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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.

Anyhoo, he kicks it off with a very bad misunderstanding of the 1st Amendment and the whole "fire in a crowded theater" thing. cc: @kenwhite.bsky.social @jkosseff.bsky.social Not only is this wrong, it's meaningless. He runs a private platform and isn't Congress. Does he not have ANY 1A lawyers?

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.

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.

agreed. and most of those probably don’t know much about what’s going on.

you are right but SUCKY excuse... I wish corps and professional orgs would quit using it. I removed all of my pics and deletes it in 2016 when it became widely known that ZUCK had taken pymt for ads in RUBLES!

Is there a competition among billionaires to be the most despised human being, seems like the game is on.

He wasn't fed a false narrative; he's creating the false narrative. Same playbook as the smearing of Soros.

There is no cost to him lying. The president of the United States has established the precedent, lies count.

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.

I'm not sure how informed he actually is. For example, he still thinks he's in charge at Meta. He is not.

He's got controlling interest in Meta and is essentially unfireable. He's in charge.

Zuckerberg is lying and he knows it.

Trump teaches all his friends the same crucial lesson: All you have to do is repeat the lie ad nauseam. When folks like the false narrative they wont look for or be dissuaded by truth.

Is it some comfort that Zuck now looks like Harpo Marx?

I was thinking Germanicus. Or Caligula.

My partner insists it’s a perm but no. The baggy tshirt and pendant were interesting choices.

Greed. Plain and simple. They see $$$ upside and never really cared about “all” users or overall user experience or anything other than profit.

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

What better place to spread falsehoods than Joe Rogan’s lame show. Zuckerberg knew exactly what he was doing. Trump threatens him, shakes him down & he says not a word. He’s a little coward.

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.

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.

Craven plutocrat/oligarch

What a stupid fucking timeline we live in.

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

I've got a cartoon for that, Mike @mmasnick.bsky.social. By the great Dave Whamond @davewhamond.bsky.social.

actually Dickens wasn't far off the mark, regarding how I feel in this Winter of Our Discontent*... *John Steinbeck, 1961

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.

Or just how fucking stupid Zuck is

Not stupid- self serving

Or, part of his conversion to a compliant MAGA supporter. He may know the full story, but if he wants the RW media to believe he's on their side, he needs to validate their emotions about what FB did.

he knows he's just doing all this as a virtue signal to the alpha male group that he desperately wants in on

Bingo 👏🏽 more important even than the money. They crave it. Zuck, Bezos, Elon, Rogan, Vance…

And the alpha crowd are just a bunch of overconfident man babies that never had to grow up. They still act like the 13 year olds that bullied the tech betas. Fucking men.

And the power…oh, the power….