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Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, hires former employee of U.S. Republican's 'Project 2025' (newrepublic.com)

submitted 2 months ago by tardigrada@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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Meta—the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp—has just hired Dustin Carmack, a former adviser to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s doomed presidential campaign and an ex–Project 2025 employee.

Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic instructor and attorney Alejandra Caraballo revealed the news on X (formerly Twitter) Monday afternoon, providing screenshots from Carmack’s LinkedIn profile, which he has since deactivated.

The move comes amid a period in which Meta’s treatment of users—specifically the type of user who runs afoul of much of what Project 2025 wants to do to the United States—has been called into question. In recent months, the LGBTQ+ rights group GLAAD has criticized Meta’s content moderation policies on its platforms, saying that they were effectively encouraging an “epidemic of anti-transgender hate” on their social media sites. The report showed a significant increase in anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ posts on Meta’s sites, noting that transgender people were routinely called “sexual predators,” “perverts,” and “groomers” in many of those posts.

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[–] 14th_cylon@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Pretty sure it has nothing to do with this, right?

Poor guy regretting he bowed to censorship...

https://www.reuters.com/technology/zuckerberg-says-biden-administration-pressured-meta-censor-covid-19-content-2024-08-27/

Aug 27 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms (META.O) , opens new tab CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the Biden administration had pressured the company to "censor" COVID-19 content during the pandemic, apparently referring to White House requests to take down misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.

In a letter dated Aug. 26, Zuckerberg told the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee that he regretted not speaking up about this pressure earlier, as well as other decisions he had made as the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp around removing certain content.

In July 2021, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said social media platforms like Facebook "are killing people" for allowing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines to be posted on its platform.

Others like former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy publicly said the company was not doing enough to take down misinformation, and was making it harder to fight the pandemic and save lives.