‘Could’ve Done Whatever’: Strategist Rips Zuckerberg For Dodging ‘Responsibility’ After Denouncing Fact Checkers

Political strategist Tim Miller, during a podcast Tuesday, called out Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for not taking “responsibility” after criticizing his own platform’s fact-checkers as being “too politically biased.”

Zuckerberg released a video on Facebook Tuesday and announced the company’s change to content moderation. On “The Bulwark,” Miller said the CEO’s statement had “two elements,” calling out the company’s fact-checking as “mostly pointless.”

“Yeah, I think that there are two elements to this. One is the forward-looking Trump suck-up part, and one is the regrets looking back part. We’re going to get to the Trump suck-up part, but let’s continue down the looking back part first,” Miller said.

“Bill Kristol in our internal Slack wrote this. I told him I was going to steal it from him, but I’ll credit it. He was like — here’s the thing, the fact-checking ended up being mostly pointless,” Miller added. “There’s not a lot of evidence fact-checking part works. I think de-ranking things from feed matters. The fact-checking ended up not being that useful. I’m open to the fact that there’s counter research on this. Maybe you’ve seen .”

In 2016, Meta launched its fact-checking system on Facebook, running information on the platform through third-party “fact-checkers” who had been certified by the International Fact-Checking Network as well as the European Fact-Checking Standards Network, according to NBC News. However, despite the program being implemented on both Facebook and Instagram for the past nine years, Zuckerberg said that both programs will be getting back to their “roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.”

WATCH:

📺 Embedded media — coming soon