Mark Zuckerberg kept the circle of people who knew his thinking small. Last month, Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, tapped a handful of top policy and communications executives and others to discuss the company’s approach to online speech. He had decided to make sweeping changes after visiting President-elect Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago…
For years, Mark Zuckerberg tried to keep his social networks above the fray of partisan politics. And why not? Meta’s flagship apps — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — were rowdy nation-states unto themselves, with billions of users, fragile internal politics, skittish advertisers, perpetually aggrieved influencers and a sprawling, uneven enforcement regime (known as “content moderation”)…
For years, social media companies made it a top priority to combat hate speech. But in recent months, they have waffled over how to tackle hateful online commentary, particularly when it is directed at L.G.B.T.Q. communities. Meta on Tuesday said it would drop some of its rules protecting L.G.B.T.Q. people. The changes included allowing users…
Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new chief global affairs officer, played a leading role in Tuesday’s content moderation announcement. In an exclusive interview on “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Kaplan said the company’s previous fact-checking system became too biased and the company wanted to return to its roots of more unfettered speech. He pointed to Elon Musk’s X,…