On Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted to doing what we already knew he was doing.
He was helping the Democrats censor American people in order to silence dissent and potentially wrecking their narratives. It wasn't exactly a total surprise to anyone. We already knew the government had its hands in pressuring social media companies to stop the free flow of information for the benefit of the party. The Twitter Files were evidence enough of that.
As my colleague Susie Moore wrote, the Facebook creator told Jim Jordan that he had capitulated to the Biden/Harris administration and wishes he hadn't:
In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree. Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure. I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today. Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from the Administration in either direction – and we are ready to push back if something like this happens again.
So why is Zuck suddenly filled with regret and remorse?
I think it's because Zuckerberg probably sees something many of us don't. As the owner of Facebook and Instagram, two major social media platforms, he's likely watching as pro-Trump posts overwhelm all the others. Historically, right-leaning material tends to dominate these two platforms, and it's my guess that Zuckerberg has noticed a rapid upswing in Republican-friendly content in the last few months.
Meta is a massive data collector, so if Zuckerberg is coming hat in hand to Jim Jordan to apologize for wrongs done to the people in the name of the Democrats... something is up.
I'm thinking Zuck is pretty positive Donald Trump is going to win the 2024 election.
The one thing I don't think is happening is that Zuckerberg is having a change of heart and is suddenly a free-speech advocate or even a budding Republican himself in the lane of Elon Musk.
Historically, Zuckerberg is a very, very shrewd businessman who isn't afraid to put his company first above all else. He is incredibly aggressive when it comes to knocking out or acquiring his competition, and some of the things he's been noted to say in the past have shown a man capable of apathy, or sometimes even disdain, for people, including those who use his platform.
So, Zuck suddenly pulling an Ebenezer Scrooge and becoming a good soul after a "come to Jesus moment" probably isn't likely. From where I'm sitting, this looks like Zuck is seeing dark clouds and knows a storm is coming, and he'd love to be protected from it by getting a little friendly with the Republicans and tattling on the Democrats.
Among a media that is constantly hyping up Harris and forecasting a win for the Democrat Party, this moment with Zuckerberg is heavily indicative of the opposite. If he saw the Democrats being victorious, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have this moment from him at all.
