Is Zuckerberg Playing the Long Game?

Fact-checking and offering money for viral content have each been contentious practices of Facebook (Meta) for years. Guided by what is most often anything but the truth, Meta’s fact-checking practices were in lockstep with the deep state’s freedom-stealing propaganda following Donald Trump’s presidential win in 2016. However, with Trump back in office for a second term as President of the United States, Mark Zuckerberg has shifted course, recently announcing he will phase out Meta’s fact-checking routine in the U.S. No more fact-checkers is excellent news, but it appears misinformation on the platform will indeed persist. Previously, content creators were forbidden from monetizing posts that fact-checkers ruled false. With fact-checkers gone, this policy will also be gone, which could intensify the frequency of misinformation that is indeed genuinely false.

Meta, through its platforms Facebook and Instagram, failed humanity for years with the oppressive way it handled “misinformation” related to COVID-19 and the experimental, gene-damaging mRNA jabs. The platform declared its mission was to curb misinformation that could cause harm, such as “false claims” about cures for COVID-19, so-called “conspiracy theories” that might sway the public from following the tyranny of the CDC and World Health Organization (WHO), and dangers surrounding the never-before-used mRNA COVID-19 jabs. Make no mistake, the CDC and the WHO played a huge role in defining what Meta deemed to be “misinformation.” Meta’s one-sided approach to a fearmongered virus undoubtedly silenced honest debate.

At the time, if a Meta post went against the nefarious narrative of the CDC or the WHO, it was flagged with a warning label, downranked in the feed, or outright removed. The mission to police users for misinformation often involved both humans and algorithms tuned to keywords, such as “mRNA alters DNA” or “vaccines cause Autism,” and so on. Many agree that Meta’s overreach—while heaping money into promoting pro-vaccine campaigns and funneling users towards WHO-approved information—silenced legitimate and necessary discussions around early concerns about, for example, the very real side-effect of myocarditis following the mRNA jabs. As the pandemic evolved, we witnessed in real time that content silenced by Meta as “misinformation” was instead often geared towards saving lives and should’ve been freely debated and spoken about amongst all sides. For those of us on a years-long mission to expose the truth and habilitate natural health, enduring that fiasco was painful and surreal.

A February 24, 2025, article in ProPublica highlighted the irony of Meta’s recent move to banish fact-checkers and pay publishers directly for viral content. With the potential to unlock a fresh revenue stream for scammers and hoaxers, Jestin Coler, who earned bonuses from fake news stories for nearly a decade, including the “infamous and false” viral headline from 2016 “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Links Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide,” shared his views on Meta’s new program currently underway. Coler, who noted that back in the day he earned five figures a month on Facebook (but stated he would never return to the platform), remarked to ProPublica:

“It’s still the same formula to get people riled up. It seems like it could just go right back to those days, like overnight.”

For years, before the recent changes, Meta prioritized discrediting viral hoaxes created to make big bucks. As previously mentioned, Meta also forbids content creators from making money from posts deemed false by its fact-checkers. But that rule will become irrelevant when Meta stops using them. According to Business Insider, contracts with all ten fact-checking organizations in the U.S. will end in March, and Meta will continue to pay them until August. Against the wishes of deep state pawns like some scientists at Harvard, Meta will replace its fact-checking with X-style community notes, but the rollout of that program will take time.

What will ensue once Meta adjusts its algorithms and scales back its fact-checking operation in the United States? It is tough to fully predict, but based on Meta’s past behavior, the financial incentives at play, and the motives behind misinformation, fake news created by hoax pages may have the opportunity to spread like wildfire. Think about it. If Meta is dialing back fact-checking while pushing for more viral content (like their creator bonuses for Reels or high-engagement posts), it could provide hoax pages with a bigger playing field. Less oversight could allow their content to slip through more effortlessly, racking up views, ad revenue, or clicks to external sites before anyone notices. In 2016, hoax pages like those peddling fake election stories pulled in thousands of dollars a month via ads because they went viral fast—Meta’s systems boosted them before moderation caught up.

In 2023, Meta accounted for 45 percent of the total income of fact-checking outfits. Undoubtedly, Meta’s move away from the controversial deep-state-funded fact-checking industry will have an impact. While the move away from fact-checkers has been well-received thanks to the damage it did censoring critical and factual information during the pandemic (and let’s not forget the 2020 election), many believe Meta is implementing its new community notes program with little preparation. Given that the platform is setting the stage for hoaxes to run wild while making scammers money, that assessment seems accurate.

Hmm, one can’t help but question the motive. Are Mark Zuckerberg’s recent actions—promoting Republican Joel Kaplan to lead global policy, donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, axing fact-checkers, rolling back its DEI initiatives, and bringing Trump’s UFC friend Dana White onto Meta’s board—about ensuring free speech, or is his new hands-off approach a strategic move to avoid being a target of President Trump’s disdain of Big Tech and to avoid regulatory headaches? Or is he joining his billionaire peers in cozying up to our new president? Whatever the reason, it is worth noting that in President Trump’s book Save America, which was published in September 2024, he noted that Zuckerberg plotted against him during the 2020 election. Indeed, Trump wrote that Zuckerberg “steered” Facebook against him despite being friendly to him in person, adding:

“We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time, he will spend the rest of his life in prison—as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election.”