The air of lament in New York Times columnist Kevin Roose's article on Wednesday over Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's rebrand to the "right" and the proclaimed end to the social media company's censorship policies was palatable.
"For years, Mark Zuckerberg tried to keep his social networks above the fray of partisan politics," Roose began, downplaying the wave of censorship of posts on the platform over Hunter Biden's laptop as well as COVID-19 era stories.
"Given the headaches associated with running his" multiple companies, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, "the last thing Mr. Zuckerberg wanted was to become too enmeshed with actual governments — the kind that could use the force of law to demand that he censor certain voices, thumb the scale on politically sensitive topics, or threaten to throw Meta executives in jail for noncompliance."
"But that was then."
"Now," Roose added, Zuckerberg is realigning to the political winds with visits in "recent weeks" to Mar-a-Lago and, as of Monday, announcing "the appointment of three new board members, including Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close friend and political ally of Mr. Trump's."
Further down, Roose later speculated that Zuckerberg "may find that his new allies on the right make more censorship demands of him, and are less forgiving of his mistakes, than the left ever was."
Throughout the entirety of the Times columnist's piece, there was no condemnation of censorship, only a dismissal of Zuckerberg that the left was the proper steward of the censorship mantle.
"The list of people hurt by Meta's new rules may be long: immigrants, transgender people, victims of online bullying and harassment, the targets of future QAnon-style conspiracy theories, and Facebook and Instagram users who want to see reliable information when they log on," Roose added.
The Times aside, there have been reports of censorship on X in recent weeks. In late December, X owner Elon Musk wrote that "contemptible fools" of "the Republican Party" must be removed "root and stem." Ostensibly, Musk's post was prompted by a debate on the platform over H-1B visas.
Central to the debate were critics calling for Americans to be put first over immigrants for jobs. Conservative commentator Jack Posobiec responded to the debate over H-1Bs with a video stating the visa policy was a source of "cheap labor" for the tech industry.
Musk's later announcement in January that a new algorithm "tweak" in the works was necessary to combat "too much negativity." The post prompted a number of users to question if X would be making a return to censorship policies of old but under a different constellation of ideas.
The gold check-marked news organization Drop Site wrote in response to Musk that "The visibility of our verified gold-check account, which covers critical and often divisive topics, has significantly dropped (by four to five times), since the first month of reporting on X. What safeguards are in place to prevent the silencing of minority and dissenting views?"
Other users on X, such as podcaster and MMA fighter Jake Shields, a staunch critic of Israel, wrote that he had been "demonetized" for "months."
It "is a clear sign," he added, "that they will start banning us soon, I'm now ... unable go live, edit Tweets, and many other features twitter should give accounts with different views.
A day after Musk's announcement about the algorithm tweak, journalist Michael Tracy wrote, that "X is now blocking links to a Spectator article on the ground that the article contains 'potentially harmful' content. Exactly what the prior Twitter regime did to the NY Post article on Hunter Biden's laptop."
That article looked into the whether Musk had a fake account under the name Adrian Dittmann.
Nick Koutsobinas ✉
Nick Koutsobinas, a Newsmax writer, has years of news reporting experience. A graduate from Missouri State University’s philosophy program, he focuses on exposing corruption and censorship.
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