‘Morning Joe’ Rips Mark Zuckerberg for ‘Horrific’ Decision to End Fact Checks
“Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough on Wednesday lambasted Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for his decision to cancel third-party fact-checking on his platforms, suggesting Zuckerberg made the decision to suck up to president-elect Donald Trump.
Zuckerberg on Tuesday posted a video saying Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — would ditch its fact-checking operation in favor of a feature similar to X’s Community Notes. Those plans did not thrill Scarborough.
“Mark Zuckerberg’s total and absolute collapse on all fronts in that horrific video that he put out yesterday — that actually is something that may more dramatically change the landscape of American politics, at least over the next 2-4 years, until somebody else gets in control. And Mark Zuckerberg decides ‘Yes, yes, sir, overlord, I will now do what you want me to do,'” Scarborough said.
A moment earlier, Scarborough said “the most important part” of Trump’s Tuesday press conference was what he said about Meta. Trump on Tuesday called Zuckerberg “very impressive” and said his company had “come a long way.” Scarborough said those comments “may have the biggest impact on American politics” moving forward.
His wife and co-host Mika Brzezinski added Meta’s change was the “story of the day,” before listening to Scarborough go off on the tech exec.
Meta launched its fact-checking program soon after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. The company used ABC News, AP, Politifact, Snopes and FactCheck.org to flag content on its platforms, and posts that were deemed unreliable were pushed further down in Facebook’s news feed. Users were also warned before sharing flagged content that they were posting “disputed” stories.
Notably, Facebook slapped warning labels on several posts made by Trump during his first term before. In January 2021, he was “indefinitely” banned from Facebook and Instagram. At the time, Zuckerberg said “the risks” of keeping Trump on those platforms was “simply too great.”
Zuckerberg, in his video on Tuesday, said the company tried its best to be accurate with its fact checks, but incorrectly flagging even 1% of content on its platforms still negatively affected millions of users.
“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” he said.
Zuckerberg’s shift towards a less-policed Facebook and Instagram comes as the majority of Americans have shown they do not favor content policing from social media companies. A 2024 poll from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a pro-First Amendment nonprofit organization, found most Americans do not trust social media moderation.
FIRE said in its poll summary that 61% of Democrats, 62% of Independents, and 73% of Republicans “don’t trust social media companies to be fair about what can be posted on their platform.”
You can read more about Meta’s decision to end its fact checking operation here.
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