My eventful time in politics taught me many things. Among them, that the abandonment of truth weighs lighter on some. None more so, it seems, than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a man whose moral compass apparently points in whatever direction is specified by the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington DC.
Having suspended President Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram in 2021 for trying to “undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor”, Zuckerberg recently joined the parade of MAGAlomaniacal tech-bro oligarchs seeking to trade cash for influence and a front-row inauguration seat.
In truth, a personal invitation to Trump’s coronation party was merely the latest stop on Zuckerberg’s identity reclamation tour. Beginning last November, when he flew to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida — Trump’s very own Nkandla, if you will — to break bread with the US president-elect. In January, Zuckerberg appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience to, among other things, advocate more “masculine energy” in the workplace and defend Meta’s removal of third-party content moderation from its platforms. I urge you not to put yourself through the three mind-numbing hours of rambling by two men whose fragile masculinity is curiously threatened by the presence of tampons and sanitary pads in public bathrooms.
But why should you or I care about the political flip-flopping of a tech plutocrat on the other side of the Atlantic? Because Zuckerberg wields unchecked influence over the dissemination and perceived credibility of online information, in an age when disinformation can be deadly. And when he had the potential to be — and had promised to do — so much more.
In 2013, Facebook launched its Free Basics platform, partnering with mobile network operators across the globe to provide free access to the internet in countries where data costs are prohibitive. Initially offering a limited number of websites in a text-only format, Free Basics has since been used in more than 32 different countries across Africa.
For many, Facebook and the Free Basics service were their only means of accessing important news, connecting with local communities, or communicating with their family. Its effects cannot be understated.
Professing to be a philanthropic endeavour, Free Basics was soon criticised for its narrow website offerings primarily employed to generate advertising revenue and direct users to a gatekept list of specific websites. Commentators claimed it was a form of “digital colonialism”. But since 2020, Free Basics latest iteration — Discover — has claimed to provide access to any website, free of charge.
In a similar philanthropic vein, in 2015 Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, founded the eponymous Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, pledging to use 99% of the wealth earned from their Facebook shares to help “build a more inclusive, just and healthy future for everyone”. The organisation espoused core values of integrity and equity, undertaking to democratise technological software and advance scientific learning for the many, not the few.
Now is not the moment to remove our existing digital safeguards. They must be strengthened further.
It is deeply unfortunate that in 2025, Meta’s abandonment of its third-party content moderation tools will lead it down a familiar path — one already trod by Elon Musk, whose remodelling of Twitter in his own questionable image has already wreaked havoc across the globe. After buying the platform for $44bn in October 2022, Musk soon fired 80% of its workforce and shut down its well-respected trust and safety team. As users of this horror site will know, the rebranded X is now rife with unchecked hate speech, disinformation and crude bots.
In the words of Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon: “The way to deal with them [the media] is to flood the zone with shit.” Musk himself is the chief culprit — at least 87 of his posts (generating 2-billion views) relating to the 2024 US election were rated as “false or misleading” by the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). No wonder the user count at BlueSky — the alternative social platform started by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey — is ticking towards 30-million and counting.
While citizens of the West may enjoy the privilege of being able to choose which social media platforms they do and do not access, for many in the so-called Global South, Facebook is their only portal to access the internet. Without proper content moderation, we will bear witness to more and more distortion, lies and hate speech, with catastrophic consequences for our politics and societies. Beyond improperly influencing electoral outcomes, the loss of human life is a direct consequence of a lack of proper content moderation on social media.
Now is not the moment to remove our existing digital safeguards. They must be strengthened further. South Africa’s presidency of the Group of 20 — where the world’s largest economies, representing 85% of global GDP, will debate a hotbed of international issues — is an opportunity for our country to be a standard bearer for change in this regard.
As the first African country to hold this leadership position, it is our responsibility to address how our citizens are safeguarded in the digital space. At the top of our list of priorities should be ensuring that no organisation wields a monopoly over people’s access to the internet. How else can we ensure that the information we consume is fair, uncompromising and unbiased? Inadequate digital moderation is already one of the defining crises of our age; we have a duty to take the necessary steps to correct it.
For opinion and analysis consideration, email Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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