TV historian Simon Schama has labeled Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to abolish independent fact-checkers a “catastrophic sell-out” and “Orwellian”.
Last week, Meta, which also runs the Instagram and Threads platforms, revealed that it is eliminating the use of these means of authentication and instead allowing other users to comment on the accuracy of posts.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said third-party moderators were too “politically biased” as he opted for a system that will work like X, which has “community notes.”
Schama, 79, who is helming a new BBC TV series on the origins of the culture wars, was asked about the decision in an interview with The New Review magazine in The Observer.
He said: ‘It’s Orwellian. Orwell stands there and rolls his eyes.
“It’s a catastrophic sell-off. The truth is not determined by the majority of votes. As my friend Mary Beard often says, history requires the voice of homework.”
Schama, who lives in the US, also said he was concerned about Donald Trump’s impending presidency, describing his enablers such as entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as “concerning”.
The historian, whose new BBC show is called Story of Us, said he believed Trump was “intoxicated by Putin’s example”.
Last week, Zuckerberg said: “We’re going back to our roots… and restoring free speech on our platforms. First, we’re going to remove fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X.
Simon Schama (79) has labeled Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to abolish independent fact-checkers as a ‘catastrophic sell-out’ and ‘Orwellian’.
Meta, which will also remove independent fact-checkers from Instagram, will now support a more conservative focus on freedom of expression
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said third-party moderators were too “politically biased” as he opted for a system that will work like X, which has “community notes.”
“It means we’ll intercept less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s messages and accounts we accidentally delete.
“The fact-checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created, especially in the US.”
President-elect Trump was previously highly critical of what was claimed to be Meta’s anti-conservative bias.
It suggests that Meta, which will also scrap Instagram’s independent fact-checkers, will now support a more conservative focus on freedom of expression. It comes after Zuckerberg met Donald Trump in November following his US election victory.
The company has also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and appointed several of the politician’s allies to senior positions at the company.
Meanwhile, when asked whether social media companies had “changed the game” by moving away from content moderation, science secretary Peter Kyle told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg that Meta’s announcement was “an American statement for American service users.”
He said: ‘There is one thing that has not changed and that is the law of this land and this government’s determination to keep everyone safe.’
He added: ‘Access to British society and economy is a privilege, it is not a right.
“If you come to work in this country, you follow the law, and the law says illegal content must be removed.”
But campaigners have argued the law does not go far enough in preventing harm.
Zuckerberg said the changes mean “we’ll discover fewer bad things, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts we accidentally delete” (stock image)
Molly Russell’s father, Ian Russell, warned that Britain was ‘going backwards’ in online safety
A series of posts from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on social media app Threads, detailing his changes to content moderation
Andy Burrows, CEO of the Molly Rose Foundation – named after Molly Russell who killed herself after viewing harmful content online – said Kyle was “right that companies had to follow UK laws” but said those laws were “simply not strong enough were to tackle major problems’. tech’s bonfire of security measures’.
He said: ‘The frontline of online safety now lies with this government and action is needed to tackle the widespread, preventable harm taking place under their watch.’
His comments follow an intervention from Molly’s father Ian Russell, who warned on Saturday that Britain was “going backwards” in online safety.
Mr Russell said the implementation of the Online Safety Act had been a “disaster” that had “highlighted the intrinsic structural weaknesses of the legislative framework”.
Stung by Russell’s comments on Sunday, Kyle said he had made “a very personal commitment to ensure that everyone, especially people with vulnerabilities and every child is vulnerable, gets protection.”