Yesterday it became clear that the Meta corporation is stopping fact-checking on its social networks (Facebook, Instagram and Threads) and will replace it with a user notes system. This was announced by the corporation's CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He defined the decision as a “return to freedom of expression“.
Will Europe fine Zuckerberg's company and what lies ahead for Facebook users, sports journalist Kamen Alipiev and political analyst Georgi Harizanov talk.
“One side forgets about censorship and says “it was very good so far“, and the other focuses only on censorship and says “no, complete freedom, this is very nice“. It's not very good, we all have more to learn, Zuckerberg himself was not born knowing how to manage the largest social network in the world“, said Harizanov on the show “Face to Face“.
And he recalled that “we must never forget that Jack Dorsey's Facebook and Twitter were complicit in the largest government-led censorship and news suppression operation“.
We are talking about the story with Hunter Biden's laptop from 2020.
We recall that at that time he left his personal computer for repair at a repair shop, but never went to pick it up. Thus, under the contract, it became the property of the repair shop.
All kinds of things were found in it – from pornography and personal photos to emails implicating his father – Joe Biden, with Chinese. All this reached the New York Post and became a journalistic material.
However, under pressure from the FBI, it was labeled as a “Russian propaganda operation“ and Facebook and Twitter were forced to prevent this information from being posted online.
So anyone who shared a link to the publication's article received a warning that their account would be blocked – and the link was not reproduced.
“If such things don't happen again in the future – that would be great. But because there is no need for fact checking on social networks and that certain information simply doesn't make sense to exist there – I don't agree and this is not good news“, Harizanov explained.
Kamen Alipiev supported his statement, adding:
“The removal of fact checking makes our profession meaningless, because everyone starts to believe what they like in their little bubble and it spreads in it and reality disappears. Everything becomes an augmented reality.“
“In practice, BigTech companies currently rule the entire world. It is possible that in our days we will experience some kind of dystopia like “1984“, “The Handmaid's Diary and the like“, he added.