Speaker 1: Already, and this is the daily This is the Daily OS. Oh,
Speaker 1: now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: Daily OS. It's Thursday, the ninth of January. I'm Zara,
Speaker 1: I'm Sam. Yesterday, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg announced major changes
Speaker 1: to the company's social media moderation policies. In a video
Speaker 1: posted to socials, Zuckerberg said Meta would no longer use
Speaker 1: independent fact checkers in a move to restore what he
Speaker 1: called free expression for its users, and also to reduce
Speaker 1: the number of mistakes he believed had been made. It's
Speaker 1: a significant departure for the social media behemoth and has
Speaker 1: drawn praise from ex owner Elon Musk and incoming US
Speaker 1: President Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: It's crazy to think that there was a time without Meta.
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, it's pretty much one of the companies
Speaker 2: that shapes the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: Evasive in every part of my life.
Speaker 2: And it's continuing to change.
Speaker 1: My partner on Meta, and my business exists on Meta.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent hit rate for Meta.
Speaker 2: It's in every part of our lives. And that's why
Speaker 2: these changes are so important to talk about. Before we
Speaker 2: get to the changes themselves, what was the state of
Speaker 2: play before this announcement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So since twenty sixteen, Meta has used what it
Speaker 1: called third party moderators to essentially identify false claims, misinformation, disinformation,
Speaker 1: and hoaxes on all of its platforms, so across Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and WhatsApp. In his video, Zuckerberg said that after Donald
Speaker 1: Trump won the election back in twenty sixteen, so not
Speaker 1: this most recent time, but back then, he said that
Speaker 1: legacy media wrote NonStop about how misinformation was a threat
Speaker 1: to democracy, and Zuckerberg said that Meta, as a result
Speaker 1: of all of that discourse and as a result of
Speaker 1: I guess that concern, he said that Meta tried in
Speaker 1: good faith to address those concerns. And that's why these
Speaker 1: fact checkers were in introduced in the first place as
Speaker 1: an almost response to the election of Donald Trump, which
Speaker 1: is an interesting point that we'll get to a bit later.
Speaker 1: And so the way that it has worked up until
Speaker 1: now is that these moderation teams, and there's about ninety
Speaker 1: organizations across dozens of countries who work as part of
Speaker 1: these teams. What they do is look very closely at
Speaker 1: content that either they or other users have identified as
Speaker 1: being false or misleading. So you, as a user can
Speaker 1: identify something, can click and say this is hate speech
Speaker 1: or this is misinformation or whatever it is. That's then
Speaker 1: reviewed by these people. The moderators then rate the accuracy
Speaker 1: of the post based on their factual review, and med
Speaker 1: can then add a warning label and the fact check
Speaker 1: is rating to the posts and then reduce its distribution,
Speaker 1: so affect how that post can be seen across the algorithm.
Speaker 2: And that's where you also see those kind of lighter
Speaker 2: boxes underneath the post that says this might not be true.
Speaker 2: Here's a link to a government website. Remember, particularly in
Speaker 2: the pandemic, there was a lot of those underneath posts
Speaker 2: about vaccines or about the spread of the virus. So
Speaker 2: that's the way it's worked until now. Talk me through
Speaker 2: what Mark Zuckerberg announced via a short video yesterday and
Speaker 2: what his thinking was behind this one eighty.
Speaker 1: I mean, to the thinking point. It is fairly rare
Speaker 1: that Mark Zuckerberg takes us through his thinking on something.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of high profile people who work
Speaker 1: at metas so when it comes to Instagram, Adamisari is
Speaker 1: the head of Instagram and he's announced a lot of
Speaker 1: the changes. But this came clearly from the top, and
Speaker 1: it makes sense. It's a huge change. So essentially, the
Speaker 1: biggest change among them is that those fact checkers that
Speaker 1: I was just talking about, the ones who are reviewing
Speaker 1: the content.
Speaker 2: The ninety organization, Yes, they're no.
Speaker 1: Longer gone done goodbye. And to add some color as
Speaker 1: to why overnight we have seen the exit of all
Speaker 1: fact checking on these platforms, Zuckerberg described the system as complex,
Speaker 1: and he said that it was creating too many mistakes. Said,
Speaker 1: even if they accidentally censor just one percent of posts,
Speaker 1: that is millions of people. Now I'm going to applay
Speaker 1: you a short clip that explains a bit more about
Speaker 1: the thinking behind the decision.
Speaker 3: There's been widespread debate about potential harms from online content.
Speaker 3: Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.
Speaker 3: So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content.
Speaker 3: But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes.
Speaker 3: The fact checkers have just been too politically biased and
Speaker 3: have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US.
Speaker 3: So over the next couple of months, we're going to
Speaker 3: phase in a more comprehensive community notes system.
Speaker 2: So let's play this out right. We're talking about a
Speaker 2: post being reported as missiles disinformation, this third party fact
Speaker 2: checking service looking at it and deciding it was in fact,
Speaker 2: it's then limiting the reach of that And in Mark
Speaker 2: Zackberg's mind, that is then limiting the reach of that post,
Speaker 2: where if the fact checker's got that wrong, it actually
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been limited in the first place. And I
Speaker 2: guess it's why that concern is around sense, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, censorship is really at the
Speaker 1: heart of the reasoning behind removing these fact checkers. And
Speaker 1: I guess the way that Mark Zuckerberg sees it is
Speaker 1: that the people, the fact checkers, who are deciding whether
Speaker 1: or not something is miss or disinformation, he is claiming
Speaker 1: that they are becoming the arbiters of truth, and that
Speaker 1: Meta itself never wanted to be the arbiter of truth.
Speaker 1: It wanted to be a social media platform, or Facebook
Speaker 1: at least wanted to be a social media platform where
Speaker 1: lots of different ideas and social connections could be fostered.
Speaker 1: And what he's saying is that it has now gone
Speaker 1: too far and it's now impeding on freedom of speech
Speaker 1: and the principles that underpin that. And to that end,
Speaker 1: Meta has also said it's getting rid of a number
Speaker 1: of restrictions on topics, so things like immigration, gender identity,
Speaker 1: and gender that have been the subject of frequent political discourse.
Speaker 1: A statement from Meta said, it's not right that things
Speaker 1: can be said on TV or on the floor of
Speaker 1: Congress but not on Beta.
Speaker 2: So essentially, Zara, does that mean that people can now
Speaker 2: post anything they want on metal platforms.
Speaker 1: It's certainly going to be easier to post what you
Speaker 1: like and what you think, but it's not going to
Speaker 1: be a free for all. Instead, the onus is going
Speaker 1: to shift from fact checkers to the users themselves. Now,
Speaker 1: this idea is modeled on the way that X so
Speaker 1: Twitter that's owned by Elon Musk, the way that that
Speaker 1: platform has treated miss and disinformation, and that's been through
Speaker 1: the introduction of something called community notes. Essentially community notes.
Speaker 1: If you've been on x recently, it's that little thing
Speaker 1: that comes up at the end of a tweet and
Speaker 1: it says community note so and so xyz is wrong.
Speaker 1: And the way that this is done is that X
Speaker 1: users basically fact check each other. Essentially, if two users
Speaker 1: so me and you, okay, if me and you, let's
Speaker 1: use you you and I, so you and I have
Speaker 1: previously disagreed on whether the sky is blue.
Speaker 2: I say it's green, you say it's blue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then there's another fact that's posted about whether
Speaker 1: or not Anthony Albanezi is the Prime Minister, and you
Speaker 1: and I agree on that. That is then going to
Speaker 1: be published as a community note because previously we've disagreed,
Speaker 1: Now we agree on the same thing. And that is
Speaker 1: the way at least that X. I know it's super confusing,
Speaker 1: but that's the way that X has said that. It's
Speaker 1: like prioritizing diverse voices and diverse perspectives. Is that if
Speaker 1: you and I agree on every single thing and we
Speaker 1: have the same political positions and therefore critique something else
Speaker 1: as miss or disinformation, you're ending up in the same situation.
Speaker 1: So that's the way X does it. I hope that
Speaker 1: that makes sense. I'm not on the back end of X,
Speaker 1: so look, I can't actually tell you the technology that
Speaker 1: goes behind it, but essentially what they're trying to say
Speaker 1: is that that same idea is going to be brought
Speaker 1: in on meta platforms.
Speaker 2: Okay, so basically via a lot of complex algorithms. It's
Speaker 2: on users. Now, you're not on these third part the
Speaker 2: TLDs checking services to identify whether something on meta platforms
Speaker 2: is factually wrong correct.
Speaker 1: And that's the way it's been done on X. And
Speaker 1: you know X has changed, It's completely transformed from the
Speaker 1: app at once was, so I think that we can
Speaker 1: expect to see the meta platforms also change quite significantly
Speaker 1: under this announcement.
Speaker 2: And Zara, we can't ignore the wider context that's happening
Speaker 2: around us, which is the election of Donald Trump for
Speaker 2: a second term. He's being sworn in on the twentieth.
Speaker 2: Meta isn't the only company in the world readying itself
Speaker 2: for a Trump presidency. Can you talk to me about
Speaker 2: how Donald Trump fits into all of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Look, it's an absolutely fascinating one because Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: explicitly said in his video that he was going to
Speaker 1: work with President Trump to push back on governments around
Speaker 1: the world pushing to censor more So, there was a
Speaker 1: very clear nod to the incoming president elect Donald Trump there,
Speaker 1: and the fact that you know he is looking to
Speaker 1: work with him and be on the same side when
Speaker 1: it comes to censorship, I guess as Trump. But what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that the two absolutely have not always seen
Speaker 1: eida eye you know, Trump previously threatened to jals Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: if he did anything quote illegal during the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four election, and at a press conference after the announcement,
Speaker 1: Trump said that this threat was probably responsible for Meta's decision.
Speaker 1: We can't test the validity of that. We are not inside,
Speaker 1: you know, the Meta decision making rooms. But I do
Speaker 1: think that it's important to, I guess, highlight some of
Speaker 1: the interesting changes that have happened at Meta recently that,
Speaker 1: as you say, do demonstrate the fact that it is
Speaker 1: readying itself for a Trump presidency. So two things that
Speaker 1: were of note. The first is that Dana White, who
Speaker 1: was the creator of UFC, he was this week appointed
Speaker 1: to Meta's board.
Speaker 2: And he's very close to the Trump camp, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. He is a full Trump loyalist to the
Speaker 1: extent that when Donald Trump won the presidency back in November,
Speaker 1: he was on stage on the night of the election,
Speaker 1: so very close to the president elect, and that means something.
Speaker 1: He wrote this kind of explanation of being appointed to
Speaker 1: the board and he said, I don't do boards, but
Speaker 1: I want to do this board. So a really interesting
Speaker 1: thing there. The second is that the head of Global Affairs,
Speaker 1: so global affairs is essentially the way that a company
Speaker 1: connects and engages with government. That person at META was
Speaker 1: replaced this week and the new head, his name is
Speaker 1: George Kaplan, has close ties to Trump and is also
Speaker 1: understood to have played a significant role in the announcement yesterday.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting how Meta is getting ready for this
Speaker 2: Trump presidency. They're not the only company that's doing so,
Speaker 2: as I said, and these decisions are going to impact
Speaker 2: millions of people, not just in America but all the
Speaker 2: way around the world. What has the response been to
Speaker 2: this announcement.
Speaker 1: Well, I thought I'd focus on the response from the
Speaker 1: fact checking groups. You know, I said that they were
Speaker 1: in ninety Yeah, there were ninety organizations who were involved
Speaker 1: in fact checking who overnight must have lost huge contracts
Speaker 1: and also, you know, believe truly in their role and
Speaker 1: the value that they can bring. So one of the groups,
Speaker 1: the Pointer Institute, said in a statement that facts are
Speaker 1: not censorship. They said it's time to quit invoking inflammatory
Speaker 1: and false language in describing the role of journalists and
Speaker 1: fact checking, not mincing words there. FactCheck dot Org, which
Speaker 1: has also been used by Meta, said that community notes
Speaker 1: model will mean that you'll have to do more work
Speaker 1: on your own when you see questionable posts. I think
Speaker 1: that that's an interesting note to end on, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, how much critical analysis, how much literacy are
Speaker 1: we bringing to the online world and to our experience
Speaker 1: on the online world, because the meta and the Twitter
Speaker 1: of twenty fourteen is very different today, and you know,
Speaker 1: here in Australia we're heading into an election campaign where
Speaker 1: we know young voters are going to be met online
Speaker 1: and especially on socials and meta platforms. So understanding how
Speaker 1: this might affect us down the road is definitely to
Speaker 1: keep an eye on.
Speaker 2: Well, the onus is kind of now more on us
Speaker 2: than that before. Yep, Zara, thank you. That's a very
Speaker 2: interesting and slightly complex discussion on how fact checking works
Speaker 2: and is evolving into the future. We'll be back again
Speaker 2: with the headlines this afternoon, but until then, have a
Speaker 2: fantastic day, which out to you later. My name is
Speaker 2: Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Kalkutin woman
Speaker 2: from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast
Speaker 2: is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and
Speaker 2: pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations.
Speaker 2: We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries,
Speaker 2: both past and present.