Dave is sitting in a Palo Alto Starbucks after just handing his resume over the counter. He knows he’s overqualified but shakes his head and moans: “At this point, I’ll take anything.” Until a few weeks ago, Dave, like thousands of other left-leaning, 30-something-year-olds, had been a Facebook fact-checker, but now he’s pounding the pavement, asking himself what went wrong.
In a surprise to many, Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta—the parent company of Facebook—ended years of oppressive fact-checking on the platform. The controversial move by the newly broccoli-trimmed social media oligarch will replace fact-checkers like Dave with user-generated Community Notes.
Don’t shoot the Facebook messenger
Dave, 32, says he felt blindsided by the sudden change in Facebook’s new policy to stop censoring the truth.
“We were on the front lines of keeping certain dangerous truths off the platform. Without a buffer zone of highly trained Content Moderators, people are going to start realizing many damaging and harmful truths that we can no longer inoculate them from.”
As the barista behind the counter frowns at Dave and offers back his resume he lets out an audible sigh.
“It wasn’t supposed to end this way. Facebook had a reputation as a government disinformation-safe space with total job security. Thanks for nothing Mark F#ckerburg!”
Like his colleagues Stacy in San Francisco and Rashid in Bombay, Dave is now forced to reevaluate his professional timeline on the new uncensored Facebook.
Disappearing stories
“I thought we were doing a really great job,” winces Stacy, 31, as she packs moving boxes in her Mission District studio apartment in downtown San Francisco.
“We were fighting the bad guys, and now it seems as though we’re the bad guys. Like that meme that we used to ban.”
After graduating from Wesleyan in 2020, Stacy landed a Meta Content Review Specialist job and moved from Georgia to California. Stacy explains that she moderated content ranging from anything that went against DEI, LGBTQAI+ Joe Biden and the federal governments pandemic response and restrictions.
“Mark knew fighting misinformation online was the only way to save lives and restore democracy. Everyone in my Zoom work group was totally energized by his vision.” But Stacy says that things started to change when it became obvious that Donald Trump would be returning to the White House, despite the fact checker’s best effort to help Kamala Harris win.
“It was the small things at first, you know? We were told to let unscientific posts about social distancing slide, then masks and then finally we were ordered to let vaccine denial run rampant. When I went to shadow ban a Joe Rogan podcast and saw that Mark was the guest I knew the system was crashing.”
Who Gives a Zuck?
Despite his company’s past draconian censorship policies, Mark Zuckerberg now says that the new change will empower users, giving them “more control over information and collaboratively assess the accuracy of content.” He goes on to explain in a video posted to the platform on January 7 that: “Facebook aims to allow for a wider range of viewpoints to be expressed.”
Do Not Redeem the Card
Sitting cross-legged in a squalid, small cramped room over Microsoft Teams from his home in Bombay, Rashid, tells GWU! he disagrees with his former meta-billionaire boss. The 39-year-old programmer who also did overtime work as a Content Moderator before being made redundant in January whispers sadly that putting fact-checking in the hands of the masses will cause a complete meltdown of democracy.
“Imagine how many lives would’ve been lost during the global COVID pandemic,” he lectures.
“The amount of misinformation about the safe and effective vaccine being dangerous or that a cloth mask can’t save you from the deadly virus was very much out of control. We were the shepherds of truth, keeping the lambs from the slaughter at the hands of anti-vaxxers.”
Rashid hopes to find work at his cousin’s chatbot farm in Sri Lanka.
The Air Was Safe to Breathe on Facebook
The fact-checkers GWU! spoke with all tell America’s Number 1 Source of Newstainment that they were paid handsomely for their services in a never-ending struggle with the truth.
“The day never ended,” exclaims Stacy. “I’d censor a few pandemic posts and seconds later there would be so many more!”
Among her more memorable acts of censorship not involving the Coronavirus scam was removing posts that rightfully claimed September 11th was an inside job.
“I mean, obviously, the hijacked planes went into the Twin Towers,” she laughs.
“The idea that it was a controlled demolition or missiles doesn’t make any sense, and, more importantly, it goes against the official narrative.” A narrative that she notes hasn’t been amended since September 12, 2001.
It was those types of official narratives that made their jobs a lot easier, reflects Dave.
“Look, I’m not writing the news, when a memorandum comes down saying something happened, it’s not our job to question it.”
Dave is oblivious as to where the memos came from or who was issuing them. While some, including Zuckerburg, claim censorship orders came directly from the White House, others believe a more sinister and higher-up operation was ordering the disinformation.
Rashid tells GWU!, that ultimately, the majority of Facebook users still support the fired fact-checkers. “That is what the information from my last spreadsheet relayed to me. I believe it and therefore, so should you.”