Mark Zuckerberg has met Donald Trump for the second time since the election, as the Facebook owner faces critics of his so-called MAGA makeover.
The tech titan was spotted boarding his private jet in Palm Beach, Florida, which was parked next to Trump’s after the pair met at Mar-a-Lago.
The co-chair of Meta’s oversight board suggested Zuckerberg was “caving in to Trump” by abolishing fact-checking at Facebook and admitted he was blindsided by the stunning turnaround.
Zuckerberg, whose Meta Group owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, is in the midst of an abrupt policy change that took users and staff by surprise.
He announced he would end the fact-checking program, which multiple studies found reduced misinformation on Meta’s social media sites.
The billionaire also allowed LGBT people to be labeled mentally ill, promoted his most Trump-favorite director and put UFC boss Dana White on the board.
Michael McConnell, co-chair of the Meta Oversight Board, was especially coy when asked about the changes, but admitted that the optics were “bad.”
Mark Zuckerberg met Donald Trump for the second time since the election, spotted at Palm Beach Airport on Friday
His plane was considerably smaller than the modified Boeing 757 ‘Trump Force One’ he was parked next to on the tarmac
“I really think there are bad optics here, that it looks like it and maybe even is the reality – I don’t know,” he told NPR.
“But it certainly seems like this is succumbing to political pressure. I would have liked to see these reforms come through in less controversial and partisan times, you know, so that they would be judged on their merits.
“Instead of looking like this: You know, Donald Trump is president, and now they’re giving in.”
The Meta Oversight Board consists of law, human rights, and journalism experts from around the world who review content moderation policies and decisions.
McConnell conceded that “there is quite overwhelming evidence that the fact-checkers corrected far more content from the right side of the spectrum than from the left side of the spectrum,” but said it was not clear whether that was because more lies were coming from the right.
He said the board was blindsided by Zuckerberg’s decision and was not consulted before it was announced.
“We didn’t know they were going to revise that standard,” he said of the fact-checking program.
The tech titan was seen boarding his private jet, which was parked next to Trump’s at the airport, in Palm Beach, Florida, after the Mar-a-Lago rally
Zuckerberg walked from his car to his Gulfstream G650 jet at Palm Beach International Airport, wearing a navy blue suit and an appropriate red tie.
Zuckerberg’s announcement that he will stop ‘fact-checking’ on Meta completes his turn from a man who banned Trump from his platform to a full-on supporter of the newly elected president
In contrast, Zuckerberg told the president-elect’s team in advance, according to the New York Times.
Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the election, donated $1 million to his inauguration and sat down with him for the second time on Friday.
He walked from his car to his Gulfstream G650 jet at Palm Beach International Airport, wearing a navy blue suit and an appropriate red tie.
His plane was considerably smaller than the modified Boeing 757 ‘Trump Force One’ he was parked next to on the tarmac.
Trump and Zuckerberg meet in the Oval Office in September 2019
During a five-minute video explaining the new policy, Zuckerberg claimed that his fact-checking had “reached a point where it was just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
“Fact checkers have simply been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created,” he said.
Joel Kaplan, a Trump ally who Zuckerberg promoted to chief global affairs officer after the election, also claimed on Fox News that there was “too much political bias” in Meta’s fact-checking program.
These claims were at odds with independent studies showing that the program helped reduce misinformation.
Fewer people believed untruths than before it was implemented, they found.
Meta has made several moves in recent days that are likely to please Trump’s team, including appointing former Republican official Joel Kaplan as head of public affairs at the company.
On Monday, Zuckerberg added Dana White to Meta’s board of directors in another olive branch alongside Trump
Zuckerberg also appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast to discuss his policy changes
Zuckerberg conceded that misinformation would increase, but emphasized that it was more important to allow largely unfettered free speech.
‘The reality is that this is a trade-off. “It means we’re going to find less bad stuff, but we’re also going to reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally delete,” he said.
Another policy change that many found alarming was the removal of protections against abuse for LGBT people.
Meta users will be able to share “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given the political and religious discourse around transgenderism and homosexuality.”
Zuckerberg said this was part of an effort to “remove a lot of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”