I'm on the fence on that point. The timing makes it very likely that it's related to the presidential transition, and appeasement of Trump sounds like a likely explanation. It's also plausible that some of these changes are ones Zuck wanted to make but felt les comfortable doing so under a Dem ...
administration! So I am suspicious of the motive behind it, but think the changes themselves are plausibly but not certainly what it's about, so I'm giving them a look on the merits.
It's good their reversing this tbh, in 2017 Facebook did great damage to political culture by shutting down organic political discussion and organizing on their platform.
I think, if anything, they did so because Bluesky now presents an alternative which doesn't suppress politics via its algorithm, and could, due to the AT protocol, present more free speech alternatives down the line.
I was talking about the pre-2017 Facebook there. Obviously we won't know until it moves forward if we'll see a return to organic political culture there, but those who defended the anti-misinformation stuff as necessary are being silly.
Of course we do, it's a blatantly political move to pander to the new power in the US. If it manifests as anything else, anything off message then they'll immediately throttle it.
The reason my OP is about the griftarchy and doesn't mention fact-checking is that I don't view this as a substantive change to Meta's content policy that requires chin-stroking reflection. It is mostly symbolic obeisance. https://bsky.app/profile/mmasnick.bsky.social/post/3lf622hlaks27
My post talks about "capitulation to the griftarchy" rather than fact-checking for reasons, y'all. This looks to me like symbolic obeisance. I don't think we know yet how it will actually affect content moderation. But this kind of obeisance to fascists says quite enough.
Have you seen evidence that Bsky is in some way immune to misinfo etc? How is that achieved? Are there fact checkers waiting in the wings for when everything goes wrong here?
I don't think I understand your multi-clause response. I guess my point is I'm seeing many objections to the removal of a fact-checking infrastructure of uncertain value from here on a platform that as far as I know has none at all and might presumably need something in the future.
Comments
Stay safe
1) I affirm that fact-checking currently works well
2) I'm worried that they're getting rid of it
That's an interesting theory, but "abject capitulation to the griftarchy" covers a broader landscape.