Meta, the parent company that started Facebook and bought Instagram (to eliminate competition), announced recently that it will no longer fact-check posts on its platforms.
Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed that it was a move to simplify platform standards and foster free speech, or some sort of soda water like that, but everyone knows the real reason for his changed stance. It's to allow MAGA right-wingers to post whatever misinformation they want to no matter how dangerously misleading it is and not have to worry about anyone at Meta taking it down for fear of retribution by MAGA - or Donald Trump himself - against the company. Any responsibility to curb misinformation on Facebook or Instagram falls to users who report misleading content to the bots that run the damn platforms.
It gets worse. Meta is also getting rid of its "diversity, equity and inclusion" (DEI) program in the wake of other companies doing the same. Now, I've had my problems with programs that promote "diversity," because the very term suggests that differences are more important than common standards and qualifications, so why bother with any of that? But by adding equity and inclusion as goals, these programs have made standards and qualifications more integral in the effort to include more women and people of color in professional entities, be they colleges of corporations. DEI is far more comprehensive than "affirmative action," which was really neither. But after demonizing former future President Kamala Harris as a "DEI hire" - forget for a moment that Harris' standards and qualifications for executive office are just the sort of qualities that DEI seeks to inculcate - no one wants to offend MAGA leaders or Trump for fear of offending them to the point where Trump finds a way to undermine their businesses. For Meta, that means regulations the Sugar Mountain Man (again, that's what I call Zuckerberg, because his name means "sugar mountain" in German) would prefer not to deal with. For McDonald's, which also ended its DEI program, that means . . . what? That Trump orders his meals from Burger King?
In other words, companies will be run almost entirely by white men . . . which, as I already explained by pointing to rock and roll, inevitably means unmitigated disaster.
As a Jew with a Chinese-American wife, Zuckerberg should know better.
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