Mark Zuckerberg’s look on the Aug. 25 episode of “The Joe Rogan Expertise” podcast supplied listeners with 173 minutes of public relations propaganda introduced as a dialogue.
Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms (previously Fb Inc.), utilized Rogan’s platform — which garners an estimated 11 million listeners (most younger and male) per episode — to quell criticism that Meta is a monopoly that contributes to customers’ psychological well being issues (significantly younger ladies), ignores privateness issues and prioritizes earnings over consumer security. In the course of the three-hour dialog, Zuckerberg deftly evaded inconvenient information, shifted blame and prevented contentious points associated to Meta and Large Tech.
All through the interview, Zuckerberg tried to hide the monetary motives driving the multibillion-dollar firm by claiming Meta is as a substitute pushed by a want to “empower” folks to “categorical” themselves and obtain their targets. This declare, nonetheless, stands in direct contradiction to the litany of research and inside experiences that doc how the corporate is definitely dividing folks, disempowering customers and limiting expression.
Echoing the frequent Silicon Valley perception in expertise because the technique of reaching a “good” society, Zuckerberg stated he thought that life would enhance due to the “immersive expertise” and digital world that Meta is creating. As in earlier interviews, he lauded “the inventive economic system” — work that entails extra creativity than the normal labor workforce — as an vital contribution to this new world that might profit Meta’s customers. This utopian imaginative and prescient nonetheless skirted substantive discussions about how the gig economic system, wherein many of those inventive jobs exist, has decimated the fabric situations of working folks. Nor does it make clear that Meta’s monetary viability is determined by, however doesn’t pay for, user-generated knowledge and content material.
Zuckerberg sought to reframe the general public picture of his firm from the company that it’s to one thing extra akin to a strong democracy. He shared that Meta has a “protection” staff that spends $5 billion yearly to fight propagandists. He lauded the “separation of powers” in Meta’s governance construction as a result of they permit the corporate to raised “serve” the “neighborhood.” He famous that having “types of governance which can be unbiased of us” is healthier than one firm or individual. Nonetheless, Zuckerberg’s rhetoric gives solely the phantasm of democracy, as a result of in actuality, it’s Meta, not its neighborhood of customers, that units the neighborhood requirements, and there’s nothing binding that separates or limits Zuckerberg’s energy.
At some factors, the CEO purposely diverted the dialog when introduced with inconvenient information. For instance, when requested concerning the concept of eliminating algorithms, as a substitute of acknowledging that Meta’s monetary viability, like most of Large Tech, is determined by the creation and alteration of algorithms to foretell and modify customers’ attitudes and behaviors, Zuckerberg talked about how algorithms serve customers by lowering enterprise spam and delivering desired content material like pictures of a member of the family’s new child.
When confronted with different troublesome matters relating to Large Tech, Zuckerberg shifted blame away from his firm. He stated that information media was liable for producing “crucial” and “damaging” content material that disrupts Fb’s principally constructive “neighborhood,” neglecting to say that social media algorithms amplify damaging information content material. He argued that Twitter is a extra damaging platform in comparison with Meta’s “friendlier” platform, Instagram, due to the previous’s give attention to information. However there once more, he failed to say how even in keeping with Meta’s personal inside experiences, Instagram’s design is liable for physique shaming and cyber-bullying.
Extremely, he additionally appeared responsible customers for selecting to be distracted by expertise, and never “being actively engaged in relationship constructing” as a result of they’re “sitting there and consuming stuff.” He didn’t point out that these behaviors have been linked to Large Tech hacking folks’s brains for the aim of selling what some have referred to as display screen dependancy.
However the place Zuckerberg proved most evasive was when it got here to censorship. Rogan questioned Meta’s October 2020 resolution to forestall customers from accessing a narrative about Hunter Biden as a result of they believed it to be misinformation. The story, whereas nonetheless controversial, was a minimum of partially authenticated by a number of information shops together with the Washington Publish and the New York Instances. Zuckerberg claimed he remembered that Meta didn’t fully take away the story, solely “decreased” entry to it. After which, in what appears to be his normal public relations tactic, he shifted blame to Twitter for fully eradicating any associated articles and the FBI for influencing Meta’s resolution to suppress the story within the first place. Oddly, he argued that customers can’t blame Meta for censoring content material as a result of it pays third-party corporations to suppress content material on Meta platforms.
That Rogan didn’t press the billionaire on any of the evident inaccuracies of his statements over the course of three hours isn’t shocking. That’s the job of a journalist — which Rogan, most definitely, just isn’t. As a substitute, the comedian-turned-pundit used his cultural cache to legitimize Meta propaganda, permitting his listeners to be informed solely what Meta desires them to assume.
As for Zuckerberg, the interview made clear how little accountability there’s in Large Tech. Regardless of the CEO’s claims, corporations like Meta undermine democracy and erode private well-being. The customers who’ve created a lot of Large Tech’s wealth have each proper to demand and obtain higher.
Nolan Higdon is a Mission Censored nationwide choose and college lecturer at Merrill School and the Training Division at UC Santa Cruz.
