In an interview with the Lex Fridman Podcast, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, dived into the convoluted waters of content censorship and its consequences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Censorship Act: Navigating the tightrope of content censorship is “really tricky,” according to Zuckerberg. He highlighted a dilemma where content might be false, “but may not be harmful, so it’s like, alright, are you going to censor someone for just being wrong, if there’s no kind of harm implication of what they’re doing?’”
Establishment Pressures: In the early days of the pandemic, Zuckerberg recalls how the “establishment” was scrambling and gave platforms, like Meta, mixed signals. He elaborated, “Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier on in the pandemic, where there were real health implications, but there hadn’t been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions, and, unfortunately, I think a lot of the establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts.”
Looking Back: The Meta CEO expressed concern about the establishment pushing platforms to enforce and censor information, which, upon reflection, “ended up being more debatable or true.”
Credibility at Stake: The hasty calls for censorship based on unsteady data played a role in shaking the foundations of trust in the scientific community. “It really undermines trust,” Zuckerberg pointed out.
Nuance in Danger: Adding to the complexity, Zuckerberg concurred with Fridman on the possibility of depth and nuance in information being “lost” in the sea of content moderation dictated by institutions and governments.
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