It's Muskerberg's World Now

Mark Zuckerberg goes full Musk. Plus, old is new at CES.

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Jan 16, 2025

That’s a cover from 2011, not 2025! Sree’s newsletter is produced with Zach Peterson with the Digimentors Tech Tip from Robert S. Anthony. Here’s our sponsorship kit.

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In August 2023, when the horrors Elon Musk was unleashing on Twitter were just becoming clear, millions flocked to Threads, the opportunistic alternative launched by Instagram. I wrote:

Things are so bad at Twitter that Musk is making Mark Zuckerberg look harmless — and that may be his biggest achievement of all. So many of us ran to Threads hoping that it would be a respite from the torture of Twitter, forgetting all the havoc Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger have caused in the world (I am more forgiving of Instagram because there’s less drama there. eg, When I was working at The Met Museum, I put my then-boss Tom Campbell on IG instead of Twitter).

Today there is no room for doubt about Zuckerberg’s intentions or where his head is.

It’s impossible to watch his recent appearances without hearing Musk’s syntax—Zuck is MAGA, his platforms are going to be used to spread hate and intolerance and his political transformation into a Trump acolyte is in place for the next four years or so.

Beth Kowitt sums it up so well in her Bloomberg Opinion piece, ‘Making the World a Better Place’ Is So Last Year:

Not so long ago, Mark Zuckerberg desperately wanted the public to view him not just as an empire builder but also as a world-saver.
The Meta Platforms Inc. CEO publicly committed parts of his vast fortune to causes like immigration reform and voter access. He spoke out about combating poverty and hunger and stressed the importance of equality.
But in a flurry of announcements last week, Zuckerberg confirmed that he’s had a change of heart. Now, he’s whittled his ambitions simply to tech overlord. In getting rid of fact checkers and loosening the rules on what users can say on Meta’s platforms, Zuckerberg unleashed a new era of heightened misinformation and abusive speech. At the same time, he ended the tech giant’s commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Let me translate some of what has come out of Zuckerberg’s empire in the last week. One item:

We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created[…]

“Politically biased” is doing a lot of work in this sentence. Myriad empirical studies show how much more mis- and disinformation is shared by right-wing adjacent networks. Translation: “I’m scared of Trump and his whims, and I should probably put deplorable Dana White on the board of directors just in case.”

Here’s another:

[W]e're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it's gone too far. So, I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.

Translation: “MAGA folks can call a gay or trans person ‘mentally ill’ and much worse and it’s up to you all to deal with it.”

And another:

Starting in the US, we are ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to a Community Notes model.

Translation: “I’m copying the Community Notes feature on X that doesn’t work, is ineffective, magnifies disinformation and confuses people. I’m going to pretend it can substitute for human editors.”

From the always essential Casey Newton, some examples of content that will now be allowed on Facebook and Instagram:

"There's no such thing as trans children."
"God created two genders, 'transgender' people are not a real thing."
"A trans woman isn't a woman, it's a pathetic confused man."
"A trans person isn't a he or she, it's an it."

The Intercept’s Sam Biddle also got his hands on some leaked documents from Meta:

Examples of newly permissible speech on Facebook and Instagram highlighted in the training materials include:
“Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit.”
“Gays are freaks.”

Let’s jump in the way-back machine—all the way to January of 2021—when Trump supporters attacked the Capitol:

It seems almost quaint at this point, but this sort of nihilism and cynicism is nothing new. The tech giants, Meta chief among them, have always taken a remarkably distorted view of what constitutes “political” speech. In this case, Meta is Zuckerberg and Zuckerberg is Meta—there is no meaningful distinction. Charlie Warzel’s piece in The Atlantic is a great compendium of how Zuckerberg has shifted in the political breeze over the years:

Zuckerberg’s personal politics have always been inextricably linked to his company’s political and financial interests. Above all else, the Facebook founder seems compelled by any ideology that allows the company to grow rapidly and make money without having to take too much responsibility for what happens on its platforms. Zuckerberg knows which way the political wind is blowing and appears to be trying to ride it while, simultaneously, being at least a little bit afraid of it. When a reporter today asked Trump if he thought Meta’s policy changes were driven by his previous threats, he replied, “Probably.”
Zuckerberg’s motives are less important than his actions, which, at least right now, are inarguably MAGA-coded. (He said that he’s moving the content-review teams away from the biased, blue shores of California to the supposedly neutral land of Texas, for one.) They are also deeply cynical. After years of arguing that its users don’t want to see political content (unless they explicitly follow political accounts or pages), Meta is now arguing that it is time to promote “civic” material.

As the political winds hit the MAGA jet stream, Zuckerberg is following suit—even trotting out the derisive version of “legacy media” in his public statements. Surely, he feels spurned by establishment liberals who never really lined up to thank him for pretending to take meaningful action to combat the ills of his platforms, but that’s borderline childish.

Matt Stoller says Zuckerberg wants to insulate Meta from regulations and he’ll do whatever it takes to achieve that:

In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg described the ‘existential’ threat to his company, which was the antitrust suit filed against him by the Trump administration. That case goes to trial in 2025, if Trump chooses to continue with it. If. There are many other policy goals that Zuckerberg has, and none of them have to do with controls over speech.
So forgive me for being cynical, but Mark Zuckerberg’s real goals are (1) an end to the Federal Trade Commission antitrust suit against the firm (2) to eliminate the consent decree that bans the targeting of children and (3) the legalization of mass copyright violations for AI training models (4) eliminating regulatory scrutiny of Facebook’s payments business by the CFPB and (5) warding off the threat that Congress will regulate the social networking firm over kids privacy. (6) U.S. government aid in preventing foreign governments from regulating the company’s platforms.
There are more legal problems for Zuckerberg, including holdover litigation from Cambridge Analytica, potential insider trading claims, and Section 230 liability over addiction. But let’s be clear, these are all a result of this one guy having far too much power because we’ve chosen a regulatory framework to allow that. Over the last eight years, slowly but surely, that framework has been changing. Zuckerberg can see that, and he’s doing his best to make sure he stays in control.

Control, power, and revenue—that’s the Silicon Valley trifecta, and Zuckerberg is straight out of central casting.

📲 Despite my criticism of Zuckerberg, I am experimenting with WhatsApp’s newish Communities feature and a series of low-volume groups you can join. Subjects include AI, hip hop, baseball and more (along with some groups by city). Browse and sign up here: tinyurl.com/sreecommunity.

💵 In December, I made the case for funding new media outlets. Am working on some ideas and looking for collaborators and partners. Ping me: sree.sreenivasan1@gmail.com.

🗞️ #NYTReadalong: Sundays 8:30-10 am ET, Neil Parekh and I read a newspaper out loud on social media with a fab guest. This week we had Naresh Fernandes, author and founder of India’s Scroll.in. Watch the video here; and several years of archives here. Sponsored by MuckRack. Want to be — or suggest — a guest? neil@digimentors.group.

By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Bob Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him @newyorkbob.

What’s in a name? Quite a bit apparently. The just-concluded CES 2025 technology super-showcase in Las Vegas proved that old and dusty brand names can be new and glitzy again—just add a little licensing magic.

Among the 4,500 exhibitors that filled CES 2025 were many showing off products with old, familiar brand names like RCA, Radio Shack and Compaq. Look closer, however and you’d find that the products aren’t actually made by the famous companies but by firms that license the iconic nameplates.

The best example at CES 2025 might have been Eastman Kodak, the photography giant which once dominated the film camera market. The Rochester, New York-based corporation failed to pivot from film to digital photography and lost much of its luster, but the company has proven adept at licensing its name and yellow logo to manufacturers worldwide.

Sitting in a plum spot close to the main entrance of Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center was C+A Global of Edison, New Jersey, which showed off a large arsenal of Kodak-branded cameras, projectors and slide scanners. A steady stream of CES attendees eagerly took selfies with the company’s Barbie-branded instant print cameras. The pink Barbie x Kodak Printomatic instant-print digital cameras can generate 2-by-3-inch ZINK Zero-Ink prints while also storing photos on removable memory cards.

Showcased at a nearby booth, the new Kodak Soundbrix Bluetooth speakers from Star Glory Limited of Hong Kong focus on simplicity. Once you’ve paired one of the lightweight speakers with your mobile device, adding another speaker is simple: stack it on top of the first one. The second unit automatically pairs and creates a two-speaker system.

Up to 100 speakers can be chained, thus making Soundbrix speakers usable for parties and corporate events, said a representative for the company, which also makes licensed Westinghouse, Polaroid and RCA products.

Prinics Inc. of South Korea showed off Kodak Mini Shot 2-in1 Instant Camera and Photo Printer units, all of which offer a boxy, retro-looking shape. In addition to creating prints from images captured by the cameras, the units can also print photos sent wirelessly from a mobile device.

Those of a certain age will remember when people strutted down sidewalks, along beaches and through parks cranking out music with large boomboxes. The new AIWA Retro Boombox with Cassette Player does a good job of mirroring the boom boxes of the 1980s, right down to its twin VU meters, analog sliding AM/FM radio tuner display and fat bass, treble, tuning and volume knobs. Yes, the unit offers old-style cassette and CD players, but also adds modern touches, including a USB port, a microSD memory card slot and Bluetooth wireless audio support.

The moral: Old brands never die—as long as they can be monetized.

It's Muskerberg's World Now

Mark Zuckerberg goes full Musk. Plus, old is new at CES.

TECH TIP | CES 2025: What’s Old is New Again. Sort Of

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