Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg Decides You Can’t Handle the Truth | Opinion

Efforts to differentiate between fact and fiction are going out of style. First X got rid of the hardy folks who had to sift through endless crap so that you, the consumer didn’t have to.

Now, it’s Meta—which had not that long ago banned once-and-future President Donald Trump entirely from its platforms—that is suing for peace and profits by sucking up to MAGA-ism and the man who made it.

The price Meta and its founder Mark Zuckerberg are willing to pay?

Reality.

On the Right, efforts to present the planet with objective truth is called censorship. This is mainly the case because what’s being peddled by these champions of freedom is spin, self-serving falsity, and whole-cloth fabrications.

I apologize for coming back to the most telling example. You’re probably bored of the story of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, which took the form of a direct and violent attack on the U.S. Capitol Building and the people inside. Unfortunately, it’s an important piece of history that is currently under reconstruction by the same people who would tell you that War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength.

We all saw what happened in real time. We saw men and women physically fighting their way up the stairs and into the seat of American government. There were kicks, punches thrown, fireworks exploded, and gunshots fired. It was police versus a mob that had marched down the Mall after being inspired by The Biggest Loser.

You can say that Trump didn’t directly call for these thugs to exude menace and commit violence. Listen to what he said, and I think a debate can be had. What can’t be debated is the pleasure he has taken in the outcome; seeing an act of hate and calling it love.

Trump isn’t alone in the effort to rewrite history as it was captured on camera and attested to by more than one of my friends.

Alan Chin was there as a photographer. We’ve been friends for 42 years. He covered the 1987 massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. He has reported throughout the Middle East and Afghanistan. I trust him to know a riot when he sees one.

What happened that day? Well, Chin says it was a violent coup attempt.

I believe him.

And, for a while, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram helped everyone to know the truth, too.

In the face of a resurgent The Donald (as the tabloids of New York once called him), these vast companies and the pirates who run them have melted. Trump has promised to make his second go around in office a revenge tour, and while those may sound like fighting words, Zuckerberg and others with billions at stake are putting the “cowed,” in “coward.”

Now, you can call the violent insurrection on that January day whatever you like on Facebook. Ah freedom! This is America dammit, after all, and social media is a public forum!

Except it’s not. These “platforms,” aren’t free and fair communities, regardless of whether they try to give priority to the objective truth. What you see on Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, X, Threads… well, it’s all constantly manipulated to ensure that your addiction to these services only grows.

That means if you are fond of certain lies, you will now get a diet of nothing but—nothing to burst your bubble. Nothing to challenge you.

And we all need to have our assumptions challenged from time to time.

Even now, in the impossible year of 2025, truth is still a thing, but no one seems willing to pay the price to preserve it.

So, what to do?

Each and every one of us must learn the skills that were once the purview of journalists. Every word you read on a social media site you now need to fact check for yourself.

I won’t make the argument that it’s not possible for people to do. Learning to do good journalism isn’t the same as studying medicine or using math to understand the cosmos.

But it takes time people don’t have and a familiarity with subjects and players they won’t get without devoting their lives to them. And the best journalism is done by people who like to poke, pry, and have little shame or need for sleep. These folks are dedicated to particular aspects of news and while they may not be able to carry out brain surgery, they know what to look for in a post-mortem report—or they know who to ask.

Unfortunately, trust in the people who have dedicated their lives to understanding the world—or at least their little slice of it—is nearly gone. Faith in people who are paid to be eyewitnesses to history is gone. Faith in even the concept of objective truth is on the way out—it no longer serves our country’s masters.

With its decision to check factchecking at the door, Meta has just made the foundations of our shared reality a little shakier. The truth is that they were shaky enough already.

Jason Fields is a deputy opinion editor at Newsweek.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.