In the wake of Trump’s inauguration, the digital world is undergoing a change in hands, and with it a renovation. On Jan. 7, Zuckerberg announced that he would forgo fact-checking on all Meta services. Meanwhile, another social media CEO, Elon Musk, has found a powerful political presence as executive of the brand new Department of Governmental Efficiency. This has a myriad of impacts on not just the online world, but on everyday life.
Zuckerberg’s abolition of fact-checking came just weeks before Trump’s inauguration. Ten years ago, academics predicted how the superfluous upper class will inevitably destabilize democracy. With Trump returning for his second term, big changes are already being put in place, many being swept under the rug and overlooked in favor of more reportable alterations. An example of this is Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, a campaign that diverted attention of the press away from other more impactful issues.
A majority of media companies are billionaire-owned. The top 1 percent can control the narrative by censoring criticism and keeping the public out of the know. Increasingly, these billionaires have been lobbying politicians in order to achieve their goals. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has an incentive to cater his products to the ideals of the far right, shown through his closeness to the Trump campaign. The campaign’s influence on Meta is evident by the increase in policies that not only make it easier to spread misinformation, but hate speech as well. Upon questioning Trump as to whether he thinks that Zuckerberg removing fact-checking was a deliberate attempt to gain his favor, his answer was “Yeah, probably yeah.”
The Meta change follows in the footsteps of Musk, the billionaire infamous for the purchase and transformation of Twitter, now X. The social media service has gone through a number of changes since the purchase, including a rebrand, a familiar removal of fact checking in favor of user-generated “community notes”, and a disconcerting push for government employees. At the presidential inauguration, an unorthodox decision was made through having Elon Musk standing beside the president. This choice is reflective of the political power Musk now possesses over the Department of Government Efficiency, a brand new department hand-crafted for Musk aimed at cutting excess government spending. Musk has been notably looking for employees for the Department of Government Efficiency through X Direct Messages.
It is in the best interest of these billionaires to keep regulations low to maximize profits, with minimal regard for the consequences. Zuckerberg recently announced AI-generated users will start to iterate on Meta services, bringing to life the Dead Internet Theory rumored to be the end of social media. The theory states that artificial influencers are turning what used to be a place for human connection into a wasteland where fake content echoes into a void of more fake content. While it may feel like social media is already soulless, this would take the cake as well as the ‘social’ out of the equation. There are countless instances of AI users posting AI videos to the delight of AI comments, in which zero human interaction can be found.
Worldviews are shifting, manipulated by the hands of giants. Social media creates echo chambers in which most Americans get their political information from, with the advent of AI only expediting that danger with its rampant spewing of misinformation and lack of fact-checking. This is not only significant for the future of America and by proxy its citizens (that means you), but for the future of the Information Age as a whole.
