Billionaires dangle free speech like a bauble. We gawp like open-mouthed babes
Zuckerberg, Trump, Musk. None care about free speech, least of all yours or mine. They care about power and remaining billionaires – or, better still, becoming trillionaires
A few observations on Mark Zuckerberg’s astonishing volte face today, declaring that he will end the crushing climate of censorship on his Meta platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, in time for Donald Trump's arrival in the White House.
It should not have taken a video admission from Zuckerberg for us to appreciate the degree to which we have been living for many years under a regime of political censorship on social media, with Meta leading the pack.
In his grovelling video message to Trump – I mean, to Meta users – Zuckerberg effectively settles the question of whether his globe-spanning corporation has been aggressively corralling its 3 billion users away from political content. He admits it has.
What he has not admitted, and won’t, is that Meta has not even been trying to enforce that censorship evenhandedly or neutrally. We know, for example, that Meta’s algorithms were carefully engineered for many long months duri