On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone explains that Zuckerberg capitulating to MAGA is the culmination of “the right wing working the refs” with false claims of conservative censorship
Carusone: “We did a big study that looked at 29 million posts. Right-wing content had 42% of the engagements, even though it only accounted for 19% of the content. I mean, that's not what suppression and censorship looks like.”
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From the January 11, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Ayman
AYMAN MOHYELDIN (HOST): So that was Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg arguing that when the U.S. government targets or attacks tech companies, it sets a dangerous precedent. And it seems kind of rich coming from Mark Zuckerberg because you know it was Zuck that Donald Trump literally threatened to throw in prison for the rest of his life if he did anything illegal to influence the presidential election. And this week, Trump even gloated that Zuckerberg rolled back his fact-checking program because he scared him into it. And with that capitulation, Zuck seems to have completed his full transformation from tech bro to MAGA world. The transformation includes bulking up, abandoning his hoodie for an oversized black tee, and of course a little bling around his neck. And to be honest, the signs have been there for a while. This was not an overnight transformation.
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Angelo, your take on this full transformation by Zuckerberg? I mean, it's — We can joke around a little bit, but it carries some serious and dangerous weight for a lot in this country.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, it really does, for a lot of reasons. I mean, this isn't surprising. I mean, he's done this before. Let's not forget that back in 2016, you know, after Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham did this meeting with him in May of 2016, he radically overhauled Facebook's policies around the trending topics section and right-wing misinformation and content exploded. There's been this idea, at least that sort of metastasized, that somehow Facebook has been suppressing or censoring conservative content. It's just the right wing working the refs. I mean, we did a big study that looked at 29 million posts. Right-wing content had 42% of the engagements, even though it only accounted for 19% of the content. I mean, that's not what suppression and censorship looks like.
But part of what we're seeing is the culmination of a strategy of working the refs and doing two things. You threaten them and bully them. In this case, you know, Zuckerberg not only got threatened to be jailed, but then in November, right after Trump won the election, the guy that's going to be the new FCC chair sent a letter saying, “Hey, we're going to come after your Section 230 immunity protections unless you stop censoring.” So one was to avoid consequences, and then the second part, which is even scarier — and this is going to be the new norm — is that you could also get something out of it. And that's what Zuckerberg saw, is that if you don't just say nice things to Trump, but you actually start to take what you have, which is his ecosystem, and use it to empower MAGA and the megaphone that we were just talking about in the first segment, you can get something out of it. And what he wants is less accountability from other countries that are actually cracking down on the types of misinformation, disinformation, extremism, sort of surveillance, you know, advertising that the platform is doing, and they're trying to rein it in. And what he wants is protection.
So he wants to basically exploit the government to protect and further enrich himself. And if he has to give up the platform, then so be it. And, you know, to me, it's not just about fact-checking. The part that's scarier — and that's where I'll stop — is that he said, “We're not only not going to fact check, but we're also going to open up the floodgates” —
MOHYELDIN: Yeah.
CARUSONE: Where what they had previously been doing was slowing down the types of content that would otherwise, you know, that lead to misinformation. Now they're saying, “Hey, that's a free for all now.” It's all going to get supercharged, so we're in for trouble.