aligned to the actual policies of GAFAM. I fear the US/the West is heading toward what we see with Putin & the Oligarchs

Yes we will be Russia soon enough . We just have to be smart enough to not be super impoverished resource scarce Russians. This is why we need to build up communities where we can take care of each others.

I remember walking behind a group of people who worked at FB in 2017, who were talking about what a problem he is, and that Sheryl Sandberg’s book release was to divert attention from him. He has no integrity.

Of course he doesn’t. He created the site so Ivy League guys could rank who was hot & who wasn’t. And people are now surprised that he wants to toss marginalized people under the bus? That’s always who he was.

She was absolutely a diversion and positioned as the "adult" in the room while the media treated him like a little boy genius well into his mid 30s.

This thread is gold, Mike. But why are you giving Zuck the benefit of the doubt? He’s not falling for something or failing to consult the people who work for him. It’s not an oversight. He’s lying for his own benefit in the face of changing dynamics that affect the greed path he is on.

Yes, it's what he's always wanted to do. Trump have him license. He's a very very bad dude - another transactional narcissist. All the techbros who made it to the top are the most unscrupulous and self-centered of all the players.

We shouldn’t be surprised he was just debriefed at Trumps palace. They are all in this together yet all these people can’t see what is really happening. These billionaires don’t care about us, period. They only care about our money.

I'll add that it's HIGHLY unlikely Meta was asked to remove any posts mentioning that the vaccine had side effects, since it obviously does. It would be incredibly poor public messaging. Rather, they may have been asked to take down false claims about side effects, which were common on Insta/FB

The CDC published the information of vaccine side-effects in their website freely for the public to view and they’ve never hidden that info; it has to be the context it was presented in.

This all assumes that the receipts aren’t out there and we can’t check them ourselves. Thanks for doing the work Mike. You have spent more time researching this apparently than Suckerberg.

Zuckerberg crying about Biden officials raising their voice at some of his team members about Covid censorship, which never happened, while Trump threatens to jail him for life and close down Meta. Crickets from Zuck on that.

Why are these White men allowed to lie with impunity? There’s no downside. The national press don’t point out the lies; they parrot them. Then the Financial Times publishes Peter Thiel’s ramblings. 🤦🏼‍♀️ Yes a “stupid fucking timeline.”

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Mike Masnick@masnick.com

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Fuckerberg knows EXACTLY who sold Facebook user data in 2016 to Cambridge Analytica to (together with Russia) micro-target Americans and get Trump elected. He doesn't need to ask anyone what happens in Meta. He knows. It's deliberate.