Commentary
New Year, New Zuck?
- by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, January 8, 2025
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wore a navy-blue T-shirt with a dropped shoulder, bell sleeve and a gold chain necklace, dangling a large charm, to his history-making video presentation on Tuesday morning.
Adding to his reinvented “lewk” was a head of shaggy orange curls and slightly tanned, orange-y skin, a contrast to his usual pallor.
And yet, despite the easygoing (1970s?) fashion flourishes, his “free speech” announcement was all-business -- if your business is being a 1950s dystopian cult leader.
Indeed, the clash of the words vs. the look was head-scratching. Set against a backdrop of sauna-type wood, Zuck appeared less alien-strongman and more like my mom’s Aunt Selma in Boca.
Selma taught me that a dropped shoulder and elbow-length bell sleeve were very slimming for the upper arms. She was also big on “statement” pieces around the neck.
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If I sound too arch, it’s because I’m still dealing with the whiplash of Zuck's extreme MAGA-ward turn, and the very slippery words he used to describe it four years to the day after the Jan 6 insurrection.
But really, why be shocked by his transparent hypocrisy?
Over the last decade, Zuck has proven himself a shape-shifting candle in Trump’s wind.
Of course, we remember his response back in 2020, when he announced that his platforms were placing a block on Donald J. Trump’s accounts because the then-outgoing president had called to incite “[a] violent insurrection against a democratically elected government."
Meanwhile, there’s more than enough lying and hypocrisy to go around. Obviously, Zuckerberg was affected by Trump’s Truth Social post in April, when the future prez wrote that he would go after “ELECTION FRAUDSTERS at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for a long time.”
“We already know who you are," then-candidate Trump posted. And like the Wicked Witch writing “Surrender Dorothy” in the sky, he added, “Don’t do it! ZUCKERBERGS be careful!”
Rather than fighting back, responding that threats like that are anti-American, Zuck sucked it up, wanting to join ‘em rather than beat ‘em in the face of overwhelming dominion.
Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter of “The Social Network,” who is now writing a movie about the insurrection, “blames” Facebook for Jan. 6. On a podcast episode of “The Town with Matthew Belloni,” Sorkin said he believes Facebook has been perfecting its algorithm to promote content that divides people “because that is what will increase engagement.”
He added,“There is supposed to be a constant tension at Facebook between growth and integrity. There isn’t. It’s just growth.”
In this context, the Meta chairman’s latest anti-integrity move is not-so-shocking. Zuck somehow kept an even straighter face than usual on Tuesday when he announced that FB’s "complex systems" had "too many mistakes and too much censorship."
Conveniently, he announced that “the recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech. So, we're restoring free expression on our platforms [and am] going to get rid of fact-checkers.”
Free speech by getting rid of fact-checkers? That’s newspeak. It’s a war-is-peace world after all.
Or it’s Meta’s way of aligning with the mighty Musk, who these days is a shadow president, now sticking his nose deeply into world affairs.
In ending third-party fact-checking, Zuck even alluded to what Musk does, saying he’d replace it with a more hands-off content-moderation policy in which users police one another through “community notes” -- just like X.
There’s also the Musk-imitating bit of moving his moderation team from California to Trump-friendly Texas.
CNN’s media guy Brian Stelter translated Zuck’s changes to mean that when tech CEOs “are favoring or preferring a certain kind of speech, they‘re favoring their own speech or their own political preferences and not the actual entire user or the community‘s speech.”
What’s more, Musk’s “community notes” decision sent advertisers fleeing X’s platform, along with many users. As Joe Mandese put it in his Red, White & Blog column “[I]f history repeats itself, watch for big brand spending to decline on Meta's platforms over time due to its content moderation policy changes, not because of politics, but because the invisible hand of the ad marketplace simply doesn't want to raise itself in unsafe and unsavory places.”
We remember Musk giving the finger to the advertising community as a result, which I guess is better than telling advertisers to “f--- themselves in the face.”
Still, in Zuck’s case, we’re talking money, not bias. Bottom line, during an interview on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe," New York University Professor Scott Galloway pointed out that with this move, Zuckerberg “gets to save maybe upwards of $5 billion, which is how much they spent on their safety and security department. And [with] a price/earnings ratio of 30, that’s potentially a $150 billion increase in market capitalization.”
The move won’t fix the plaforms’ underlying problems at all. But that’s some powerful economics.
Still, I wouldn’t be surprised within the next four years (or less) to see Mark make another video appearance to explain his latest shocking 180.
By then, maybe he’ll be setting off his Meta glasses with a pony tail and linen caftan.
MediaPost's MADblog columnist.
Needlessly disparaging Zuckerberg's looks disqualifies anything written after such comments. I'm sure you would be insulted if anyone wrote an article about you that started off disparaging your looks to justify an opinion about your perceived ineptness at doing your job.
Seems like nobody at MediaPost has followed Zuckerberg's road to where he is now. Long before Donald Trump won his second term, Zuckerberg publicly disclosed and disclosed at length that FB was strongarmed by the U.S. government and high profile politicians, including the FBI, to remove content that was factual and true.
Opinion on Facebook is just that - opinion. You don't have to agree with it, and like all other mediums, you can "change the channel." It has come to light that much of the content that was removed was either satirical in nature, or it was actually true, but these "fact checkers" were pushing a political idealogy. FB paid for these services to basically do just the opposite of what they were hired to do.
Allowing the audience to openly debate is healthy. Adding more diverse members in opinions and backgrounds to the FB boardroom is healthy.
MP is supposed to be objective in its review of the industry, but mostly propogates falsehoods in these opinion pieces and pushes an idealogy that is increasingly being rejected.
thanks for your insights, Dan.
Barbara: A brilliant piece including the references to Z's looks and dress - all part of the Meta subterfuge and "transparent hyprocracy", of course. (Dan please note!). As Professor Scott Galloway inferred, its all about the money, not decency, ethics, morals or responsible media content and reporting. This Meta decsion should fuel calls for rescinding Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act, 1996 that protects social media from the consequences of their content sewers but that will clearly not happen under the new regime in the US that unequivocally and consistently feeds on "alternative-facts" and "falsehoods"!
Thanks, Tony. Could not agree with you more!
@Tony
very convenient that both you and Barbara completely ignore the truth. The truth being that plenty of people, including Zuckerberg, have publicly named names as to how they were pressured to subvert the truth.
The laptop was real, you can still get, and pass on, Covid even if you are vaccinated, "cheap fake" videos of Biden, etc.
It has been proven that facts and those who broadcast the facts (truth) were shadow banned and censored.
You're not about fact checking and the truth. You're just overtly in favor of censorship when it propagates your ideology. Injecting childish observations about Zuckerberg's appearance just reinforces you should not be taken seriously... especially considering that Barbara's MP avatar is 20 years old and nobody would be able to recognize her if she showed up at an industry event and they never met her before.
Barbara ... are you sure that you didn't use an old picture of Harpo Marx?
John--Ha!
Dan is probably correct that Barbara's disparaging remarks about Zuck's appearance detracted from rather than added to the impact of Barbara's otherwise excellent commentary. It is one thing (and not unexpected) for career polticians to submit to Trump's threats to primary them and thus reveal their lack of morals, ethics, self respect, good judgement, and commitment to fulfill their obligation of doing what is best for the country. It is another to see the parade of corporate execs (like Zuck) going to Floridas to bend the knee to Trump and thus reveal they too are intimidated by Trump;s threats. We should all be concerned by what this says about our politicians, our corporations and half of the population of the US.
Ron: I would resfectfully suggest that Z's "costume" is a deliberate part of the con and hypocracy and data piracy he represents, notably for the great gullible unwashed (and therefore noteworthy). This group, I suggest, are not actually "half of the population of the US" responsible for the final Presidential result. Of the approximately 245 million eligible voters, only ~162 million were registeted to vote, ~75 million voted for Harris, ~77 million voted for DJT, and ~89 million or about 36% of those eligible did not vote. Pause for thought?
@Tony Jarvis Thank you! Obviously Zuck's clothing, jewelry, and hair styling are all carefully curated and part of the optical presentation,therefore, fair game. While shots at age are not.