What nobody is saying about Zuck's announcement
I'm going to be using inverted commas a lot in this post, as the online world is one of euphemisms and double-speak.
Zuckerberg announced that FaceBook is doing away with 'fact checkers', and scaling back the censorship that's euphemistically called 'moderation'.
That's a good thing, surely? In abstract, yes. It's surprising how thoroughly censored the entire 'social' media ecosystem is. Mainstream platforms are censored to the extent that people can't discuss anything of import without euphemisms and blanking out half their words. Influencers self-censor because The Algorithm and the fear of being 'demonetised' by some corporation or other.
Sometimes it's hard to comprehend the degree to which the concept of free expression had been devalued over the past decade. What passes for the political left wanted a growing list of restrictions and pretexts for censorship. The political right only cares about free speech insofar as it can be weaponised against minorities.
In reality, getting rid of 'fact checkers' and moderation on FaceBook wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, because Social media is little more than an advertising platform for corporations an sponsors. Users turn over their personal information, they get advertised at, and the parameters of what they're allowed to express are still determined by a handful of corporations and their 'community guidelines'.
Instead of allowing sponsored 'fact checkers' to interject with their unsolicited (and often unqualified) opinions on our FaceBook posts, I'd imagine Zuckerberg is going to allow the far-right to astroturf our feeds with their unsolicited sponsored opinions and their tedious little 'memes', in order to 'drive engagement'.
We will get our freedom of expression, but what good is that when our posts are buried under 'sponsored content', the way my partner's message of solidarity with transgender people was the other day?