Political strategist Tim Miller has publicly criticized Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for his lack of "responsibility" in handling the company's fact-checking system, which he deemed "too politically biased.
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Miller's comments came during a podcast on Tuesday, following Zuckerberg's video announcement on Facebook regarding changes to the company's content moderation.
According to Conservative Daily News, Miller, speaking on "The Bulwark," dissected Zuckerberg's statement into "two elements," one of which was a critique of the company's fact-checking system, which he described as "mostly pointless."
Miller stated, "Yeah, I think that there are two elements to this. One is the forward-looking Trump suck-up part, and one is the regrets looking back part. Were going to get to the Trump suck-up part, but lets continue down the looking back part first."
Miller further elaborated on his point by referencing a comment made by conservative commentator Bill Kristol. "Bill Kristol in our internal Slack wrote this. I told him I was going to steal it from him, but Ill credit it. He was like heres the thing, the fact-checking ended up being mostly pointless," Miller said. "Theres not a lot of evidence [the] fact-checking part works. I think de-ranking things from [the] feed matters. The fact-checking ended up not being that useful. Im open to the fact that theres counter research on this. Maybe youve seen [it]."
In 2016, Meta introduced a fact-checking system on Facebook, which involved third-party "fact-checkers" certified by the International Fact-Checking Network and the European Fact-Checking Standards Network. Despite this system being in place on both Facebook and Instagram for nearly a decade, Zuckerberg announced a shift back to the platforms' "roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms."
Miller also highlighted that Bill Kristol, a known "Never-Trump" conservative, had criticized Zuckerberg's handling of the fact-checking system. He pointed out that Zuckerberg had the power to remove the fact-checking system at any time. "Bill [Kristol] writes, Zuck now denouncing Facebooks fact-checking when he implemented it, was in charge of it, arranged it, supervised it, paid for it for years, is like a Stalinist show trial type of self-denunciation for the new leader,'" Miller said. "I think it is part that, putting on the hair shirt for Trump, but I do think he also has some of his own regrets about it, but he hasnt done the mature thing of accepting responsibility for the decisions he made as one of the richest people in the world."
Miller further criticized Zuckerberg's announcement, stating, "In this announcement, its like, The legacy media and these annoying hall monitors forced me to do this. Now, its like, Now this is my big middle finger back at them. As you point out, he could have done whatever he wanted, really. Its not like the Biden regulators were coming for him. He believed a lot of the stuff based on that interview with Ben Smith, but he hasnt accepted responsibility for that. It doesnt feel like it.
Zuckerberg's decision to alter the platform's approach comes amidst significant changes in the social media landscape, including billionaire Elon Musk's takeover of X, formerly Twitter, in 2022, with the aim of safeguarding the "free speech" platform. Zuckerberg stated that the changes were influenced by the upcoming 2024 election and criticized "governments and legacy media" for their increasing push to "censor more and more."
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