
The Leftmedia Turn on Zuckerberg
Numerous articles in recent weeks delve into what caused Meta’s CEO to “go MAGA.”
How real is the “conversion” of Mark Zuckerberg? Is he turning to the right? Is he becoming a supporter of free speech?
A couple of weeks ago, Zuckerberg dropped a bomb on the Big Tech establishment by announcing that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, would ditch the “fact-checkers” and other methods of speech suppression and censorship in favor of a more open model. As repeat victims of the Orwellian thought police, we welcomed the change with optimism — but also a healthy dose of skepticism learned through the cruel teachings of experience.
Since that announcement, we’ve noted a significant uptick in traffic and performance, but we have a long way to go to regain what Facebook’s jackboots took away.
Also this month, Zuckerberg announced the end of DEI initiatives at Meta. In so doing, Meta joins a growing list of companies dumping the racist, sexist, and Marxist ethics of DEI. It all feels like part of a sea change politically and culturally as the nation wakes up from a four-year nightmare.
Conservatives have long viewed Zuckerberg as “one of them.” He palled around with Barack Obama and generally followed left-wing orthodoxy — for example, co-founding an immigration group and opposing efforts to secure the border. He led the world’s biggest social media platform while it cracked down on free speech, apologizing for the supposed “misinformation” his platform allowed to help Donald Trump win the election in 2016. He publicly opined on his company’s supposed responsibility to stop “hate speech” and “misinformation.” He stopped neither, of course; his company merely allowed one political party to do so unopposed.
What’s interesting now is to see the Leftmedia publishing various reports about Zuckerberg’s “shift to the right.” That’s how NBC News recently put it.
NBC identified a moment that might have been a turning point for Zuckerberg: the first attempt on Trump’s life. I also noted that back in September. Zuckerberg reflected, “Seeing Donald Trump get up after being shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
So, he’s softened toward Trump personally, even heading to Mar-a-Lago early this month and donating $1 million to the president’s inauguration.
Leftmedia outlets are fit to be tied.
In another story, NBC details “a series of specific moves to signal that Meta may embrace a more conservative administration.” He didn’t respond to “a personal threat from Trump” about spending time in prison for election interference. Of course, NBC took Trump’s comment as literally as possible. NBC also laments that Zuckerberg “attacked the Biden administration’s response to Covid-19 misinformation.” Allow me to translate: Zuckerberg outed the Biden administration for unconstitutional suppression of free speech regarding things that turned out to be true about the coronavirus.
On that topic, here’s how The Washington Post misleadingly framed things: “Zuckerberg described the company’s years-long efforts to police speech as a form of ‘censorship,’ embracing a Republican characterization that rejects the industry’s preferred phrase, ‘content moderation.’” How dare he not use the Left’s deceptive euphemism for censorship.
The openly left-wing fanatics at Rolling Stone see the usual bogeyman: “The lengths to which Zuckerberg has been willing to go to appease Team Trump is part of a broader effort by the country’s tech, corporate, and billionaire elites to get in good with Trump now, no matter how much his swelling authoritarianism and xenophobia may have unnerved them in the past. And the somewhat dissatisfied reception Zuckerberg has so far received from his new MAGA overlords underscores just how much Trump and his far-right lieutenants wish to bend their former and current enemies to their will.”
Again, I’ll translate: Trump demanded a level playing field — free speech and equal justice for everyone. Rolling Stone sees this as “authoritarianism and xenophobia.”
The New York Times quoted “Katie Harbath, chief executive of Anchor Change, a tech consulting firm, who previously worked at Facebook,” as saying that Zuckerberg has really been sort of MAGA all along: “This shows how Mark Zuckerberg is feeling that society is more accepting of those libertarian and right-leaning viewpoints that he’s always had. This is an evolved return to his political origins.”
We’ll see.
It is indeed fascinating to see Zuckerberg make tangible changes to make Facebook a platform again instead of a curating publisher of left-wing “fact-checker”-approved material. If he genuinely follows through and free speech becomes cool again, the icing on the cake will be watching leftists lose what’s left of their minds over it.