Thread by @michaelharriot

There's a very interesting connection between Mark Zuckerberg's right-wing turn and the guy who might be the most powerful person in American media. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, so...

A thread.

First of all, let's be clear. Mark Zuckerberg's didn't just announce changes to Meta's content moderation policy. He didn't even announce that Meta's content policy will change.

He announced that his company is willing to help kill people.

How?

First of all, replacing fact-checking with community notes doesn't just mean misinformation and hate will spread, it means people will die because of it.

For instance , Facebook removed MILLIONS of posts containing COVID misinformation.

cbsnews.com/news/mark-zuck…

At one point, there was MORE COVID misinformation than CORRECT information from hospitals, govt agencies & doctors.

Imagine how many kids would have died if, instead of removing posts, there was just a note that said:

"COVID slumber parties are probably not a good idea."

Do y'all remember WHY Kyle Rittenhouse grabbed his AR-15 & headed to Kenosha?

Facebook

FB ADMITS they should've removed the post earlier bc it violated their rules, but imagine how many OTHER deaths they caught

Now imagine what'll happen with "less liberal" content moderators

FB also removed the Unite the Right rally event page the day before Nazis convened in Charlottesville. They don't deserve props, but it could've been worse if content moderators can just say:

"There are good people on both sides."

Like this "good guy."

abcnews.go.com/US/woman-repor…

Speaking of both sides, remember when researchers, journalists and even Congress UNDER TRUMP found out that 95% of the George Floyd protests were peaceful and right-wing groups caused MOST of the violence?

Whatever happened to the Boogaloo Boys anyway?

They came out of nowhere, fucked shit up during the summer of 2020, & just disappeared.

And they would've gotten away with it, if it wasn't for those damn liberal content moderators

washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

You might be too young to remember when you could buy guns on FB. The leftists stopped it in 2014 But imagine how many mass shootings we averted

I'm old enough to remember the story that made the whole content moderation debate go viral.

What you know about "Pizzagate?"

The story about Democrats running a child sex trafficking ring from a DC pizza shop w/ an email server in Hillary Clinton's basement started on Reddit. But it went crazy when people started posting the pizzeria customer's IG pics on FB

THen a "hero" showed up with a machine gun

Russia saw the disinformation and was like: Damn! That's a good idea.

Never forget that Russia targeted "no single group more than African Americans." 40% of the disinformation was on FB & 2 out of every three posts was aimed at Black people.

bbc.com/news/technolog…

I'm sure a few digital post-its can stop a coordinated campaign by one of the biggest intelligence networks on the planet that's using racism to undermine democracy.

Question: What if the Proud Boys had enough people to overthrow the gov't on Jan 6?
abcnews.go.com/US/facebook-ta…

We won't talk about how FB contributed to ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka, Myanmar & other places where content moderation isn't as robust as when a Black person is suspended for even mentioning the esteemed Mr. Wyatt P. Pull

Meanwhile, cops be like:
revealnews.org/article/inside…

Well, get ready for FB to a lot like Myanmar now...

Or Twitter.

But that's not even what I came here to talk about. We all know what Twitter has become since Mr. Battery-Operated Apartheid took over.

Remember when we thought Elon was smart?
nytimes.com/2017/10/27/wor…

Or people at least thought he wasn't a right-wing wingnut.

Then again, we thought the same thing about Mark Zuckerburg and Jeff Bezos. No one thought they were libs but, at worst, they were just ruthless capitalists.

What happened?

I have a theory.

There's a common thread between all these oligarchs and their right-wing pivot. To be fair, I didn't notice this until I watched the Zuckerberg announcement for myself.

The Venn Diagram also includes Elon's apartheid bro Peter Theil, the campaign against CRT...

The attack on DEI, the trans sports debate that doesn't exist, anti-vaxxers and all the stuff that pisses of "straight white guys" who Donald Trump will save

And it all started with the most powerful force in American media.

Joe Rogan

Unlike a lot of people, I won't pretend that I never liked Joe Rogan or say he isn't funny. I once did a Pew Research panel on podcast listenership & they don't even count Rogan because is audience is too huge. You can't fathom how big his audience is.

If JRE was on TV, it would rank as the most-watched series on TV besides Sunday Night Football and the Olympics. That's why Spotify gave him a $200 mill

I've paid to see him do comedy & listened to hundreds of episodes, and I thought it was interesting.

Notice I said "was"

He was a curious and funny guy who was interested in a lot of things. And it's funny to hear someone who's funny explore different topics with the premise of "I don't know shit, but I'm interested in everything."

Then, it started changing.

My mother once said: "If there's such a thing as 'average intelligence,' at least half the people are below average."

And because his audience was so big, male and largely white, millions of below-average white guys believed Joe Rogan wasn't just curious...

He was smart.

Even worse, he believed it.

Imit it in a million years, but then again, no one thinks they're dumb.

I'll even tell you when I think it started:

When he moved from California to Texas because they had more "freedoms"

Whenever a white man adds an s to "freedom," he's gone.

But he didn't just move there. He opened a comedy club. And when the pandemic hit, and people criticized him for not shutting down, he slowly started drifting rightward. He invited on anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists like RFK and others.

mynbc15.com/news/nation-wo…

Think about this: DO you remember when Rogan, Elon and RFK were criticized for spreading vaccine misinformation on Rogan's show?

Remember who else was there? I was LONG done with Rogan by then but I remember Mark Cuban was there with a billionaire I'd never heard of...

It was Bill Ackman, who started the anti-DEI campaign.

But by then, Rogan had already had Peter Thiel and Christopher Rufo on, the guy behind the anti-woke "Critical Race Theory" campaign.

fortune.com/2023/06/20/bil…

Remember, 12 years ago, Joe Rogan was the one who started "warning" people about the danger of Trans women in sports. (Since then, there's been 5 examples. There's literally more laws against trans women in k-12 sports than trans women in K-12 sports)

bleacherreport.com/articles/15730…

Remember who started hanging with him, suddenly started making trans jokes and ignoring COVID protocols?

Rogan got more anti-vax when people laughed at him for taking Ivermectin. To this day, he still hates when people say he took "horse dewormer."

heavy.com/news/joe-rogan…

I'm sure you remember when Trump was on Rogan's podcast. But do y'all remember next?

Don't worry.

He was on Rogan Friday, and then held a rally at MSG on Sunday.

Well, when Rogan moved from California to Austin, a young comedian moved there with him.

Tony Hinchcliffe

Don't forget that Zuckerberg was always really conciliatory about misinformation on FB.

Until he went on Rogan and seemed to be convinced in real time that he should not have "suppressed" the Hunter Biden corruption laptop story.

Two months later, this happened

apnews.com/article/alexan…

Then he endorsed Trump.

I'm old enough to remember when he said Trump was an "idiot." not he thinks he's going to bring back his "freedoms"

I'm telling y'all, it all goes ties back to ROGAN.

But if you don't believe me, here's the wild part.

When Zuckerberg said he is going to move their content moderation from California to Texas to make it more liberal, he didn't say WHERE.

But if I had to guess, it would be here in Roganland:
trerc.tamu.edu/news-talk/face…

At least Joe Rogan's boss and Zuckerberg's new board member will feel at home.

kxan.com/technology/ap-…

Rogan is the puppetmaster

By the way, this is not a conspiracy theory. If it was...

I'd post it on Facebook.